Michelle Simon is a professional environmental scientist and filmmaker. She has 17 years of formal experience across the sectors (civil society, government, academia and private) with a 20 years history as a socio-enviro-political activist. She has priorities her work to focus on the delivery of human rights shelter and basic service needs such as water and sanitation. She has also enforced compliance of developers by protecting natural resources such as rivers, wetlands and groundwater and designed projects at an environmental level to include food security, rainwater harvesting, waste recycling and energy efficiency.
Her work arises from both lived experience and professional experience. Her lived experience formed from birth as an affected person on the receiving end of the externalities of toxic pollution by multinational corporations in one of the worlds most polluted areas, the South Durban Basin in South Africa. The forced apartheid planning of placing the most toxic industry on the doorsteps of black communities predestined her life as a socio-politico-environmental activist and set the pace for her career as a professional scientist delving into the very issues she and countless others were subjected too. As negative as her lived experience was, it grounded her and was fundamental in creating her relentless convictions on protecting the earth and all who lived on it. It also harnessed her appreciation of nature as limited as it was back in apartheid to black communities, nature, green spaces where held in check and so conservation was racist in access.
However, the battles for human rights, environmental justice and social and political freedom where not separate, working as a grassroots activist from the age of 15 years old, she learned that all activists had one common goal, to protect those who needed protection and this included the voiceless wildlife. She grew up breathing polluted air, frolicking in toxic water, playing in oil drenched sand, none the wiser that this was not nature but the ruthless force of unconscionable industry coupled with a racist regime.
We present some business ideas for those of you who think that the future is greener than the present- we can think of some who don't ---. The advice is general and does not apply exclusively to any one nation.
We use the tiger (this is a prime Siberian example) to show up our failure to conserve wild species, but while we monopolise all the food that animals require, we could remember that it is not only their conservation we urgently need to cover. It is also our own indulgences.
How can you describe the threats existing to species, both large and small? Using the highly-threatened primates, we can perhaps see how they have contrived to exist until the current time. Then we can better understand just how we can prevent factors simply wiping them from the face of the earth, often through ignorance, lack of care, prejudice and of course the universal profit motive. Conservation begins in our minds, but demands much more than that.
The future is certainly renewable, but are we too late to prevent future centuries problems of global warming- and the rest! Here are some current US solutions to waste and warming for you to enjoy---there are some ads in this piece but weve allowed them for one blog only.
Need to save money after the spending boom to end them all? Here are 2 sets of opinions on how to pull out the plugs at night at least.
When dolphins are 'rescued' in various countries, the car given seems to be ill-considered. We are simply looking at the success rate which is reported to be low, in most places. They could even end up in commercial aquarium shows, but they certainly rarely make it back to the sea.
