Raison d’être (French: reason or justification for existence) The reason “Living the Green Way” is here.

Unlike most websites that are just there, someone’s idea, a web presence of their business or even fulling some perceived need, we came into being by cause, a powerful cause that motivated us to bring it into being. Here is that cause, our raison d’être.
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April, 1970. For weeks we had passed out leaflets with information, facts being made public, many for the first time, evidence of a frightening issue. The world was dying.

On the 22^nd I made my way to Fairmont Park in Philadelphia, a concert was happening. It was a new holiday, a day of awareness, Earth Day.  We were also in New York and other cites, people of every color and character banded together to bring this awareness to everyone.  The world depended on it.

In Philadelphia local bands entertained us with music from a concert stage on the Belmont Plateau. Hundreds sat on the rolling green lawns, shedding the innocence of youth and rising up for for a cause that would grow into a worldwide concern.  We were the counter-culture, anti-establishment, crazy kids, but this time standing with us were Senators, Congressmen, scientists and engineers.  We came from disparate backgrounds to become one group with the same goal.  We cared about our world and brought news of evidence that it was out of control, heading to demise.

No one wanted to hear it.

Get rid of those big Cadillacs and Buicks, stop dumping garbage straight into the oceans?  Stop wasting, start living responsibly and give up our luxuries?  No way.  Earth Day is just another youth protest and doesn’t mean anything.  The concern withered.

Then, remarkably, a few years later a gas crisis hit, people had to line up at the gas pumps, fights even broke out over position in line as many went dry.  Suddenly that Earth Day thing looked real.

Today, the message reverberates in every language, in every nation.  It has become an issue of note but still needs to be elevated from the level of message to the state of real action.  Once again we enjoy the comforts of a seemingly endless supply of oil and other resources – as long as we pay the price.  Prices go up but the pumps keep pumping; people nod in agreement to news of global warming on the radio in their SUV.  Some talk of reduced emissions from vehicles but say nothing about how many are being built and put on the roads each year, in every country. Still they say they care.

Caring is action.

This blog is one of my actions.  What are yours?

Thomas C. Davis Jr

I am a writer; blessed by the pen, as I say.  It is what I do, who I am. In my written words I live. I am a writer.