Imagine this - you are inside one of Earth’s beautifully crafted rainforests, engulfed in the pure serenity and unknown. You try to come in tune with your senses, first, the sounds. Telling by the sun, the forest creatures are out and about for their spiritual midday chatter. Communicating with each other in their native tongue, it leaves for a rather loud afternoon. Now, the sights. You open your eyes, immediately captivated and awestruck. Mostly all you see is various greens, tangled in the spider web of epiphytes. Above you, the sky is checkered with canopy trees, in front of you, the forest is dense with shrubs and vines, fighting to survive with so little sunlight.
Fortunately, you are not alone in this experience. The black howler monkeys throw their bodies on their favorite branch, getting comfortable before they can sing their daily song. Following, a family of tree frogs leap onto leaves, carefully poising themselves on the silk layer. Two chameleons dance on their branch, almost simultaneous with each other. Finally, the colorful macaws carefully fly into the scene with their red, blue, and yellow feathers. Singing their song together, they are a family, the rainforests family. Unfortunately the likelihood of finding open spaces of such lush imagery is becoming a rarity. Although these open spaces were once prevalent throughout the world, they are now decreasing due to many factors, these factors can include agricultural expansion, logging, and the need to drill for oil, the latter being most significant. Not just fossil fuel oil, but palm oil, a vegetable oil extracted by pure destruction. Now imagine this - as the family of black howler monkeys go to sleep for the night, everything is going according to schedule. As the sun just peeks through the horizon, the family is immediately awoken by the crash of a tree. As the disturbed birds fly away, the monkeys stay alert. A few minutes later, another tree has fallen. Crack. Snap. Crack. Snap. One by one, trees in the distance are falling. A machine turns on. It’s loud. The once living trees are now being crushed in the teeth of this unknown contraption. The monkey’s are …show more content…
One little thing will always affect the bigger picture. Just like an earthquake in California will cause the deaths of many in Japan via tsunami. Living in the evergreen forest of Maine nearly monthly, I come in tune with my surroundings. I’m thankful for the foliage growing, and the creatures watching me carefully, both in land and in water. We are one planet, one Earth, one system. Those marching into territory that does not belong to them, to drill hundreds of miles into the earth’s skin, for one tank of gas, are not thinking of the big picture. Not only are you mercilessly murdering your own planet, you are doing it for the paycheck. For the accolade given to you by your boss. Are the workers naive? Maybe. Are they questioning the effects of their actions, given to them by money hungry corporations such as Texaco? No. Your polluted ocean is my polluted ocean. You murder a species of animals one by one, that’s another species my child will never see in person. You rip a forest out of the ground that was there before man was, that’s one less opportunity for life to
Fortunately, you are not alone in this experience. The black howler monkeys throw their bodies on their favorite branch, getting comfortable before they can sing their daily song. Following, a family of tree frogs leap onto leaves, carefully poising themselves on the silk layer. Two chameleons dance on their branch, almost simultaneous with each other. Finally, the colorful macaws carefully fly into the scene with their red, blue, and yellow feathers. Singing their song together, they are a family, the rainforests family. Unfortunately the likelihood of finding open spaces of such lush imagery is becoming a rarity. Although these open spaces were once prevalent throughout the world, they are now decreasing due to many factors, these factors can include agricultural expansion, logging, and the need to drill for oil, the latter being most significant. Not just fossil fuel oil, but palm oil, a vegetable oil extracted by pure destruction. Now imagine this - as the family of black howler monkeys go to sleep for the night, everything is going according to schedule. As the sun just peeks through the horizon, the family is immediately awoken by the crash of a tree. As the disturbed birds fly away, the monkeys stay alert. A few minutes later, another tree has fallen. Crack. Snap. Crack. Snap. One by one, trees in the distance are falling. A machine turns on. It’s loud. The once living trees are now being crushed in the teeth of this unknown contraption. The monkey’s are …show more content…
One little thing will always affect the bigger picture. Just like an earthquake in California will cause the deaths of many in Japan via tsunami. Living in the evergreen forest of Maine nearly monthly, I come in tune with my surroundings. I’m thankful for the foliage growing, and the creatures watching me carefully, both in land and in water. We are one planet, one Earth, one system. Those marching into territory that does not belong to them, to drill hundreds of miles into the earth’s skin, for one tank of gas, are not thinking of the big picture. Not only are you mercilessly murdering your own planet, you are doing it for the paycheck. For the accolade given to you by your boss. Are the workers naive? Maybe. Are they questioning the effects of their actions, given to them by money hungry corporations such as Texaco? No. Your polluted ocean is my polluted ocean. You murder a species of animals one by one, that’s another species my child will never see in person. You rip a forest out of the ground that was there before man was, that’s one less opportunity for life to