Paradise – © John Neel
As responsible citizens and concerned photographers, the most important subject we have right now is the environment. Without the environment, nothing else will matter. Life will cease to be. Even those who deny or are hiding their heads in the sand will be no longer.
Over the past few centuries, man has treated the earth without much regard for the environment that we need to live.
We must stop what we’ve been doing to the oceans, the water supply, the natural resources of trees and food. We must stop the crazy stuff such as pollution, war and corporate ownership.
We have to stop putting money ahead of life. We need to stop the greedy and the powerful. Money is what is killing us all. And it is killing the wealthy, the greedy and the ignorant. They just don’t see it happening to them.
Money and ignorance are killing everything we love and everything we need to survive. In terms of how well the earth is taking our abuse, we have been nearing a point of no return for some time already. Man has treated the earth with disrespect – totally ignoring the environment that we need to live, for way too long. We must stop dumping our waste into the oceans, the water supply, and other vital resources. We must stop taking away from the earth and begin to behave with responsibility.
We must stop the greed and ignorance that is killing all hope for a sustainable future. Money and power need to stand aside so that we can begin the process of returning the earth back to the machine that was sustaining all life we’ve ever known – until now.
Either we learn to give back, do with less and alter our behavior or we end up with nothing. Life will vanish. And that means that we vanish as well.
In the scheme of things, we are the ones responsible because we are the ones who have made it this way. Only with our most intelligent minds working on the tremendous problems we have created will we be able to do the job.
The first thing that must happen is to somehow make everyone on this tiny planet aware of the predicaments we face if we do not work with each other, towards this grand goal as soon as we can possibly get our acts together.
We need to realize that less is more.
Anything short of saving the environment should take a back seat until we can get the environment back to some semblance of its former condition. However, if we are all on the same page, those other details will likely fix themselves. They should do so by making us all more aware of our complete reliance on the earth for our existence.
The corporate world is not a sustainable world. We need to change our system, our way of life, and our priorities.
We humans are ultimately accountable to the well being of all life, its future – including the world we can save for the young.
All that is needed is our common goal and our collective commitment to life over money.
As for you photographers and artists, what you show in your work just might be what we all need to see. To me, the first priority in my work is to do what I can in order to get the attention needed to see the truth – the reality of where we are living. Part of that truth is in the air, in the water and in the earth itself. It is everywhere you might look.
Ignorance of that truth is ignorance that we can’t ignore.
Ignoring the truth is ignoring ourselves. ignoring the world is ignoring life.
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