Thoughts of the future

It's funny how little things lead to big things.

A post on a message board I frequent led me to look for the meaning of an archaic word. My clumsy internet searches turned up The Rosetta Project, which is an attempt to document and preserve as many human languages as possible, in order to "help in the recovery or revitalization of lost languages in unknown futures."

Unknown futures.

The Rosetta Project is an offshoot of the Long Now Foundation, who's mandate is to "creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years."

10,000 years.

Most of us have trouble thinking about next year, much less what might happen in 10 or 20 years. Exceedingly few of us spare any thought for what might transpire after we leave this earth. And why should we? I mean, we'll be gone, right? So who cares what happens then? Why should we worry about what the world of our children's children will be like?  This is the ultimate lack of responsibility. We have become a disposable society. Zooming along the freeway of life, we toss our garbage out of the car window, unconcerned with what becomes of it. Hey, we're not coming by this way again, right?

Recently, my wife and I had a discussion about water. Neither of us like drinking the water that comes out of the tap. For me, there's just too much chlorine in it. If we process it through one of those Brita water filters, and let it sit in the fridge for a while, I find it quite acceptable, but my wife still objects. There's something about the taste that turns her off. For a while we were buying cases of bottled water for her to drink, but one monday evening, as I carried our blue box to the corner for pick up the next morning, I was struck by the fact that it was full to overflowing with plastic water bottles. That would be fine if I was confident it was all being recycled. Unfortunately, current statistics tell us that more than 50% of the things we put into our blue boxes still find their way into landfill sites. Hence our discussion. I feel a responsibility to do my best to preserve this world for posterity. Not only for my child, but for my grandchildren, and their grandchildren. If we don't start taking some pretty drastic steps now, our descendants will live in a barren, unhospitable wasteland. We eat up arable land thousands of acres at a time for new development. Along the way, we are cutting down the forests that are our atmosphere factories, and filling in the marshes and wetlands that are our natural water treatment facilities. Here in the Greater Toronto Area, we generate so much solid waste we can't even deal with it ourselves. We have to ship most of it to Michigan. What they're doing with it is anybody's guess.

Years ago, my wife and I made a commitment to be more ecologically responsible. We recycle everything we can. We need two blue boxes to hold all of the paper, glass, and plastic that we don't put into the trash can. As well, all of our biological kitchen waste (with the exception of meat products) goes into a backyard composter, and turns into rich soil which gets mixed into our gardens twice a year. We are proud to put a single, only partially full garbage can at the curb every tuesday morning. Complacency, however, is the enemy. After my epiphany with the plastic water bottles, my wife and I agreed that we would no longer buy those large cases of bottled water. She committed to getting used to the taste of our tap water, and bought a refillable sport bottle to use at the gym, and around the house. I applaud her sensitivity to the issue, and continue to look for other ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

10,000 years of forethought may be somewhat beyond my ability to grasp, but the little things do help extend my influence on the future to some extent. You wouldn't believe me if I told you I was Conservative, would you?