5 simple ways you can help our dying planet

[Anonymous]

Our planet is our little oasis of life in such a vast cosmos full of empty space and unhabitable rocks and planets, it's time we took better care of it.

Wouldn't it be great if your cancer decided to stop killing you?

Here are 5 little ways you can make a big difference!

1. Grow some plants. You could grow some herbs on your windowsil, fresh herbs can add a world of flavour to your food. You could grow some flowers in your yard or balcony to bring some beauty to the place. If you have a garden you can grow and enjoy the freshest and healthiest fruits and vegetables without pesticides or fertilizers. And just seeing plants you have grown and nurtured should always bring you a smile!

2. Avoid buying plastic. The mass production of plastic over the past 80 years has been rapidly destroying our planet. Try to avoid using plastic cups and plates. Avoid foods packaged in plastic, they're usually older, less healthy foods anyway. Avoid buying things you don't need, especially if it's packaged in plastic.

3. Don't drive if you can avoid it. If it's not too far you can walk, you won't just be helping the planet, you'll be helping yourself and your city or town. Walking just 45 minutes a day greatly improves both physical and mental health. And it reduces traffic, making both pedestrians and drivers less stressed and makes the air you breath cleaner. If it's too far to walk maybe take public transport.

4. Avoid eating meat. Our bodies are designed for vegetarian food, our intestines are too long for meat, the animal flesh decays inside and causes a lot of problems like cancer. And of course eating meat is really bad for our planet. We take enough vegetarian food for 30 people, feed it to animals to get enough food for 1 person as meat. Also we're making millions of animals suffer a lifetime just to get slaughtered. You can help save yourself, the animals and the planet all in one by going vegetarian!

5. Be happy! When you're happy people around you are happier. When people are happier they care more about the planet and themselves and are more willing to do what's best. Also they will make other people happier and the wave of happiness and positivity continues. Remember all your feelings are generated within you, whether you feel happy should be entirely up to you, it shouldn't depend on what's happening around you!

[oddwaffle]

#4 is wrong. The human body isn't designed for vegetables. In fact, human didn't have much grain (major calories in diet) before the rise of agriculture. Even though gathering was an important source of food, hunting was pretty much a requirement for survival.

In fact, up until 1800s, China still got invaded by nomads because they go agriculture and the nomads relied heavily on animals for food.

The key to environmental protection are still the fundamentals: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

By reducing your food intake and waste, you can massively reduce the amount of food you eat. If you just eat enough to be healthy then you don't really need to eat a lot, a single chicken including head, skin, bones and offal and some grain can last a person for 2-4 days. Even packaging can be reduced to the minimum because people don't use packaging much.

Reuse is a great way to reduce trash. There are tons of things can be reused for a long time. From plastic bags to used computers, everything can be repurposed for something else.

Recycle is tricky. It requires a lot of man power and generally inefficient to recycle in rich countries. Most of the recycled stuff you threw away actually ended up on giant boats that will dump them into poor countries in Africa or Asia.

It actually comes down to design problems. You have to have near uniform materials or just plain easy to sort with machines (aluminum cans) to recycle efficently.

[myTake Owner]

Go back further to when we still lived in the trees and our diet was mostly vegetarian. Our dna is almost 99% similar to chimpanzees and they live mostly off fruit. We have a herbivorous digestive system, with jaws designed to chew food and longer intestines than carnivores. We have the ability to digest meat if we can't find other food, but it's not what we should be eating if we have the choice. These days hunting isn't a requirement for survival, we don't need to eat meat anymore

[oddwaffle]

Actually no. That was a different species. Not human.

Hunting and gathering period is pretty much the start. Human was nomads. Gathering was the bunk of the food but to stay alive in the ice age you needed more than just nuts.

And no the reality is that you don't actually have any fruit trees lying around in the wild. Just take a trip into some of the forests. Animal meat is your major source of food.

You don't need meat to survive, you also don't need internet, information or education to survive. Live like a prisoner and eat the most horrible food is technically all you need.

Unless you can spend years eating nothing by Soylent and live in a cubicle then the "need" reasoning is about as good as a teenager needing texting to survive.

[myTake Owner]

Evolution works gradually, our digestive system is almost identical to chimpanzees. People ate meat because it was easier to find, not because it's what our body is designed for.

Food is fuel for our bodies, with the right fuel our body runs more smoothly, we have more energy, we're happier, we need less sleep and we feel more alive. But if you don't care about any of that stuff and just want to survive then you can live off meat, junk food and soylent

[oddwaffle]

If you learned anything about species then you already know what makes a specie. No need to show this "gradual" thing, it's not always like that.

Also, this is proper biology, human isn't designed. We adapted. Eating meat is an adaptation. Closer to an evolution but not yet. Like eating cooked meat.

by the way Soylent isn't junk food. It's a meal replacement. You can survive on it alone but it doesn't have much taste.

I like meat because of the taste so no point in eating bad tasting vegetarian food.

[myTake Owner]

It's always a gradual thing, though humans did evolve pretty quickly from apes. The digestive system is really complex, it doesn't change that much that quickly. It can adapt to be able to eat new things relatively quickly through natural selection, but it will do much better with what it was meant for.

I didn't say soylent was junk food, there was an "and" in between.

Meat doesn't have much flavour really compared to fruits and vegetables, that's why meat is nearly always eaten with sauces, spices etc. But it seems stupid to put the wrong fuel in your body just because you prefer the taste, it's like putting the wrong fuel in your car because you prefer the way it smells when you're filling it up.

[A-man-22]

1 yes
2 yes
3 yes

4 I have just about had it with people trying to mess with my diet.

Overpopulation is the issue here not meat.

We need so many resources to sustain our current population it's harming nature.

Plant farms do it too, we chop down forest to put more crops down.

Keep the meat, just limit the population. The resource issue is more than just food, it's about space and unrenewables things you can't solve with diet changes.

[myTake Owner]

The population is indeed our number one problem. "Don't have kids" should have been on the list. But it's hard to convince people not to have kids, especially women. They have a natural urge to want kids, and most aren't conscious enough to overcome that. And people don't want to adopt because they have this childish belief that their dna is the best and their genes must be preserved.
But even if everyone on the planet stopped having kids it would take 40 years to half the population. We probably only have around 20 years until a serious ecological disaster will wipe us out, so we need to make other changes too.

Unfortunately the people in power instead of educating the world about the problems and convincing people to not have kids they use the problems to brainwash people against immigration, while encouraging people to have kids.

Plant farms are a problem but the vast majority go towards feeding the animals we eat. If we eat less meat we need less plant farms

[DeeDeeDeVour]

Nice myTake.

[myTake Owner]

Thanks :)

[Evil_Chuck]

Let's not kid ourselves. Just call it what it is: conserving resources and energy so we have a comfortable place to live. The planet is not "dying," and by the time it does our species will be long gone. We really don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things, and Earth has been through a lot worse than us. As George Carlin said, "the planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked."

[myTake Owner]

Well it might not die but it's certainly getting sick. Just like us the planet is a very delicately balanced life. We are disturbing the balance too much and if we can't change our ways it will get rid of us the hard way.

[Massageman]

Well, I'm 4 for 5. Just not quite ready to give up an occasional steak or burger, but thank goodness I really like a wide range of salads. Thanks for a nice take.

[Browneye57]

Ew boy... one of those.
I drive a V8 gas guzzler, eat lots of meat, cut trees down, buy everything in a plastic container so it stays good, and smile a lot at you dingbat tree-huggers. ;)

[myTake Owner]

I'm sorry to hear that. Get well soon!

[NerdInDenial]

Life will always find a way. It doesn't matter if even one percent populations does something. There's just too many people.

[myTake Owner]

The important thing is that each of us is part of the solution not part of the problem. If we all do that the problems will be solved.
Life will find a way, if we can't take care of the planet it will find a way to get rid of us.

[NerdInDenial]

If it does, it won't be in this lifetime.

[myTake Owner]

I think you are in denial. If we don't make changes now probably in 15-20 years there will be a serious disaster and it could take hundreds of years to undo the damage. And it could wipe out well over half the human population.

[NerdInDenial]

I bet you will have a better chance of getting shot up tomorrow than living through a disaster.

[Liam_Hayden]

Or you innovate:

newatlas.com/.../

[genericname85]

lol dude our planet won't die. we will. the planet will be fine xD

[myTake Owner]

Yeah she will get rid of us before we kill her

[genericname85]

who's she?

[myTake Owner]

Our mother Earth

[genericname85]

Earth has no will and takes no action. We change Earth untill it becomes a place we can't survive. It's our own fault.

[myTake Owner]

Tom8o tomato. You're saying the same thing in other words

[genericname85]

The notion that Earth has a will and takes action is just wrong xD that's what I was critiquing.

[myTake Owner]

It's just a different way of looking at it. She certainly takes action, just not in the same ways we do

[up_64]

The planet doesn't have a conscience. Therefore it can't be harmed as it's not a living creature

[myTake Owner]

Even if for some reason you believe our planet isn't alive that doesn't mean it can't be harmed. We are destroying the planet and if we don't start making changes things are going to get really bad for us too, and it will become really hard to reverse the damage

[codycccccccccc]

Or we could just kill all the religious people

[myTake Owner]

Wouldn't help much, there are loads of eco-unfriendly athiests. At least most religions have some rules against eating meat

[FlatsRunner]

Population control is urgently needed now.

[nerms123]

It’s too late