June 21, 2006 - Day 1 - Week 12 - The Choices We Make

Yesterday I wrote about our two guests on Earth Talk Today because each spoke about an issue that affects all of our lives in a direct way.  Paul Scott emphasized that the choices we make about the vehicles we drive impact the over-all health of the planet, and ultimately our health as well.  Polluted cities, like Santiago Chili, Guatemala City, Guatemala, Mexico City and Hong Kong are home to millions of people with lung damage because of automobile and bus pollution.  It is increasingly apparent that clean communities are home to healthier inhabitants.  Therefore, it does not require much in the way of insight to promote clean burning engines or clean factories if we want to contribute to the well being of each other, especially our children and elderly.

It requires only a little sleuthing to discover that all of my family and friends enjoy going to places where there is clean air.  Not one of my family or friends chooses to go to cities for their vacations that are polluted or communities that are contaminated.  When I hear the word vacation I immediately attach words like Alaska, Hawaii, Cape Cod, Lake Michigan, Montana, or the Caribbean, just to name a few, because everyone I know likes to vacation where there is clean water and air.  That is a given, an axiom that you can take to the bank.

Katy and I were recently in Montana.  Big Sky Country was more than wide open spaces with few people and fewer dwellings.  Every day was a chance to take really deep breaths because the air was so clean.  To be refreshed and renewed by the purity of nature is a universal pursuit that we heartily endorse. We are first in line to experience a really clean environment.  That is motivation enough to travel.

Is there a direct connection between the quality of the environment in which we live and our health?  Do healthy people live in healthy communities?  Do sick people live in towns and cities beset with systemic environmental crisis year after year?  Does cancer visit the mountain towns of the west where the water still runs pure and the smog alerts are non existent?  Why are there cancer clusters in places like McFarland and Delano California?

And the 64,000 dollar question, should I pull up stakes and leave Los Angeles for a region in the US that will ensure that I am not exposed to any more carcinogenic pollutants?  Do I minimize the risk by drinking only distilled water and eating only organic vegetables in a town like Ovando, Montana, population 234?

The choices I make, from the car I drive, to the food I consume, to the goods I purchase all eventually impact my own physical well being.  Maybe I need to rethink some of my choices.  In addition, I will continue to ponder the questions posed because my long term well being may depend on the answers I find.

Back to Week 12