Support Environmental
Protection and
Rescue Our Planet

Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai, New York, USA,
August 4, 1999 (Originally in English) Videotape #664

M: Yes. Don't you feel the world is getting better already?

M: That's right. It's terrible. When I see car exhaust and inhale it, it makes me feel very bad, too. Every time I have to go into the city for some reason and I get stuck in traffic, the way you do every day, I feel very sorry for you, very sorry.

But you see, the world isn't made up only of us, it's also made up of a big body of bureaucracy and laws and all kinds of red tape in all kinds of businesses and profit-crazed organizations. Sometimes people invent good things, but they aren't released immediately because of the different ways of the business world.

Our world would have already been much better if the people had accepted many of the inventions of a hundred years ago, not just now. But people are sometimes jealous of each other, even among the great people, scientists, businessmen or entrepreneurs. They become jealous of each other and make problems. Sometimes they destroy an invention in the bud; sometimes they destroy the inventor; sometimes they cover it up; sometimes they distort it and so on. So our world is less than it should be.

Yes, the automobile is bad: you're right. Maybe you should start something. You could write a slogan for the street: "Stop all this smoke; invent something new!"

Meanwhile, what should we do? We have a lot of environmental protection groups such as Green Peace and various other "greens." There are a lot of greens in different countries. But people have to be taught from childhood about the responsibilities we should take upon ourselves. Most people still aren't educated in this direction, or in any direction. They go to school all right, but they don't learn this kind of common sense. The important things aren't taught in school, and that's a problem.

People say, "OK, look! We cut down trees because we need them. Now that we've cut down one tree, we'll plant two more trees." But the cutting down of so many trees has made for lethal weather; there's murderous weather now in the U.S. Many people died this summer because of the heat. But they still haven't heeded the warnings yet; they still cut down the trees and do all kinds of harmful things to the environment such as the chemicals and so on.

You can't stop them all, at least not all at once. It might sound good to plant two trees each time you cut down one tree, but the one tree you just cut down took a hundred years to grow. And the two trees you want to plant will take a hundred more years to be able to balance the good air that the old tree was capable of producing.

If the Amazon forest is cut down, even if another forest is planted again, we'll have to wait a few hundred years for the trees to grow to such a capacity that they can produce oxygen and neutralize the toxins in the air the way the Amazon trees do. It's not like you can cut down any tree and plant it, and it will be the same. The size may be the same, but the capacity isn't the same. For example, except for a few geniuses, we all grow wiser with age. Our size stays the same, our face looks the same, but our wisdom isn't the same and our experience isn't the same. Similarly, trees need time to be able to neutralize the toxins in the air and produce the balance that we need to survive.

So, apart from our spiritual endeavors, we can't do much. We can't stop all these greedy industrial business people from cutting down trees and amassing riches for themselves at the cost of ourselves and our children. They think they're doing good business and that they're providing a lot of work for other people, but at the same time they're doing a lot of damage. And it's much more long-term for this planet because of the waste from cutting down these enormous trees, which are the life-savers of this planet.

If we keep cutting like this, our planet might become like Mars very soon. Mars is all dust and gas and toxins and pollution so you might not be able to live. What do you think Mars was? Maybe Mars was like us before until we finished it off.

Never mind: We'll do the best we can and hope the world will learn. Share whatever information you can with whomever you know, at least physically. Don't cut down too many trees, killing yourself and your children and your grandchildren. Even if you have a lot of money now, you can't buy their lives back later, when they get skin cancer and become sick or you're sick or the heat kills all of us and so on. So you should share whatever you know.

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