Earth Day reminds us of our place in the world

It all sounds good. My pet peeve though, is that we've had to legislate and enforce what should be an automatic reflex. It annoys me that people actually have to have the threat of a fine hovering over their heads, before they're inclined to throw away their trash in a garbage can, pick up after their dog, or refrain from dumping their cigarette butts on the street.

A recent YouTube posting made an instant hero out of a Montrealer, fed up with inconsiderate litter-bugs. Claude Landry was walking on the street when he noticed a man emptying a mess of cigarette butts out of his car and onto the sidewalk. Probably sickened by the filth that's on Montreal streets, Landry reacted by confronting the man and dumping two handfuls of the ashes the man had dumped on the sidewalk on his lap. Of course, the video turned out to be staged, but I really don't care. It depicted Landry doing what I've often wanted to do and never had the guts to.

Every single day, I see an unbelievable number of drivers flick their cigarette butts out the window and I always wonder: "Do they think that cigarette butts vaporize before they hit the ground?" There is an ashtray right in front of them, staring them in the face, and yet, they still feel the compulsion to throw their garbage out the window.

Laws cannot change people's habits. They can instill fear, perhaps reducing the amount of offences (and that's certainly a step in the right direction), but to truly make an impact, people have to be sensitized to the fact that it's their responsibility and not some unknown general mass of others who will carry the burden.

There's a serious disconnect with our environment today, because so much of our daily existence is not directly related to this earth; at least, not overtly. We get up and use electricity, we drive to work in our gas guzzlers, we throw our garbage around, we pollute the earth, we mass produce, we consume, we cut down, we build, we live as this separate species and entity on this planet and then we're somehow flabbergasted when something drastic happens to wake us up and make us realize that we're not independent after all.

In fact, whether our pretentious little egos like it or not, we're extremely interdependent. Indian Chief Seattle once said: "Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."

I don't think that, as a species, we've ever been effective in understanding that simple truth. We hold too high a regard for our self-importance and the hierarchy we have on this global food chain. But the cold, hard truth is that Nature trumps all and, if we keep this up, we won't emerge the winners in this battle of wills.