World Environment Day June 5th 2021

 World Environment Day June 5th 2021 - Link to podcast

4 Challenges for World Environment day on June 5th 2021  

1. Pick up rubbish. 

2. Stop using plastic bottles. 

3. Walk and cycle more.  

4. Fall in love with your local environment.

I’m a big fan of the planet.  It’s lovely. Like most of us, I love walking beside a river or the ocean and just cannot get enough moments when I am surrounded by green rainforest and smell, hear and see the beauty and majesty of what is undoubtedly a most wonderful part of being alive!

Take this one step further and I look at a sunrise or a sunset, see the surreal and stark beauty of a full moon or a starry night in a country sky and the sense of awe and wonder goes to a whole new level.  

Yet we humans have a spectacular capacity to be so self-absorbed and one dimensional in our thinking that we do things every day that damage and spoil this amazing world we live in.  Honestly most of us will resist doing anything that is an inconvenience or that slows us down and if it spoils the environment a bit we just don’t care.  The way we often treat our own bodies is another disturbing case in point.  We tend to bite the hand that feeds us so to speak and neglect the most valuable and enjoyable parts of our lives; our environment.  

Well this Saturday, June 5th is world environment day and as I said, I quite like our planet so I’m keen to use my vast influence and integrity on this subject to change the world.  Probably just a little bit, but I’m gonna have a go.  

So here, beloved listeners are a few very practical things we can do this week to make a difference.  

The first and most obvious is to pick up some rubbish in your street or your local park or wherever you wander.   Don’t just walk past it – pick it up and get it into a bin.  Otherwise it will wash down a drain into a river then into the ocean!  It was not you who dropped it but there IS something you can do about it, so don’t hesitate - just do it!  

My second idea is to get reusable coffee cups and water bottles.  Don’t buy coffee in disposable cups or water in plastic bottles for a week and see if it can become a habit. Tap water is safe and clean.  For every 1 liter plastic bottle of water, we use over a litre of oil to make it, and 3-7 yes 3-7 litres of water to produce the bottle.  Then it needs to be pumped from the ground, bottled packaged, transported stored and refrigerated before it gets to you, using stupid amounts of fuel, electricity and manpower.  And of course you waste money buying something that you can get for free from a tap almost anywhere!!  

Three.  Choose to cycle, walk or car share whenever possible.  Let’s use less fuel and produce less smoke. Try walking to a local shop and taking a little trolley or something and see if the extra time, exercise and white space is not a better way to go than rushing so you can get back home to watch tele. 

And finally - Fall passionately in love with nature.  Get out into it and do so with a spirit of gratitude and reverence.  Slow down and really see it and experience it.  Martin Luther said God writes the gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and flowers, and clouds, and stars.   Love your local environment and care about what happens to it.  Maybe then we will care enough to act, speak to politicians or maybe join a land care group who weed and replant things along local river beds.

Bless ya