If I'd known I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself.
If I'd known we were going to run out of water by Christmas, I would have taken shorter showers and never, ever rinsed dishes under running water.
Today while I was doing what passes for gardening during these dry times -- pruning, removing dead plants, and adding soil amendments that will help if I ever get to plant anything new again -- I couldn't help but think about parallels between preventive care and water conservation.
When we're healthy and the reservoirs are full, we assume it will always be so.
Frightened by a heart attack or the threat of taps run dry, we vow to do better. But when the crisis is over, do we really stop eating fries or get that leaky tap fixed?
It isn't easy to change our ways, either individually or as a nation. You can find out more about how increased used of five simple, preventive health measures would save 100,000 American lives each year by going to www.prevent.org. That's where you'll find a new report, "Preventive Care: A National Profile on Use, Disparities and Health Benefits."
As for water use, shower with a friend.
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1 comment:
That's definitely true. If I would have know what horrible things my trash was doing to the environment as a child, I would have recycled; then maybe global warming wouldn't be a problem and perhaps we wouldn't be in a water shortage. You're right our selfish, fast food nation has a bad habit of not taking the right steps until it's almost too late (i.e. the mortgage problem, the water shortage, the obesity problem, etc., etc.). Let's just hope it's not too late now.
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