Environment

What we don't know... does scare the pants off of us!

I want to tell you a story about something that happened to me a few years ago.  My sister and I lived together in Melbourne, Florida, and one day we went to Sebastian Bay, a man made inlet in the mid-east of the Florida peninsula, to learn to surf and to enjoy the beach.  I made a failed attempt at surfing and when our friend took back his surfboard, my sister and I decided to take a swim.

After swimming way past the level where we could touch the bottom, we heard the lifeguard's siren go off.  We looked back, saw that it wasn't for us and continued swimming.  A few seconds later it went off again.  I looked back and saw that he was beckoning us back to shore.

Reluctantly, we began our return to the beach, my sister in front.  After a few moments of swimming, I looked back to see the fin of a shark, which I figured at three to four feet long, gliding right past where my sister and I had been swimming.  It was feeding.  So as not to scare her I didn't inform her that a shark just swam by (at that point in life, she was terrified of sharks, and where we were at the moment had one of the highest rates of shark attacks in the States).  I kept calm and kept us swimming. 

When we arrived at shore, I told her what I saw, and the lifeguard verified it, except he said that the shark was about 7-8 feet long (as he knew better than I, he was probably right). 

We survived a near shark attack. 

The thing is, we were unknowingly swimming within attack distance of dozens of sharks, yet we didn't get attacked.  Why?  Because sharks don't "just" attack people.  Humans are their least favorite of the spectrum of flavors out there.  Though we were within 7 feet of a 7-8 foot shark, we didn't even go off as a blip on its radar.  Sharks don't even want to eat us - that's an ego popper.  They attack when hungry, curious or in danger.

After this experience, Hollywood lost all credibility for me.

 

What makes us so uncaring about the global predicament?

Lately I have been hearing people talk about what is going on with our world, and it is driving me crazy!

We were having a discussion the other day about the ridiculous flooding that have been going on in England, the heat waves that have been hitting us and other abnormal things going on in our world.  People are now saying, "Well, that's global warming."

Yeah, it sure as heck is global warming, but how do you take it so casually?  People act as if this is the most natural thing in the world that global warming is occurring now at an accelerated rate.  It is as if they are not at all worried about the devastating effects, which we are already seeing as I write this (Exhibit A:  Flooding in England. Exhibit B: Melting Icebergs.  Exhibit C: Melting Himalayas).

So why are we so nonchalant about this ultra important issue?

I've come up with three conclusions.  The first is that governments are keeping it as a low priority on their agenda, as money talks and our world doesn't.  It works really well for them that the environmental issues are kept under the lid?they give just enough to "show they care", but not so much that it will hurt them in any way, shape or form.

The second reason is that environmental organizations have been trying for so long to make a difference, that people have just gotten sick of hearing about the environment and what we are doing to ruin it.

Finally, the third reason, which I believe may be the real reason, is that we as the human race simply do not know how to think towards the future.  We don't think about the future that our children and their children will have, we are shortsighted, and believe that if things are alright, maybe not perfect, but alright, now, then they will also be fine in the future.

We need to be careful.  Our children's futures literally do hang on a thread if we continue to think in the present.