Today is the World Oceans Day. This a day to increase our awareness about damages that us, human beings, have caused to our planet. Oceans provide half of the world’s oxygen, regulate the global climate system, and directly support the life of nearly 50% of all living species. However, today our oceans are in dire shape.
Yesterday, the American actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a fervent activist for animals and nature protection, went to Mexico and met the President Peña Nieto to sign an agreement of fishing regulation in order to save the “vaquita marina” (“marsouin” in French). The vaquita is is the most endangered marine mammal and sadly, it only remains 30 specimens of those in California gulf waters. Why? Because the vaquitas are regularly trapped by the huge fishing nets of the unsustainable and illegal fishing. As DiCaprio mentioned it: “Now more than ever, the world is looking for bold leadership at every level to tackle climate change and environmental conservation issues.”
That is just one example but there are thousands like this:
Massive industrialization
Non-treatment of pollutants in waste
Absence of regulation in urbanization practices (we build, we build, inhibiting soils breathing)
Massive forest destruction
Ambient-air pollution
Natural resources depletion
Overexploitation
Degradation of biodiversity
Lack of recycling
Illegal hunting
And unfortunately, the list is still long…
Humans are the only specie which uses words to communicate. But it doesn’t mean that animals don’t communicate. It doesn’t mean that trees don’t communicate, that oceans don’t communicate. They simply speak a different language. If we were listening to them what would they tell us? Probably that they suffer, probably that we are precipitating the chaos. What will we do when we will have wasted all our natural resources: our water, our soils, our forests…?
When I started the blog, my main idea was to talk about travelling in Mexico and in general. But will we still travel when we will have destroyed everything and that we won’t have anything to see anymore?
Climate change is not an invention, as the American President shouts it from the rooftops, but a reality. And from now on, it’s extremely urgent to act upon it, to do everything we can to preserve our environment.
There are thousands of associations and foundations which actively militate to protect animals and our planet. Here are some among many others:
-Fondation Nicolas Hulot (a French one)
-C'est assez (a French one)
And there are many new habits that we can all adopt such as avoiding the consumption of products which contain palm oil (it’s hard but it’s possible), decrease our water consumption, buying goods from the organic farming, talking around us about environmental issues to sensitize our friends, our colleagues and our family, collect wastes (how many beaches are covered with plastic?) and so on. Those are only few examples of what can be done and if we all adopt new habits it can make the difference.
As a conclusion, I share here the link posted by National Geographic today. I promise you: it worth to see it.
