Fire Drill Friday

Weekly, I attempt to create some content, be it a blog, video or podcast, to join in to Fire Drill Friday’s mission, to create change for the environment. This is inclusive; you don’t have to feel that Greta Thunberg is the end all, you don’t have to be a Jane Fonda fan (but I hope you are). You don’t have to believe in Climate Change.

To me, my Fire Drill Friday is finding the commonalities, the areas in which we all can potentially agree and create change.

Todays topics are Essential Workers Bill of Rights and, How deforestation is not a great idea for our health, without spending a second on climate change or the air quality.

Essential Worker Bill of Rights that provides workers with:

1. Health and safety protections;
2. Robust premium compensation;
3. Protections for collective bargaining agreements;
4. Truly universal paid sick leave and family and medical leave;
5. Whistleblower protections;
6. An end to worker misclassification;
7. Health care security;
8. Childcare support;
9. Treat workers as experts; and
10. Holds corporations accountable for meeting their employer responsibilities.

Scroll for Deforestation & Health but first, please sign the petition.

DEFORESTATION AND YOUR HEALTH

Hurt Nature, Nature Hurts You Back

However, protect nature and nature may protect you.

Sars, Ebola and Sars-Cov-2 (Covid) are three infectious viruses since 2002 that jumped from wild animals to humans. Animals that are suffering as we eradicate their homes, their forests- some are quite ill and some are asymptomatic and transmitters of the bio-microbes that create these and similar diseases.

The more we create a negative impact on forests, the more wildlife carrying microbes enter our own “habitat” and create illness and death with these pathogens.

There was a study that showed that a 10% reduction in forests creates a 3% increase in Malaria. These numbers seem small but that’s over 7 million people. This is just discussing Malaria. Multiply that by the hundreds of thousands of potential pathogens and you start to see the big picture.

For more information or to get involved https://www.ran.org/issue/forests/

We can’t be happy or truly healthy until we begin to take responsibility. It’s not enough to vote or wish a situation away. We must petition, discuss, make this a topic that is on other’s minds and in their hearts. We deserve to be healthy and happy.