4 Easy Things We Can Do for Earth Day
An interview with Earth Doctor Reese Halter
1. Eating plant based. Try eating One (plant based) Meal a Day or participating regularly in Meat Free Monday or doing an entire month vegan like Veganuary.
Dr. Reese, how does my cheeseburger I eat in London or my bacon with my breakfast in Kansas matter?
Animals feel pain. By eating a burger you are supporting cruelty.
Nine hundred gallons of water were required for your half-pound burger. Consider trying plant-based Impossible burgers, which only takes four gallons of water.
Raising livestock also destroys rainforests in the Amazon jungle.
The more rainforests we lose, the less likely we can continue to inhabit Earth.
Why does eating plant based matter to earth? What is biodiversity*? How does animal agriculture affect our drinking water?
Kindness. Compassion. Water-smart. Health.
There are about 2.1 million known forms of planetary life. They all depend on each other. Humans depend upon all that life, or, biological diversity (biodiversity*). It, on the other hand, does not need us.
About two hundred species are going extinct daily. Half, or 1.05 million forms of life are predicted to be extinct before mid-century.
If so, the human civilization will also be gone.
Animal agriculture runoff is causing the expansion of 520 massive dead zones along the coast of all inhabited continents. No oxygen, no life!
2. Sit in a Chair Under a Tree
Dr. Reese, can it be this easy? In your book you mentioned forest bathing, what is that and why does is it helpful? If I walk or hike will I reap the same benefits?
All native forests are potent medicine chests. Visit a grownup forest and breathe its air. Your blood pressure will tumble, stress will melt away (cortisol) and your body cells (natural killer cells) becomes much stronger at warding off infections as well as cancers!
The key to human survival is to protect ALL the remaining big trees. They are the best carbon storehouses and strongest medicine chests for all forest life. Only one per cent of the trees are giants, they contain fifty per cent of all the above ground stored carbon.
Try and arrange your daily walk around urban grownup trees. They too give off strong airborne medicines.
3. Plant Something
Dr. Reese, I read that you have knowledge about organic gardening. Do I have to compost to grow a plant? How does every plant help us?
Compost is merely not wasting any inedible plant materials and putting them back onto the earth to reuse their nutrients. Compost mimics nature’s model of no waste.
Plants are producers. They absorb CO2 and store it as well as giving off oxygen.
Humans are consumers that depend upon the producers, the plants.
Human bodies have about one hundred trillion cells that all need oxygen.
Oxygen is circulated in veins, arteries and capillaries.
End to end, we each have about hundred thousand miles of a circulatory system.
Eighty thousands miles are tiny capillaries.
Plant-based diets reduce inflammation, a plaque-like stiffening, that occurs when you eat animals and saturated fats like palm oil.
Inflammation is the gateway to heart disease.
Can I grow a houseplant and will that help me and our planet?
House plants help our home environment by making us aware of their beauty and by giving us more oxygen.
4. Learn about our Ocean Planet
Dr. Reese, If I don’t live near the ocean why does it matter?How are we as humans connected to the ocean whether we live there or not?
The oceans cover about seventy per cent of the planet. Oceans occupy ninety-nine percent of the earthly livable space. The oceans also drive Earth’s climate.
Combusting fossil fuels, wood pellets and palm oil is adding the equivalent heat to the oceans of dropping seven Hiroshima-style bombs every second of the year. Hence the term global heating. The more we burn, the more instability and horrible climate megastorms, climate droughts, climate heatwaves, climate fires and crop failures that we will ALL experience.
Dr. Reese, do you have any other Earth Day everyday tips for us?
Go vegan.
Consume less.
Refuse plastics.
Take off your shoes, walk barefoot on earth, sand, grass, pebbles, forest floors are the best!
Grow a couple raised beds with earthworms & food bearing trees in your yard.
No chemicals in your yard, please, to promote pollinators & decomposers like earthworms, millipedes & many other wriggly compatriots.
Vote for Mother Earth!
*Regarding biodiversity, I thought the spectacular series Our Great National Parks, featuring protected parks around the globe, produced by and narrated by Barak Obama, offered fascinating footage and examples of why biodiversity is at risk and why it’s important. Check it out and enjoy!
Many thanks to Earth Doctor Reese Halter. I am blessed to know the most passionate steward of our earth planet, bees, trees and seas, Dr. Reese who is not only knowledgeable but selflessly prolific. I highly recommend his writing.
Dr. Reese and I did a podcast episode long ago regarding solar and other information. You can click here to listen.
Michele the Trainer 2022
Click here to learn more about Michele’s Ocean Protection League
Sunshines of our Ocean Planet, if you want to join the conversation about global heating, climate change and our age of extinction I’ve read twice and refer to The GenZ Emergency by Dr. Reese Halter which is rich with solutions, research, references and ideas for our future (and inspiration!)
