The Updated APN Diary, presented by ^KevLewis & ^SheTakesPics

Topic: Impact on Nature
You hear so often these days of people “going green” to save the environment. As an employee of an electric company, I hear it daily. Though by general terms it is a good cause, one thing disturbs me still: the last time humanity cared about the Earth, they abandoned the cause and forgot about it.

I worry that “going green” is just a fad, and will die out, the way so many trendy causes go these days. Take for example that AIDS movement, or the Breast Cancer Awareness movement. Sure we get up in arms in the beginning, or on the day of remembrance, but once the cause has been overplayed, it is often abandoned. I will note that MANY of you that went pink in your icons during Breast Cancer Awareness week, are no longer sporting the pink. I for, one, do not care for the actual color, but I care for the cause, and I have not changed my icon, and will not change it. I fear that the same will happen to the “going green” movement.

I remember not too long ago, when I was a kid (early 90’s), that Earth Day and Recycling actually meant something. Movies played up to the philosophy like “Ferngully: The Last Rainforest.” The world almost stopped to support it. I bought recycled notebook paper for school, and recycled my trash, but then the movement gradually died out.

As a print designer I can tell you that the declined support towards the closing of the century, has had an impact in how paper is produced today. Years ago, it was easy for companies to order recycled paper at a good price, but then when the movement went soft, so did the demand for recycled paper. Now the movement is back, with a very catchy slogan, and companies are demanding recycled paper, but it is no longer easy to come by, and it is very expensive to produce. Paper companies are even wary about getting new equipment to manufacture recycled paper, because they foresee this new demand as a trend too.

Fortunately for undiscovered authors like myself, the printing industry has made it easy for my book to be Print-On-Demand (POD), making self-publishing a breeze. Unfortunately, the presses for POD books can’t handle recycled papers and as a result must used virgin paper. So I am torn. I want to share my book with the world, but I don’t want to hurt it by having to cut down new trees to share it.

When that fateful day comes for me as an author, and I get picked up by a true publishing company, I will personally see to it that my books are printed on 100% recycled materials and inks (if I can). Unfortunately, until that day comes, I have no real options. As a nature photographer I struggle with my own principles of “going green” and my impact on nature. It makes me sad to think that one day, there might not be any flowers left to photograph. This brings to mind one of my favorite prose pieces, written by James Thurber, “The Last Flower”. The following excerpts are select portions of the piece, which best sum it up:

“World War XII, as everyone knows, brought about the collapse of civilization. Towns cities, and villages disappeared. All the groves and forest were destroyed, and all the gardens, and all the works of art. Men, women, and children became lower than the animals…

One day, a young girl who had never seen a flower chanced to come upon the last one in the world. She told the other human beings that the last flower was dying. The only one who paid attention to her was a young man. Together, the young man and the girl nurtured the flower and it began to live again…

So presently, the world was at war again. This time, the destruction was so complete that nothing at all was left in the world, except one man, one woman, and a flower.”

To read the whole piece, someone has posted it here: [link]

This piece was written in 1939, and even then people could see the destructive power we had on nature and the environment. Isn’t nature and environment the same thing? No. An environment is the outside conditions, resources, stimuli etc. with which life interacts. Nature is life. The two are not the same, but they are not by any means without each other’s support. Nature is dependent on the conditions of the Environment, where as an Environment is not solely dependent on the conditions of Nature. So when you are thinking about “going green” or saving the environment, remember what you are trying to protect, or “Go” for.

Often time’s humans have a tendency to do good things only for themselves… I am no exception to this, and neither are you. We are worried about the environment for one primary reason: to save ourselves. However, in order to save ourselves, we must save other living things and the environments they inhabit. Next time you take a photograph of something in nature, or look at something in nature, ask yourself, would you be willing to give up your way of life to save the life of that natural thing?

If we are going to become consciously aware of our impact on the environment, we need to be consciously aware of the whole problem. I personally don’t like the catchy term “Going Green,” because it doesn’t represent the whole picture. If we are going to protect the world, we need to protect all forms of color and levels of nature; not just the green ones. Personally I would like to “Go Blue,” but that isn’t catchy enough. I want blue skies and blue water, because it is the impacts we have on those things that helps the things in nature go green.

If we truly want to make an impact on saving the world, we should all “Go Caveman” or “Go Pre-industrial Revolution,” but nobody in this modern age is ever going to make that quantum leap. So what is the next phase in saving the Earth from us and for us? Evolution.

It is time to Evolve. It is time to stop the war we are waging on our planet, and all wars in general for that matter. It is time to share and love one another and the planet that we are so fortunate to be guests upon. It is time for the Natural Revolution to begin and it is time for this essay to end. So that’s my hypocritical soapbox about the environment and our impact on nature. I say hypocritical because I am not fully green yet, but I am trying everyday to go a little bit greener. After all, though I would love to see my photos of nature in a museum someday, I wouldn’t want to see them in a history museum as a memory of what once was.

Thank you, and have an excellent APN Week!



My book features the beautiful cover art by Meredith Dillman *kyrn