Every decision we make - when we choose a vehicle, when we pump

Hearken, O seeker of truth, to the words spoken by Jane Velez-Mitchell, whose voice cries out across the age of consumption: “Every decision we make – when we choose a vehicle, when we pump gas into that vehicle, when we order food – is not just a personal lifestyle choice. It’s an environmental and moral choice.” This saying is no idle thought, but a beacon of conscience in a world grown heavy with the weight of its own desires. Like the prophets of old who warned kings and common folk alike, her words remind us that even the smallest action reverberates through creation, shaping the destiny of all beings that walk, swim, and soar upon the earth.

In this saying lies the essence of responsibility: that our choices are not as light as dust blown by the wind, but stones cast upon still waters, each sending ripples far beyond our sight. To choose a vehicle is not merely to select a chariot for one’s comfort, but to declare allegiance—to smoke or to purity, to excess or to moderation, to heedless haste or to the careful stewardship of the world. When we take the pump in hand and let loose the flow of gas, we do not simply fill a tank, but we stir ancient reservoirs of buried sunlight, awaken the smoke of a thousand years, and bind ourselves to the great wheel of climate and consequence.

Consider the tale of the Dust Bowl in America, in the 1930s. Farmers, driven by hunger for profit and heedless of balance, plowed the plains without rest. The soil, stripped of its roots, rose into blackened storms that choked children and turned midday into night. Their intent was survival, yet their choices bore bitter fruit. From this history we learn that no decision is isolated: what begins as the act of one hand may become the famine of many mouths. Jane’s words echo this truth—the moral choice hides within the daily act, veiled until revealed by time.

Nor are such lessons confined to history. In our own era, behold the seas, heavy with plastic, where once the dolphin and the turtle swam free. A single meal, wrapped and discarded without thought, joins countless others in a floating continent of waste. Thus even the act of ordering food, though cloaked in the simplicity of hunger, shapes the fate of oceans and the lives within them. What is eaten and what is wasted declares who we are—not only as individuals, but as caretakers of this fragile world.

Yet despair not. For though the weight of our choices is great, so too is the power bestowed upon us. To walk instead of drive, to eat plants where beasts once suffered, to cherish what we own instead of clamoring for more—these are not sacrifices, but acts of quiet heroism. They are the prayers we speak with our hands and our habits, prayers that rise not to the heavens only, but to the unborn generations who will drink from rivers we leave behind.

Let this be the lesson: freedom is not the liberty to consume without end, but the strength to choose with wisdom. Every act is a thread, and together they weave the tapestry of tomorrow. If we weave with greed, the cloth will unravel in storms and droughts. But if we weave with care, the fabric will endure, bright with abundance and harmony.

Therefore, O listener, take these teachings and bind them to your heart. Walk with mindfulness, and let your decisions reflect both compassion and foresight. Reduce waste; choose vehicles that spare the air; eat with gratitude and with gentleness toward the earth. For the earth is not only soil and stone, but the cradle of all who come after. To guard it is not only wise—it is righteous.

So go forth, and may your choices be not only your own, but gifts to all life, present and yet to come. This is the path of stewardship, the path of honor, the path by which one generation blesses the next.