Greendimes.com Speaks Louder than Words

I was recently welcomed home from a deployment to the Sahel region of Africa to piles of junk mail. 100 million trees and 280 billion gallons of water a year are used to produce what amounts to an average of 70 pounds of junk mail a year per household. A friend introduced me to Greendimes.com, a new company that appeals to both our altruistic and self-interested natures. For $3 a month or a dime a day, they work tirelessly to keep you name off of junk mail rosters, while simultaneously engaging in extensive reforestation efforts.

In marked contrast to the African Savannahs I had just left, the lucid air of New England's fall and the changing oak and maple canopy evoked childhood memories of apple picking and walks through wooded paths with my father. I wondered would my children have such memories? Memories about time spent enjoying the wealth and wonder of nature, jumping into leaf piles and building smoky fires to shrug off the autumn chill. I wondered, too, about the children of the Sahel and what memories they will have.

The Sahel runs along the length of the southern border of the Sahara desert. With simple tools farmers toil in green fields partaking in a way of life that has changed little over a few thousand years. Like our ancestors, their lives are at the mercy of the elements, of changing seasons and of changing climates. Three of four seasons are dry, but between July and October monsoon rains fill rivers and water crops. However, warming Atlantic waters and deforestation along the West Africa coast have diminished these rains and the Sahel is slowly surrendering to an encroaching desert. As the Sahel gives way to the Sahara, I wonder what type of life the children of the Sahel will be have.

We are inexorably tied to each other and to our planet. As a Marine, I have served with city Marines and country Marines, immigrants and Native Americans, Spanish speakers and Francophones. But on our deployments, the foreign peoples I have worked with see us all as Americans. We also view them too often through a narrow lens. A man whom we see solely as a Chadian may be a member of one of 140 different tribes speaking one of over 140 different dialects. An Iraqi may be Shia, Sunni, or Kurd. A Frenchman is quite different from a Czech or even a nearby Italian. So, too, an outsider looking in would see the population of our small planet as one human race unaware of the artificial divides constructed between us. While cultural, racial and religious differences exist, I have found that it is more often a struggle for resources--be it oil, diamonds, water, or land that divide us. Our children's memories will be shaped by how we address these problems.

With that understanding comes a great responsibility to be good stewards of our children's and of their children's world.

More important than talking about it and more important than writing about it, it is important that we do something about it.

Greendimes.com seems to be a good place to start.