There's only one earth.

Today I'm sad.

I woke up and learned that while still alive and being filmed, an internationally protected whale shark was sawed into pieces in China. The animal was clearly in pain as it was being chopped up. Where's the humanity?

"Protected" means they're close enough to extinction that they need to be left alone. After all the news, conversations, and learnings around Cecil the Lion, ivory poachers threatening the existence of elephants and rhinos, radiation causing flowers to mutate, major drinking water droughts, reduced depths in fresh water lakes, rivers and streams killing fish, the entire North Pacific Gyre issue, and so on, I am beside myself. Change needs to happen. 

Why is it so hard to connect the dots and consider the severity of human beings actions? Whether we're killing animals or destroying nature, it's all related.

Ignorance is killing us and the earth. I truly wish people would stop living with an unsustainable consumerist mentality. "By the time you die, we're going have a new layer on the earth- plastic," as my Oceanography professor, Bob Gotsche, told me almost 10 years ago. We kill the different animal species that are a part of the bigger ecosystem, pollute the oceans with our excessive "needs," and add toxins and pesticides into the soil/on plants... It's killing the honey bees that keep us alive! I can go on forever about all the issues, but I won't. 

There's one earth. We all need to take the responsibility to protect our planet and the animals that live on it. We ourselves are animals, too. We are not above any other living thing that shares the world with us. We are all connected.