Environment

For a Nature Photographer like me the beauty of our planet is extremely important, but the beauty of our earth is of course only one measure of the health and the values of the environment we are currently living in. So the systems we are living in and we use daily during our lives are tightly intertwined with the Earth’s beauty and are thus of the same importance. Our future, the future of our kids and next generations and all the beauty and happiness these future generations will find are strongly dependent on how we treat our planet and it’s health today.

In fact mankind today is not only wasting more resources than we actually are allowed by nature and health of our planet, but as a society in general we still close our eyes and do not want to recognize the signs of sickness and destruction our Earth has already entered.? We are so deeply involved in our everyday’s businesses, that we easily find thousands of excuses not to watch these signs and to forget about the destructive process we are involved.

Since I was born, the Earth’s rainforests have disappeared through devastation and exploitation by more than 50 percent and the rest is going at least as fast. Since 1980, half of the arctic sea ice has melted and the main reasons are based on human induced climate change. We are overfishing the oceans, diminish the habitats of numerous life forms and still keep going as if nothing could be seen already. We start seeing catastrophic climate changes all over the world, in some cases only bringing mild changes, but in most cases resulting in severe destructions, which cannot be reverted within many thousands of years to come.

There are no excuses for our collective foolish and ignorant behavior. Human beings need to learn how to live sustainable on Earth. This should start already with right education in schools of course and must not be neglected by any type of business and controlled, supported and even enforced by governments. What we ruin today will be either very expensive to repair or even impossible during our lifetimes and many generations to follow. Thus it is in our own interest to take care for our environment and preserve the beauty and health of our planet as much as everybody of us can.

All of us can contribute in one or many ways. In my case this is on one side through my engagement in the development, deployment and future enhancements of the worldwide Internet, as the Internet opens many new possibilities for efficient usage and control of the resources we have available. On the other side my nature photography shall demonstrate the beauty of our planet earth and nature, which we need to preserve for future generations which is an effort to remind all of us again and again of the values we all have to protect.