This lovely planet of ours–we need to protect it as long as humanly possible, because the environment is very important, and all of it is ordained: animals and plants and trees. Now, we need to love our environment, not just our material things. Even though we may have busy lives, we need to stop and be grateful for the environment because it’s our legacy that we will leave for our future generations, and the generations after that. Environmentalism is about learning how to take care of the environment that we live in.
Encyclopedia Britannica defines environmentalism as “the political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities.” We should all be aware of the environment and how we should take excellent care of it, and I hope this piece starts a broader conversation about the environment itself. What I also hope for is that we, not just in Atlanta, but across America and across the world, should be aware of the environment around us.
While I was researching for this piece, I found an article about Ms. Julia Butterfly Hill. She did something very impressive and compassionate and is the embodiment of an environmentalist.
Ms. Julia Butterfly Hill is an environmental activist concerned about the environment, and she is a part of Earth First! Earth First is an environmentalist group founded in the southwestern United States in 1980. She was very well known in the 1990’s for her acts of environmentalism. Ms. Hill moved up into a redwood tree for about two years so that loggers would not cut it down. She wouldn’t come down until the loggers agreed that they would not remove the tree. She had a bunch of media presence who were watching this all play out. People were very interested in why she was up in the tree for so long.
We all should be like Ms. Hill, because we all need to be concerned about the environment. We don’t know how long each one of us is going to be on this lovely planet of ours out in space. We all need to care about the environment and all its habitats. Ms. Butterfly was willing to risk it all, even her own comfort level, to save the environment. I think that is a very compassionate thing for Ms. Butterfly Hill to do. We can learn a lot from other people who care about the environment as much as Ms. Hill does.
What I found interesting, when I was reading an article in the Princeton Review, is that you can have a career in environmental science. Environmental scientists go into this profession to help people understand the environment, and at the end of the day they can go home every night to their families knowing that environmental scientists do a lot of different things such as coming together with other environmental scientists to discuss different kinds of policies that have to do with the environment.
People might ask, “Why should we care about the environment?” We should care because it is our future that is at stake, and not just our future, but future generations after us. I want them to have the same motivation to care about the environment as Julia Butterfly Hill and, as Compassionate Atlanta readers I hope you get inspired to go love on the environment. Go feel the wind in your hair, and if you can’t take off your shoes, go feel the dirt between your fingers, go feel the sun on your face, and remember to do your part to take care of our great friend.
