By MAKENNA MCCORVEY
Staff Writer
“Repost and plant a tree”, “Post this on your story to help”, “Like and save a life”. While scrolling through Instagram, you see your fair share posts like this, or even identical. But, how does this exactly work? Has anyone checked the validity of these “gimmicks”? We have come to believe we live in a generation of activists, rather we live in a generation of opinionists. Posting left and right about how aware we are and how we want others to join the awareness, we have a distorted perception of what is truly action.
As we see the Amazon burning we are concerned for the indigenous people and the destruction of the valuable land. But, what we don’t realize is that this destructive mindset is not forign to us. This mindset is what our country is built on. We took the land from our native people, and destroyed it “preserving chunks of it for the natives that are left” , giving their offspring benefits, but this is not what they wanted. They wanted their land to be priceless. Something money can’t buy. Although , we are far past that, and it is difficult as a teenager to change our system, we can change the system with real action in our daily lives.
What does this look like? We need far more than reusable bags to make change. Bike to school. By doing this , you can prevent 4.6 metric tons of Carbon Dioxide from entering the atmosphere! Buy local produce! Not only is it good for you, but you are saving emissions from transportation, usually it has less packaging, and you are supporting your local economy. Go solar! Although you can’t make this decision for your parents, but consider it in a few years when you have your own place. Another thing to keep in mind for the future, is cloth diapering! This will save around 3,000 diapers from going into the landfills in just one year, with just one child! Although you can’t stop all the harm done to the earth, daily change helps too! “The small choices and decisions we make a hundred times a day add up to determining the kind of world we live in.”- Harold S. Kusher. Next time you think about reposting to plant a tree, put your phone down , step outside, and make a choice.