GINTA — In recent news… or the power of each and all of us

Daniela Ginta writes for The Armchair Mayor News on Fridays.

COLUMN — I remember seeing a photo of Mount Everest very early on at a young age. I loved the grey shades barely seen through the snow, the slopes of a mountain that seemed to touch the sky in earnest. It is an image that has stayed with me since.

I had a similar one on my wall in the dorm during my undergrad studies and kept dreaming about ice climbing and mountaineering yet at the same time feeling intimidated at the thought of leaving traces in a pristine world that did not need me for any confirmation of its stark, everlasting beauty.

This morning, some of the news that caught my eye had to do with a photo very similar to the one I kept with me for years. This one had a sky just as blue, snow white as ever, grey rock peeking into view from snow and clouds and a big pile of cans and other type of waste a Sherpa was bagging up.

One’s heart can sink at the mere glimpse. Approximately 700 climbers make the slopes of Mount Everest their home for two months, during the climbing season. And that is 700 able bodies producing waste, from cans, to oxygen tanks to impromptu toilets in the snow.

The pristineness struggles to exist. And the photos are just not the same. The question is the universal ‘Why?’ What drives people to forget reverence and instead assume that the world is there to leave their mark on any possible ways?

This is not a climber’s woes and worries but an appeal to revisit the area that should always be the foundation of everyday life: social conscience. Together is the way to find a way, employing knowledge is how we advance.

Mount Everest is but the tip of it. Pun intended, why not?

Whether it is Kenna Cartwright or Mount Baker or the Mara Hills, or the middle of the city, or a quiet neighborhood street, leaving nothing behind but gratefulness for having had a chance to see it all is a sign of understanding that such gifts should bear no sense of entitlement.

If all that we do as we go about our lives carries thoughtfulness – lighter than you think once you realize the importance and the benefit of it – things are bound to work out.

Being aware of our world, from how we raise our children and how we expect schools to carry on, elementary to university level, to how we keep ourselves informed about the goings of our immediate and greater world too, to how we act, from picking up after ourselves and acting in ways that show we care, everything builds towards a better world.

We find ourselves these days at the confluence of many life-decisive happenings that sprout around us on a daily basis and the necessity to be informed and participate in the making of decisions is as important as breathing. Because in more than one way, the act of breathing that we take for granted – and the clean air we assume we breathe in – that is a right we have to defend, and with that, we also need to affirm everything that follows it, be it controversial bills threatening our civil rights, or industry threatening pristine environment for financial gain of faceless stakeholders.

A large study published recently by a team on scientists from Spain concluded that children display slow cognitive development and lower memory test scores when exposed to high pollution from heavy traffic area. That does not count the 21,000 pollution-caused premature deaths that Canadians register every year.

On our side of the world, in the U.S., another large study pointed to stronger lungs in children when pollution levels are low.

That children are in the thick of it with so many challenges lurking on their path is no longer a debate. They are subject to too much information, and at the same time a worrying scarcity of knowledge, they are nature-deficient at a time when nature needs to be most understood for further protection, and we often overlook teaching them – and allowing to exercise it freely – their right to critical thinking and all that goodness that comes from being allowed to question things and commit to action that brings positive changes. That’s how you build social conscience.

We cannot move mountains, as they say, but we can keep them clean. We cannot give up cars and industry but we can work out selection of what is truly needed so that the health and wellness of our world prevails.

One step at a time, from keeping informed to asking questions, to making our voices heard, everything leaves a mark in the world, each of us and everyone. Invisible marks and yet poingnant enough to show that we cared. That is both a choice and a privilege.

Daniela Ginta is a mother, scientist, writer and blogger. She can be reached at daniela.ginta@gmail.com, or through her blog at http://www.thinkofclouds.com.