Be Green

This Thursday is Earth Day and I have to admit that this year is probably the first year since grade school where I took home and planted a tree in the yard, that I will be giving it more thought than just the usual acknowledging glance at the calendar. Over the past few months, as I stated in my lost entry, I've been trying to become more educated in my decisions that affect the world around me!
I'm becoming a lot more conscious of my affect and after many years of thinking "what's one person changing their ways really going to do to make an impact" I've realised how wrong I was to think that way. We are all responsible for the changes impacting our lives and our world, despite that we are a very densley populated community on our planet we all carry just as much importance as another. Each choice we make is a vote, if we continually purchase meat from our grocery stores... meat that usually comes from large factories owned by even larger coorporations who don't control the way the animals were raised or buchered then we are voting that we agree with animal abuse and neglect (at the least) in order to feed ourselves, however if we choose to do some research and buy local animals from farms and ranches in and around our city we are voting that we don't stand for this type of treatment.
Because of individuals standing up for the rights of animals, and in turn standing up for our rights - because really how healthy can an animal be for us to consume if it's not even healthy enough to stand on it's own legs in the "farm" before being butchered?? We now have more power than ever in the choice of how we eat and what we eat.
Large scale corporations that own food chain giants such as McDonalds and KFC continually employ workers who brutally beat the animals before they are killed and fed to us, these companies are able to turn a blind eye to this behaivor because of the money they are making off of the consumers... they're making a killing... literally. And it isn't even to our benefit as you all know the consumption of these types of foods only harm our bodies, they provide us no nourishment at all. But as long as we continue to go to these places and pay for the meals we are supporting them in doing this to animals to ourselves. I bet that none of these large scale company CEO's or the lesser would dare take a bite out of anything their own companies serve knowing how bad it is and where it's really coming from.

I want to pick up The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone so that I can further educate myself:



I am highly intrigued by this concept of living "the kind life" (I also signed up to The Kind Life at www.thekindlife.com) and I can't wait to dive into everything in this book.

It's such a revoloutionary idea for me to change everything I know and I am tip-toeing around the idea of becoming vegetarian... if not whole heartedly at least to the point where I will only consume locally farmed animals that I can be assured were living naturally and killed kindly... as kindly as one can be killed I suppose. Can I even say that? It sounds wrong....completely wrong...which is how, over the past while I've been feeling about everything I do.
I wouldn't kill my dog to eat, so why am I killing chickens and cows...why do I draw a line of difference? They all breath...they all feel...

So this, combined with so much more... is what will be filling my head for the next while. But I am going to try to do my part on Earth Day! Time to give back to the world that has held us over for so long after we continually abuse her...