Environmental Disaster

I was just reading on the David Suzuki Foundation website that Canada, our glorious and beautiful Canada ranks a dismal 28 out of 30 OECD countries, that means we hold the WORST  ENVIRONMENTAL record of any developed country, like Wow, are we all asleep here or what. I am totally astounded. What kind of a government have we as the citizens allowed? One that continually points its finger at other countries telling them to clean up while our back yards have fast become toxic waste dumps. And what kind of people are we to allow this? Are we too damn passive in our electronically induced stupor, our heads continually plugged into cell phones, i-pods, computers, game-boys, etc. Our wilderness is being raped at a faster pace than ever thanks to newer technology, yet the toxic waste while no longer being dumped by the barrel-full on the Northern Tundra, or into the oceans, is now just big sitting cesspools that are contaminating our air, water and killing massive amounts of birds. If we had a waste dump in our own little yard behind our house the city would have us fined and forced to pay for its clean-up. Yet big corporations can continually make big toxic ponds miles wide in the back yard of Canada, and nothing is done, Why? Why can corporations destroy our environment and OUR governments allow it. Yes I have heard the argument, if the bleeding environmentalists get their way people will lose their high paying jobs and then heaven forbid they just might not make as much money, oh woe is that. We have placed the almighty God of $ above the earth and her inhabitant, and that includes us. 

By the time my Father, a man who did his part to recycle, re-use and renew the soil of his little part of paradise, was eighty-three he told me he had seen and heard too much destruction of our precious earth and animals and could take no more... five months after that conversation in the middle of winter, he died. Yes we all shall die that is a fact of birth, but our earth should not die, yet we whom she nurtures with food, shelter, water, air and beauty, are killing her, and as she dies so does our wildlife, birds, insects and us of course,, only at a faster rate than need be. "As we do to our Earth, we do to ourselves". So what part are you as an individual taking to nurture rather than destroy, to invest rather than deplete?

Healing Hand Acrylic on canvas, 20x16

Maybe the love my Father and Mother instilled in me for our Mother earth and her inhabitants is why I paint. I want people to see the beauty and abundance we have right here in Alberta, in Canada. I want them to see it and believe in it before its too late. I want the joy of the natural world to seep into everyones pores and have them want to protect the earth and her inhabitants. Want to protect it because it is irreplaceable, once a species is extinct, thats it... gone.