Sex and the City Saves Elephants

Actress Kristin Davis, co-star of the show Sex and the City, traveled to Kenya a few years ago for a safari. A ranger approached her vehicle and asked if they'd seen a baby elephant, so the whole truck stayed with the rangers for two days helping look for the baby. They finally found her among lava rocks, scared and angry, and had to cover her eyes and practically tackle her to get her safe. They gave her water, moistened her skin and transported her back to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, where she'd be cared for.

The rangers who approached Kristin's truck did so not because they thought approaching a celebrity would help, but because they simply needed more eyes. In fact, they didn't know she was a celebrity. It took DSWT a few weeks to realize who she was. Kristin Davis adopted the baby elephant she helped find, who was named for the area they found her, for $50, getting her email updates as to the elephant's health.

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust takes in orphaned elephants, most of whom are orphans because their mothers were slaughtered for their ivory tusks, and raises them to be released back into the wild. Some of the adult elephants actually come back to the reserve on occasion for a visit.

Oh, and Kristin Davis is also an advocate of women's rights. While her character in the TV series would get into the gritty details of her sex life, the actress laments that there are so few shows on TV that star women that each one still gets compared to Sex and the City, which ended 8 years ago. She does Broadway now, has adopted a baby girl, and has become the public face of the Wildlife Trust. She feels strongly about women's health issues and women's rights; she wants to raise her daughter to grow up in a world where there are not only elephants but complete freedom for women. Surely having played such a liberal, confident woman for so many years has helped shape her own beliefs and ideals (or did her beliefs and ideals shape the character?), but to have a show that starred and focused almost entirely on women be as popular as it was encouraged the teens and young women watching it to pursue their dreams.

Kristin Davis has done a lot to educate herself on the plight of elephants over the last few years and has compared buying ivory to buying blood diamonds, bringing something people widely regard as into the spotlight, using terms they recognize and understand. She's trying to bring attention to the severity of the problem (elephants could be gone in less than 10 years), describing the scenes she herself has witnessed (an elephant's head hacked off after it had been chained to a tree and left to die, with another not a half mile away).

"You want gritty details?" She asks, fully prepared to give journalists the shock they're looking for.

Oh yeah, and she's also passionate about women's issues and laments that there aren't enough shows about women. I don't think I could like a celebrity any more.

Why The World Might Actually End

End of the world prophesies and predictions are everywhere these days and each one passes as if nothing changed. And that's because nothing has changed. But I'm beginning to think it's not really that far off.

Our ethics and morals the world over are fucked. This might not come as news for a lot of people, but the part that scares me the most is that we know our ethics and morals are fucked, but we're doing absolutely nothing about it.

We think saving the planet is weak.

Possibly the most important thing for us as a species to be concerned about is the planet we live on because, despite what movies predict, we won't be inhabiting the moon or mars or the space station or anything other than this one planet we have. I mean, maybe in a few thousand years. But not before then, if ever. So it would make sense to recognize that we don't really have a choice but to be good stewards of the planet. It would also be awesome to not be so goddamn self centered and think about what those future generations are going to deal with, but I do realize that's asking a lot. For whatever reason.

Thing is, though, we're not just protecting the planet for our great grandchildren, or our grandchildren, or even our children. We're not getting out of our very own lives without some serious consequences. Not just if we don't start protecting it now. It's already too late. It's very, very likely I'll never see a wild elephant. In a few years they'll be extinct in the wild, and while elephants can be reintroduced into the wild eventually, too much has to change for that to be a viable option. War has ravaged their habitat for decades - that's not just going to stop because elephants need to be reintroduced. The demand for ivory has only been growing (which infuriates me to no end - there truly are no words to describe my anger at a whole generation of people whose frivolous purchases fuel murders and extinctions), and as soon as elephants are back on the market they'll be poached before they can reproduce. We'll also lose the Arctic circle, which means bye-bye polar bears. Because the planet is warming every year the ice will never return, which means reintroduction of anything in that area is impossible.

We blame unpopular victims.

It seems like the whole world has adopted a boys will be boys attitude about how we treat our fellow people. I don't know if I've just been paying more attention the last couple years, but it seems like more and more high profile people are raping and getting away with it. Raping students, raping children, raping and taking pictures. And it's ok, cause no one calls them out. No one punishes them. It's no big deal. 

And you know what we do then? We blame the victim. Woman out at a bar gets raped? Shouldn't have worn whatever it was that she wore. Woman walking home alone gets raped? Shouldn't have been out alone. Woman with her friend on a bus? Shouldn't have had a vagina. Seriously, that's all it is. It should not matter how much the girl was "asking for it" with her clothes or actions or existence. When did simply having a vagina come to mean you are a receptacle for everyone else's whims? Why on earth does it matter what a woman wore to a club on the night she was raped? Why does it matter that she had sex with someone else the night before? Why does it matter that she consented before that one time? Why do we argue whether or not it was rape if she was passed out? Or too drunk to stand? Or she agreed at the bar but changed her mind at home? How desperate do boys have to be to think that all of those situations equal legitimate sex? Are they afraid of rejection? Do they feel entitled because they got her a cab? Do they really believe we ask for it? I used to love wearing overalls when I was a kid (and in high school... shut up, it was cool). But I was told to be careful when wearing them because the back strap was easy to cut with scissors and all a rapist would have to do is yank them down, and it'd be just like I was wearing a skirt. I was literally told I could be raped for wearing overalls.

We tax the poor.

At least in America we argue over who should be taxed and how much everyone should pay. I'm not willing (or able) to get into the details of the tax exemptions that expired at the beginning of the year or how that will affect me and the rest of the country (partially because I haven't seen an effect yet), but I do know that the vast majority of Americans will take home less money right when many of us were thinking we were home free. It's been a true struggle for years for all of us and most people are starting to climb out of the hole we found ourselves in a few years ago. But to now see less of our paychecks? I do know that our economy is not all better just yet - taking more money out of the hands of people who do the buying can't be the best idea. Then again I'm not a politician, so I don't know the nuances of why that's an arguing point. 

But it disturbs me to see our politicians arguing over how to spend the money we do have. Congress argued over relief money for Hurricane Sandy. Excuse me, super storm Sandy. It got downgraded from hurricane to super storm, depriving homeowners from their insurance money. Because they were only insured for hurricane damage, not super storm damage. So the insurance companies are bullshit, and Congress trying to decide whether or not to be good goddamn people and put aside a little extra for a natural disaster is extreme bullshit. I honestly do not understand why, whenever we're talking about the budget and where we're allowed to allocate money, why why why schools and Planned Parenthood and disaster relief and infrastructure are the first things on the chopping block when Congress makes fucking good money for the measly amount of work they do. While their constituents, who they talk about all the goddamn time, work 40 hours a week at at least one job (many work more than that at multiple jobs) to make rent and feed ourselves and our kids, congress members get whole months off and spend their work days bickering and arguing over which of the poor gets money, meanwhile enjoying perks like government cars and phones, and some have even better perks. I don't see why Congress deserves the pay they get. They should receive the same pay as cops and firefighters or at the absolute minimum have penalties that affect their pay whenever they put off doing their jobs.

We argue over the wrong things.

Gun laws have been talked about more than ever since 20 kids were murdered last month. Gun enthusiasts refuse to admit that guns kill people, despite studies and records every year that say otherwise. Guns are more likely to kill someone the owner had no intention of killing than they are of being used for their intended purpose, yet people still want to have them around. In their homes, with their children, cocked and loaded. In fact, politicians are making it easier for those with mental health issues to obtain guns legally and want to make it illegal for physicians and psychiatrists to caution against gun safety. 

And we're also still arguing whether gays should be allowed to marry. Whether two grown adults who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together be allowed to wed gets just as much debate as whether or not mentally unstable people should be allowed to have military style, automatic weapons that cause mass murder. This is utterly ridiculous and says more about our morals and ethics than anything else. 

The world has to be coming to an end. It's 2013 and it feels 200 years earlier.

Making A Point With Money

The majority of my recent post have been somewhat depressing: between palm oil, poaching, the USDA killing birds, more palm oil, and the economy, there hasn't seemed to be much good in the big wide world out there. People are greedy and willing to do whatever it takes to make a buck or get things done the easy way, the rest of the world be damned.

All of this led to me wondering about the business practices of large corporations... the latest disappointment is from a company I love and have recommended for years, yet now all I hear is Apple buying products from what are essentially slave and child labor companies in China in buildings that work people 12+ hours for pennies and have suicide nets as a standard office amenity. Apple is wildly successful and insanely popular and their young, hip and socially aware following gives Apple the ability to change world business practices, so why support unfair and cruel business practices?

I know the answer, and it's the same reason high quality food companies use palm oil when they know it's low quality and environmentally damaging, but it's depressing. Corporations can make a higher profit margine by saving money on production, and if palm oil and child labor are the means to the end then so be it. It's got me thinking twice about getting an iPhone (and a MacBook Pro) when the time comes... I don't like the other products out there, but if buying from Apple means supporting horrid labor practices I can't feel good about that, and I really, really want to be excited about those purchases. (I know that other computer and phone companies are exactly the same, and that no matter what I buy I will be supporting environmental damage or child labor or some other horrible business practices, but Apple is so popular and believes so highly of itself that it should be above that. A silver lining may be that Apple has now, finally, disclosed almost every supplier for its products, allowing third party auditors to assess the conditions of the factories and create better positions for the workers.)

Last month I bought an American Apparel hoodie because I had a Groupon for half off. I always really liked the styles of the jackets and they seem to last forever, but even still I could never justify paying $50 for a jacket. At $25 it was way more reasonable, especially since the lower quality jackets at Target were $20 this season, and I'm glad the only negative business practice that purchase supported was skanky models and a skankier CEO. But I'm not hipster enough or rich enough to shop there all the time, so Target and Ross it is for the rest of my clothes, which no doubt save money with Chinese slave and child labor (not to mention Target's financial support of anti-gay fanatics).

One of the reasons I want to be quasi-wealthy one day is so I can spend $50 on American made jackets, buy sustainable and organic food at farmer's markets every week and really make an effort to make a difference with my money. And it's sad that doing so requires a certain amount of wealth, but it does. I already spend $8 on a bottle of shampoo (and am looking for new body wash, face wash, face scrub and hand soap), buy high quality cat food, avoid palm oil, get fair trade and organic tea, and only buy sustainable fish when I eat meat, but I know all or most of my clothes were originally made in a sweat shop somewhere, the battery in my phone was mined in Africa and probably cost someone his life, and now my computer (and iPod and likely every other electronic I own or use) is manufactured by little kids or miserable adults in China.

So what am I supposed to do? Ignorance really is bliss. Not knowing, or caring, can make life so much easier. Better, maybe not, but easier.

Conservation Lows

More than a dozen dead elephants in one box.

This year wasn't a particularly good one for a lot of people, mostly due to the world economy, but it was a particularly bad one for endangered animals. In addition to smuggling, a man releasing his private zoo before offing himself and the essential acceptance of global climate change as legitimate fact, poaching was steeply on the rise in 2011. More than 400 rhinos were poached this year (compared to less than 15 just 4 years ago) and thousands of elephants were killed for their tusks. Millions of dollars worth of illegal ivory was confiscated and showed that poachers are getting smart in the ways they kill elephants and transport ivory to Asia.

Which really pisses me off. As awful as rhino poaching is and as useless as it is (really, Asia? Powdered rhino horn is going to cure your cancer?) at least they believe it has medicinal properties so valuable that they'll pay it's weight in gold for even a few ounces. Elephant tusks, on the other hand, are used purely for decoration. Ivory is carved into shapes (sometimes, for irony, in elephant shapes), used to adorn silverware and handles and added around the house to show off wealth. How fucking vain. Oh, and sometimes elephant feet are also chopped off to be used as a side table to display more wealthy shit. Even ivory. Cause, you know, that's high fashion. And totally worth causing an entire species to decline and untold amounts of pain and suffering.

Again, I'm left to wonder what will happen when these animals do disappear from the planet because, let's be real, it's only a matter of time for most of them. There's only one species of rhino that is doing alright and that's only because of extreme protection, and even they had record deaths this year, and the rest are on the fast track to extinction. I'm still not sure what people will do when there's no more supply of rhino horn... will the existing horns skyrocket in price? Will Asian medicines be altered to include parts from other animals? Will the other animals used in Asian medicine be poached even more (bye bye tigers)? Will people realize they were silly to think that rhino horn or tiger penis had any benefits whatsoever and shrug that they're gone now? Will ivory become even more prized and will people begin hurting each other for a piece?

And what about the rest of us? I'm always one to revel in "I told you so," but (to quote my favorite movie butler/caretaker), "on that day... even I won't want to."