My little earth muffin

My son is turning into quite the little earth muffin. He is learning in his school about the earth and how it is getting so polluted. This has led to some interesting conversations to be having with a 5 year old.

Take for example when we walked down the road to see how the work was going on for the bridge near our house that they are tearing down in order to build a newer, better, bigger bridge – albeit one that goes over one of the most disgusting smelling, fetid bodies of water in our area. As we walked over and watched the massive diggers working away, my son’s attention was drawn to the nasty water below.

“Daddy, why is that water so gross?”
“Because people keep throwing garbage and other things into it.”
“Why do they throw garbage and others things into it?”
“Because they don’t want to take the effort to get rid of the garbage properly.”
“Oh. So they just throw it here?”
“Yes.”
“That is very bad! Now the whole earth is getting polluted because of people throwing garbage in this water. Look daddy!!! Some of the water is getting hard.”
“No, son, it is not getting hard. That is something called sludge. That is part of why it smells so bad over here.”
“I don’t like sludge. Its yucky!”

Or take another conversation just the other day. Mind you this one happened right after he got up from his nap with the AC running in his room, keeping him nice and cool.

“Daddy, air conditioners are bad! They make CFCs go into the air and then the atmosphere will break.”
“Where did you learn about CFCs?”
“At my school.”
“So you don’t want to use your AC any more because of that?”
“No. We should find a different way to cool my room.”
“How should we do that?”
“Maybe we could get a REALLY big fan and use that instead.”
“I don’t think you would like that too much.”
“Well, . . . . we just have to be careful that we don’t break the atmosphere.”
“OK, we will be careful.”
“OK, I will tell my teachers we will be careful.”

I am encouraged that there are at least some here who are aware of the problems and are trying to teach young kids about it too. So many here simply throw things here and there, making the problem that much worse. Who knows if this concern will stick with him, but for now, it’s a good thing.