Andrea Weckerle

Today is Blog Action Day, where thousands of bloggers — over fifteen thousand and counting, with millions of combined readers — write about a single important topic: the environment.

Well, "protecting the environment" has been a buzz phrase for a very long time now, and just as there are many people and organizations who understand that environmental protection isn’t antithetical to business and can go hand-in-hand with it, there unfortunately are detractors who are more comfortable being cynics than taking steps that, on a combined scale, will make positive long-term change. Fortunately, important events such as Al Gore’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, lend great credibility to the importance of environmental causes and place them on the global stage.

Ultimately every action starts with an idea, though. And so, I’d like to share, in his own words, what a very special young boy, with the wide-eyed innocence of youth, suggested we can all do to "help the earth." 

• Watering your lawn and watering your garden.
• Feeding wild birds in the winter.
• Cleaning up your toys.
• Picking up garbage outside.
• Don’t burn tires, or don’t use your car too much since that can pollute the air.
• Keeping the lakes and rivers and oceans clean.

If a six-year old can come up with ideas and get excited about how he can contribute, surely the rest of us can too.