In the U.S., we worry so much about our purpose in life, what we need to be doing, or how much we accomplish.

We spend millions of dollars on metaphysical workshops to speak to the dead and to angels, and to learn our future. We want to know what our purpose is in life and how to make a lot of money with little effort.

Are these appropriate priorities?

We need to focus more on what we leave to our children than what we accomplish for ourselves. Think of the ramifications of that shift in reality. We struggle to be successful, we struggle to provide for our families, and we totally ignore what is happening in the rest of the world.

As the wealthiest country on the planet, we have a unique opportunity to influence change in the world. As long as we are focused on what we can get out of life, instead of what we can put into life, we will continue to destroy the planet and any chance of a life for our descendants.

We have come to a place in our human development that we can’t ignore what is going on around us.

In the U.S., we are so focused on the next presidential election that we forget that 12-year-old girls are being sold into sex slavery in alarming numbers. We continue to destroy our environment to make money. We waste trillions of dollars to build weapons that are so defective that they can’t be used. We organize and fund terrorists who then turn on us when we no longer need them.

We need to be more proactive about abuses in spending by our government. The US government has spent over $1 trillion on an experimental F-35 fighter jet with an agreement to buy 2,500 of these jets. The short story is these jets don’t work and are a failure. The math is frightening, with the US government committed to pay trillions of dollars for the fighter jets. Foreign nations that originally committed to buy these aircraft have cancelled their orders. We need to cancel ours too. Even worse, the military can’t account for 25 percent of what it spends. There is approximately $2.3 trillion dollars that the military spent and they don’t know what they spent it on. That is approximately $8,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

We have bankrupted ourselves trying to carry the biggest stick. And nothing changes.

Oil should be in the ground, not on it. Pipelines are spewing oil leaks all over Canada and North Dakota. The Gulf of Mexico is still recovering from the massive oil spill that occurred there. Fracking has all but destroyed the water sources for hundreds of thousands of people. This is all approved and ignored by our government.

One of the most toxic and poisonous practices allowed in the US is fracking. Fracking is a process of forcing natural gas out of the ground by injecting water and chemicals under high pressure. There are approximately 500,000 gas wells injecting 40,000 pounds of chemicals in each well. The chemicals are highly toxic and carcinogenic. These wells have ruined and destroyed water sources all over the US, with residents reporting that they can actually light the water coming out of their faucets on fire. There are thousands of reported cases of physical and neurological damage caused to people who drink this water. Incredibly, the fracking industry is exempt from the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act. People need to contact Congress and their representatives to object to this practice. We have to protect our resources for our children and descendants.

We are destroying our planet to pay for our abundance.

There are several things that we, as individuals, can bring about change.

The first is to be politically active. By that, I mean be a voice for the things you are passionate about. You don’t necessarily need to run for office, but you can communicate with your representatives (and the rest of Congress for that matter) about the causes you believe in. If we don’t tell our representatives what we believe, they will simply go about their business in ignorance. Tell them what is important for them to be aware of and work on for change. Whether it is the environment, Monsanto, fracking, the military, local issues or election abuse, we need to tell our representatives what to do. That is why they are there—to serve us. If they don’t know what we want, they can’t help us.

The second is to use your dollars in alignment with your beliefs. Don’t buy produce that is raised with pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified seeds. Don’t buy produce made by Monsanto or other chemical companies that are poisoning our food and planet. Monsanto’s second quarter results in 2016 reported net sales of $4.5 billion dollars and one of the best earnings reported to date. This is despite all of the scientific data indicating how toxic Monsanto’s products were. We need to stop supporting their poisoning of the planet.

If we are going to protect our children and their descendants, we have to hold our government accountable for its abuses and criminally negligent spending. We have to hold corporations accountable for destroying our natural resources. We have to be more vocal with our elected officials and hold them accountable for their excesses.

We are at a tipping point, and it will not be long before remedial measures will not be enough. We will have permanently poisoned our environment.

We can’t let this happen.

Author: James Robinson

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Dustin Lee/Unsplash