Jerked awake with the fire alarm blaring. You tumble out of bed, grab your family, your pets, and head for the nearest exit. You escape the fire with your loved ones, then you call the fire department and hope they can save your house. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? What if instead you and your family are running from the fire and you stop with the door insight, but you all start arguing with each other on what started the fire. Was it an electrical short, did someone leave a candle burning, was the stove left on, and your family begins to accuse each other of starting the fire while you’re still inside the burning house? Instead of escaping with your lives, you stay inside the fire and fight about whose fault the fire is instead of escaping.
You’re probably reading this and thinking, “Who would do that? No one would do that?”
Australia is on fire, literally(https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/australia-fires-deadly-wildfire-photos-2019-2020/). This is after California was on fire (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/california-wildfires). The Amazon was on fire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Amazon_rainforest_wildfires). Our house is on fire and we’re arguing whose caused the fire. We’re so busy pointing fingers and shouting at each other that it’s your fault, their fault, that we aren’t putting out the fire and saving as many lives as we can. Priorities, my fellow earthlings, priorities. Let’s put out the fires, lets figure out how to save the polar bears as the ice melts, lets save the bees and all the other insects. They’re food for birds as well as the major pollinators for our food crops. If we lose our insects, we are next, for so many reasons. But I’m not here to be all doom and gloom, I’m here to share some hope. We can do this. We can put out the fires both real and metaphorical. We can turn around or come up with new solutions for what’s happening to our planet, our home. I don’t believe that we have these great big brains for nothing, or that we have compassionate hearts for no purpose.
I’d planned on writing this blog last night, because the Australian government didn’t seem to be supporting their rural firefighters or rescuing the animals trapped in the fires. This morning the Prime Minister of Australia has promised two billion to support fire relief efforts (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/australia-commits-billions-dollars-wildfire-recovery-n1111021), so I thought I would skip this blog where I was going to list charities to send your money and mine to today, and then I realized that money promised isn’t money in the pockets of charities today. It’s a promise and eventually they will get the money, but no government gives out that kind of cash quickly. They want to be sure it goes to the right place, or where they think is the right place. The charities will have to jump through some bureaucratic hoops to get some of the funds, that’s just the way it works, so … here’s a list of charities. If you give a dollar today it will get to them quicker than the billions promised. If everyone who reads this blog gives a dollar, or five dollars, or whatever they can afford it will help.
See, there’s the hope to share. We can help each other. We can grab each other by the hand even if we are thousands of miles away and give hope and real help to each other. Give a dollar, send the donations that people are asking for, we are not helpless in the face of all this, if we work together to save each other and the other riders on this big, beautiful planet.
If we stop arguing about how we got here and start working to come up with solutions, we can all get out of the fire, and we can save our home, this planet at the same time.
These are Charites related to the fire that have been vetted by news sources, (CBS affiliated News) and the links are reputable.
These are vetted links to the fire fighters
https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/volunteer/support-your-local-brigade
https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/supporting-cfa
https://cfsfoundation.org.au/donate
https://www.rfbaq.org/donate-to-rfbaq
Charities helping General
https://au.gofundme.com/f/fire-relief-fund-for-first-nations-communities
https://www.redcross.org.au/campaigns/disaster-relief-and-recovery-donate#donate
https://www.communityenterprisefoundation.com.au/make-a-donation/bushfire-disaster-appeal/
https://donate.vinnies.org.au/appeals-nsw/vinnies-nsw-bushfire-appeal-nsw
https://frrr.org.au/cb_pages/supporting_bushfire-affected_communities.php
https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/australian-wildfire-relief-fund/?rf=pr
Animal Charites
https://www.rspcansw.org.au/bushfire-appeal/
https://donate.wwf.org.au/donate/2019-trees-appeal-koala-crisis#gs.qwx2wb
https://donate.zoo.org.au/donation
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-thirsty-koalas-devastated-by-recent-fires
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-save-kangaroo-islands-koalas-and-wildlife
What if the sky was not falling? What if all the hysterical calls for the end of everything was a bid for ratings, views, clicks, likes … Well, it is, because most news media has to fight the most popular shows to get ratings and add revenue. It’s not the fault of the news media that more of us will click, or pause, or tune in for an alarmist, negative headline than for something positive. It started there with journalists having to fight for ratings, but then the internet happened. A place where every rumor can be repeated and become fact, even if the initial post was meant to be a joke, or sarcasm. Anything repeated often enough and loud enough must be true, right? But the internet is fighting for attention, too, and we are all more likely to tune in, click through, read a story that is dramatic and frightening, or sad. I do it, too. In fact I’ve started feeling so overwhelmed by all the ecological disasters that it felt like why bother to try and save anything the world is dying and we’re dying with it. But is it and are we?