While on my flight from London to Vienna to visit my grandparents over half term, and while listening to "9000 days" from the Invictus soundtrack, I was looking out the window at the clouds. Being my UNSUAL self, I was deep in thought, which, as previously stated, is very unusual for me.
Anyway, while I was thinking and looking over the clouds and the cities below, I had a moment of realisation, kind of anyway. Please note, this is not something I will usually write about and it pains me to use clichés, but this seemed important to me and probably to every living organism on this planet. Again, if you do not like clichés, please stop reading and go away, as you will think I am completely mad for posting something like this on a technology orientated blog.
So, now that we have got rid of the cliché haters, we can get on to the main point of this post. (just another side note: as mentioned above, it pains me to write a cliché like this, so please do not judge). As I was observing the clouds, I noticed how they just floated by, without a care in the world, like they did not care what happened to everyone else, as long as they were ok.
Then it hit me. It's almost like the clouds represent mankind, but more the western civilisation instead of mankind in general. There are inevitably bad people amongst the good who will "rain" on your parade (see what I was getting at there?). But aside the fact that there is bad amongst good (for that is a topic for another post), the idea that the clouds, floating by not minding anyone, sparked my interest. Civilisation (mainly, but not in its entirety, western), including me, seem a bit arrogant to the well being of our home, Earth. Sure, we care very much about all the political stuff (which us all crap in my opinion), but how do a bunch of people sitting round a table, discussing how they can get more money in their pockets, help, when Earth is over polluted and uninhabitable? Sorry for being so cynical, but just think about it for a second.
I am still in the younger years of my life, but I, as well as most of you out there who have bothered to read this far, know that the new generation will have to solve these problems. I have an ambition, depending if I get a decent job, to be able to rent a small plane and fly it over Alaska and witness the Northern Lights with my own eyes. I have no idea why I want to do it, or how I plan to achieve this, but I will try. If we do not start solving these problems now and keep putting them off for later, how do we expect the wanders of mankind (The Acropolis, The Pyramids, Machu Picchu) and nature (The Great Barrier Reef, The Northern Lights, The polar ice caps) to ever survive in the long run if we keep draining our planets recourses?
Take the time to think about this, like I did for 1 hour and a half on a stuffy Airbus A320: do you really want to see earth and all of its wanders crumble in front of your eyes. Having read many books, in which this situation has arisen, I have decided I do not want to witness this or for my children's children to witness this either.
So, I guess this is a plea to all those CompBlog (weird name, I know) readers and RSS feed subscribers out there: if you have managed to sustain the energy to read this far, please look after the earth. I know I will. The Eco revolution has to start now. Manufacturers out there need to start making Eco sustainable products and we all need to do our bit to prevent the earth becoming a dead, barren wasteland, like Chernobyl. We just need to be bothered to recycle, turn off lights behind us, use more sustainable products and other obvious things like that. It will be the general population making small changes and not the government who will prevent something like this from happening.
Do not walk away from this thinking that you have heard it so many times and it does not matter. Read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", then tell me that you do not care, as the situation of Earth in that book is not that far away from becoming reality.
