Dog Walk

I was walking my dogs this evening when the thought came to me for this blog. It was a beautiful summer night in any/nowhere north america. I was blissfully enjoying the sun and the song stuck in my head when all of it was shattered by the noxious stank of the roads being re-tarred ahead. It took me a moment, I must admit, before I was able to regain my somewhat oblivious and peaceful stroll. But then I heard a sound.

Not a sound in the world, a sound in my brain. And no I don't hear voices (often enough to worry) and it wasn't a ghost. Nope, the sound I was hearing was my own deeply and effectively suppressed sense of righteous indignation.I was not upset that hard working folk got to earn their living, I wasn't even upset that my stupid dog tried to lick the tar and probably inhaled some sort of expensive drawn out family tragedy. Nope my spirit was moved by something different all together.

I am going to go off on a little tangent now, but I will get back to the point. Promise.

Please keep in mind that I am in now way an accredited scholar. I am merely a human, being.

Imagine if you will the life of our planet. For my arguments sake lets say it is one hundred million, billion, abakajillion years, and barring some sort of catastrophe our planet will live for that inconceivably vast expanse of time. Now imagine that some one or thing or one thing or even two wanted to kill this planet. Their are various ways to go about it I suppose (Our existence as a species is too fragile by far), but what if the goal was to be as evil and devious as possible? Keep that in mind.

As you keep that thought in your mind lets go back to my walk, and the tar. I don't know how much it costs to make tar, I don't even know how its made. I would wager though that the process involves the burning of some fossil fuels. I know for a near certain fact that transporting said tar from its place of birth to it's place of smear burns fossils fuels in an escalating rate directly proportional to the distance traveled. I also know for a fact that fossil fuels are burned in the application of the tar (don't forget the fossil fuel we burn to gather and refine fossil fuel).

I personally believe that the burning of fossil fuels has a negative impact on the air we breath and the water we drink and the food we eat. As reluctant as I am to take the side of popular science, there you have it.

And as I walked my dogs these gears kept on turning.

I began to equate the impact of what I was seeing to the life of the planet. That finitely vast length of time is still only a compounding of days, weeks, months, and eons. what difference could a little tar make? Well let's say one ounce of tar smeared on the road equates to the loss of one hour in the tangible life of our planet. For all you drinkers out there I am sure you can easily imagine what 26 ounces look like, and I would say about that much tar covers a little more than a square foot, 30,000 square millimeters to be annoyingly precise. Any way you slice it that is not a lot of road to tar in return for an entire tangible day in the life of our planet.

Everywhere I looked I saw months and months and months of life just slapped on the ground to congeal in a dead mess. Smooth driving though. And the gears kept turning. How many days did the planet lose when my car was made? How much life was squandered so I could have a portable computational device with which to blog.

My heart bled, my soul was crushed, as the weight of my own personal responsibility was driven home and by my averageness multiplied many many times.

What a bitter thought to share for my first foray into blogging. This beautiful planet we are all privileged to share is literally dying for our convenience.

Love