The atmosphere of Mars is made up of over 90% carbon dioxide, with less than 1% oxygen. Nitrogen appears to be almost non-existent on the little red planet. Back home here, however, no matter how much we humans try to foul it up, our air is some 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. Carbon dioxide comprises less than 1% of what we are living in.
Further, scientists tell us that while it can hit 70 degrees Fahrenheit on Mars, it can still drop to -100 at night… colder at the poles. Water, is scarce if it is there at all.
These are a few things scientists have been able to discern about the planet next beyond us, some 49 million miles off in space. In part they can tell that because of things like the Mars Rover , the probe which just stopped transmitting pictures back a few years after it was sent roving at a cost of just over $2 billion.
My point is that for me, Mars doesn’t sound like a treat. That two billion dollars might be better used here making this little planet, the one with the water and the sunlight and the fish, more livable for us. Whether you’re religious and see Earth as a gift of God or just practical, it’s difficult to suggest that we as a people would be better off somewhere way off in the galaxy than right here. So, no offense to the chocolate-laden bunny and the day we celebrated yesterday but I think today is a pretty important one on the calendar. Earth Day.
I guess it just comes naturally to me. My parents, for all their differences, were both avid gardeners and loved spending time outside when the weather was fair. I grew up watching Wild Kingdom. To me Marlon Perkins was as much a star as Robert Blake or the Three Stooges were to some of my classmates. Other little kids (apparently, we’re told) aspired to be astronauts or firemen or pro hockey players when they grew up; I dreamed of being a weatherman. By the time I was ten, I’d probably have corrected anyone who said “weatherman” since it seemed rather common and commercial. A “meteorologist” was my dream destiny, studying and forecasting our weather, the power and fickle nature of our atmosphere. I had a wind vane on the garden shed, barometer, thermometer with a reading inside from the device placed outside the window, you name it. I recorded the data in a little log book.
I never did become a professional meteorologist; when high school was winding down I looked at the course load and thought there was too much physics and calculus involved in a specialty degree in meteorology, too little looking at maps or chasing storms across the countryside. Besides, seeing perhaps a limited scope of possibilities for the profession, I feared getting assigned to some weather station in a remote and arctic hick town rather than the environs of Toronto I was familiar with. My love of weather has stuck though; a couple of years back I took a course to become a certified amateur weather reporter, trained to know when common a garden thunderstorms become something to be concerned by and how to report the info.
Weather might have evaporated like a passing cirrus cloud in my career goals, but by the time I hit university, I’d segued into another area of earth science. For the college summers and a while right after, I worked in a park service, doing this and that. Some days I’d be leading school tours around conservation areas, others I might be out looking for wildlife coming up with biological surveys of areas of interest. I wrote up brochures for the public and scientific reports for the agency. I felt like I was accomplishing something important for the future.
Life’s taken a lot of twists and turns since then but one thing that’s never changed for me is my love of nature…and my concern for our environment. If there’s a blue box around, that can and newspaper is going in it. If I’m a passenger in the car I’m probably watching the birds on the power lines. When I have some extra mad money, some of it will probably go to the local nature organization or the national Nature Conservancy, which realizes government can’t do everything and tries to buy up important natural areas before they get paved and turned into parking lots, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell.
More and more we’re realizing for us to thrive, nature has to thrive as well. Cities which are poorly planned and have too much development in the river valleys tend to be cities which flood. Ones with forested valleys not so much. Planners have found that marshes – old-fashioned cattail ponds – can clean up our water about as well as filtration plants…and they cost a lot less. When we have lots of swallows and flycatchers, we don’t have as many mosquitoes and we don’t have to spray a lot of costly chemicals which may or may not kill us in the long run as effectively as the insects they’re supposed to combat.
So here’s to Earth Day. Here’s to all those who choose to live a little “greener” and look down at the ground instead of up to the stars when dreaming of a home for the kids and grandkids.
Earth – third from the sun, first in our heart.
Everydave Life 