Ros wrote this in response to a challenge to her monthly column in a local magazine. Like me, Ros has no children…..
Our Environment: Why Should I Care?
I would like to say that the information I obtain for my articles is from reading numerous reports which are mostly from the EU and USA also some from other countries around the world. I also try to be sure these reports are from recognised researchers and specialists as well as from those for whom the subject matter may have touched personally both ‘for’ and ‘against’ any particular subject.
I am not an expert but I am very interested in world affairs and all things environmental however I am NOT a ‘bunny hugger’, I am also interested in politics but do not give my allegiance to any political party.
I have an agricultural background, being brought up in a farming family, now I am a horticulturalist though through the years I have worked in numerous fields (no pun intended), in both the paid and voluntary sector. I have also had close ties to the armed forces and been personally touched by the horrors of war and chemical use.
I have travelled quite extensively and seen for myself how great a detrimental effect that our excessive consumerism and throw-away attitude has on communities and wildlife and their habitats across the globe.
I like to meet and talk to the people of the countries I visit, and I am in touch via the internet with many people around the world in agriculture and horticulture who use both organic and ‘conventional’ methods.
I will not guarantee to getting everything correct but endeavour to try my hardest to give the facts and do not knowingly write anything which is not true.
At a young age I was environmentally aware and very concerned about the serious degradation man has on the Earth. The environment is not something we just look at in our free time but we are a part of it and anything we do that affects the planet affects us in return. We cannot just change the planet for a new one when this one becomes past it’s sell by date, there will not be another passing planet we can hop onto. Everything we do is interconnected, everything we use or throw away just because we ‘want’ the latest model, everything we waste all comes initially from natural resources. Even man made things originate from the earth, they do not appear as if by magic on the shop shelf nor will they always be there whenever we ‘want’ them. I feel that society as a whole has lost the distinction between ‘need’ and ‘want’.
The earth’s resources are not infinite and the human race is depleting them at an alarming rate. I am not being alarmist, if I were to class myself as anything it is as a realist, I realistically know that money, power and materialism, as well as over population is the cause of most of the worlds problems. I write about the environment to try to raise awareness of some of these problems.
I have no children so there will be no grandchildren or great grandchildren coming after me who will have to suffer the results of our excesses. So why do I care? I don’t know but I do.
