We’ve sliced away at wilderness, and let former ranch and wildlands be sold to developers. The Keep America Beautiful campaign began in 1953, and anti-littering laws exist in all states—in some, for longer than forty years. Yet people continue to litter. Cigarette butts are the most commonly littered item in the world: over 4.5 trillion butts are tossed out car windows, thrown on sidewalks and streets, ground into the soil of hiking trails. Each takes from four to five hundred years to completely break down. We take for granted our hills and canyons, our lakes and streams, and the soil of our farmland. We have been reluctant to respond to the promise of a warmer earth. We roll our eyes at environmentalists. But reality is that we share a single environment with every other being on this planet. Our collective homes form one huge, interconnected home. Risk to one is, essentially, risk to all.
As residents of this common environment, we are vulnerable to nature’s whims as well as to changes imposed by humanity. We have homes, rarely inviolate, but protected, sheltered, as best possible. Wild creatures are constricted to nests or dens only when they are newly born, giving birth or nursing. Once weaned, they explore trees and grasslands, hills and furrows and streams, expanding home outward. Knowing nothing of artificial boundaries imposed by humans until we enter their space and erect fences and buildings or draw lines on paper and state on this side of the line they are safe, on the other side, they may be shot.
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