Earth Week SOS

By The Malibu Times · Fri Apr 17 2015

This year marks a significant turning point for our species. No longer is it sufficient to celebrate just one day, Earth Day. Instead, its time to roll up our sleeves and save our species. 

Here’s what we know: Nature is dying at an unprecedented rate on land and under the sea. Heat-trapping fossil fuels are altering ocean currents, globally. Plastics (a byproduct of petroleum) are suffocating all sea life. Clearly, it’s time to distance our selves from these antiquated, subsidized, carbon-polluting bandits.

We are all required to lend a helping hand so that together we can reverse this tide, feel as though we are part of the solution and truly make a difference!

Support my friends at Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Lend a helping hand on Ocean’s Day (June 8) by cleaning any beach or shoreline.

• Do not purchase any cosmetic products with squalene (shark’s liver) or exfoliators containing polyethylene balls of micro-plastics.

• Stop eating fish and seafood.

• Don’t eat Bluefin tuna, ever. 

• Become a vegan.

• Don’t ever buy tickets to dolphinariums.

• Purchase six organic, bee-friendly cotton bags and only shop with them.

• Refuse single-use disposable bags, and instead buy plant-based bags and take them to the grocery store, re-use them again and again, and don’t forget to launder your cotton bags (in cold water) and air dry them in the sun once a month.

• Go organic, grow your own vegetables, plant a couple fruit trees in your yard and please, no pesticides. We need all of the bees, every last one of them. And please remember, “You are what you eat.”

• If you smoke, please be responsible. Don’t discard your cigarette butt on the beach nor street-side in a city or town.

• Volunteer your time to any marine conservation group.

• Start a Facebook marine cause and share your conservation information.

• Become more aware of the ocean issues by subscribing to a Google Alert, it’s free.

• Walk more, ride your bicycle or skateboard more, watch more sunrises and sunsets, walk barefoot in meadows, have more picnics, find your bliss and please, drive less, way less!

Earth Dr Reese Halter’s latest book is Shepherding the Sea: The Race to Save our Oceans.