One of the pleasures of retirement is that we have time to think about the big picture. We can celebrate what’s going well, such as the meaningful decline in world poverty in recent years and the great strides we’ve made in medicine and technology.

But there is some not-so-good news too. For example, our earth is doing badly. Oceans are rising, species are dying out.

We discussed the future of the earth in my last TED-Talks class, focusing on the sad state of our environment. Two facts (not fake):

1. The Great Pacific (Ocean) Garbage Patch is now two times the size of Texas. (262,000 sq. miles x 2) and growing.
2. A million plastic bottles are manufactured every minute.

(Fact #2 caused a handful of class members to slip their plastic bottles of water under their seats.)

We know we must take action. We left class vowing to help rectify this situation. But will we?

Will you?