What sticks with me is the word Care, with a big “C.” The technorati blur the fact that within each and every one of us is the virtue of compassion. We care for things – different things, but the capacity is there individually amongst us all.
So how do we tap it? Where can we touch the hearts and minds of people to get them to care about the planet?
Lots of people are focused on data and solutions and science of how to cure the planet of its ills. I prefer putting on the planet many faces: yours, mine, every one’s. The planet, as some one recently wisely said, can take care of itself; it’s we humans who are in trouble.
Walking along the crowded street in Taiyuan, China people stroll along wearing surgical masks to filter the pollution to their lungs. It’s difficult to see more than 100 yards away because of the smog. Disease is rampant.
Hope, you’d think, would be lost in the struggle to survive in the world’s most populous country.
But it isn’t.
On the front page of the national English language newspaper in China, a story per day is devoted to the environment. People care. They are just ill equipped to deal with environmental problems of such magnitude. They are much like us in the US: our words are much louder than our actions. Our government policies remain silent.
Many Chinese truly want to clean up their country, but businesses and government trump their wishes. Sound familiar?
That’s why it’s important to focus the current animosity towards China –because of Tibet, because of pollution, because of human rights…–on the government and not the people. They are very much like us. They care with a big C. But change is out of their hands.
There’s also something else to remember: 30% and maybe more of the pollution emitted in China is caused by manufacturing plants producing products for us here in the West.
We’re connected. Blame is just a rubber band.
We need to care for ourselves. Meanwhile we need to get businesses and governments to emote.
