We are too selfish when it comes to the environment, people living in poor countries, our children, and future generations yet to be born. We want ours now. Those after us and those who are not us, well too bad about them. They are just going to have to get along with whatever they have, or more is the case do not have. It is estimated almost a billion, one billion is 1,000,000,000 people are suffering from malnutrition. Your neighborhood is not exempt from malnutrition due to the Standard American Diet, and production over nutrition.

We drive over-sized, overpowered vehicles because we want to, and it is a problem. We live in house larger than most two or three family homes in developing countries. We waste water, fuel, and food. We spend tens of minutes idling our over-sized vehicles in lines for food that is unhealthy. We do this because we are too busy or lazy to either get down, or make a sandwich or other meal at home.

Our weekly trash collection contains vast amounts of food that has either spoiled, or we do not want to eat. The rest of our trash is partially composed of packaging discarded from things we bought that we think we need. The rest is a mix of real trash and items that are still usable but we are too selfish to give them away, so we send them to the dump.

Our streams now contain hormones and chemicals like birth control pills, caffeine, anti depressants, and other medications our body can not use or we flush down the toilet. This added waste is on top of the millions of pounds of insecticide and fertilizer we dump on our lawns each year that washes away unused in the next rain.

Our lawns where our children play are hazardous waste sites. Herbicides and insecticides often are applied with the thinking that if the correct amount is good, more must be better. Over years, many lawns are approaching higher levels of contamination than identified  EPA Superfund sites.

Our interest in our children’s way of living and their children’s lives take second place to keeping ourselves comfortable. We pretend when gasoline out prices our budget, some other fuel will magically appear. Think about that. Why should an alternative fuel appear? Where is the incentive to produce alternative fuels? We drive around in huge vehicles, vehicles that can carry eight or nine adults for an average family of less than four.

We can continue to keep our head in the sand, pretending we do not see what is happening outside of our air conditioned and heated living spaces. We can play chicken little and generate media like these articles to produce fear, and cry the sky is falling. Or we can develop an EcoHeart and start living in the manner we are meant to live, being stewards of our living space, our country, and our world.

The stripping of timber in Europe led in part to the discovery of the Americas. One-half millennium later we have cleared so much timber for energy and building we are now becoming worried about developing countries wanting to do what we did. Of course these problems are happening somewhere else. We have our own sets of problems in our own back yard. What are you going to start doing? Will it be enough, and will it be enough in time?