How are we to revive the seas, air, and soil?

By sustaining their ecosystems and reducing our polluting waste.

Understanding why this is so and how our careless ignorance is destroying biodiversity on earth is the way to live more sustainably.

The only way to revive our seas, air, and soil is to stop dumping our waste into these environments. That requires repairing and reusing items that we might throw away, or recycling items that can be efficiently recycled, or even better upcycling items that can be refashioned for new uses.

We should try to avoid all single-use plastic containers, straws, utensils, cups, etc. There’s no need to buy Tupperware. Instead, reuse plastic food packages including takes-out containers from restaurants. 

Compost food waste instead of thrashing it. Spread the compost around flowers or food plants in your yard. Urge neighbors to ask your town or city council to collect food waste for composting around plants and trees in parks.

Our air pollution is primarily fossil fuel exhaust from our power plants, cars, trucks, gas furnaces, lawn mowers, and leaf blowers. Convert to electric equipment, especially when electricity generation is by green sources (solar, wind, geothermal). Drive less. Use electric public transport when possible. Walk. Fly less. Calculate our carbon emissions and buy carbon offsets generated by nonprofit organizations that plant trees where they are needed to conserve the soil, shade crops, maintain needed rainfall, and provide the species diversity required to sustain ecosystems.

In response to the living-world that sustains us, we should gratefully make choices that will help sustain the earth’s diverse biosphere.

Of course, we should also advocate for public policies, by corporations as well as governments, that will rapidly shift from fossil fuel polluting energy to renewable sources. We can pledge to spend our consumer dollars with producers and suppliers reducing fossil fuel emissions and recycling wastes. We should vote for politicians committed to public expenditures reducing fossil fuel emissions and other environmental pollutants. Moreover, we should expect corporations to support only politicians who back sustainable policies.

We have the technology required to revive the seas, air, and soil, but so far have not had the will as individuals and voting constituencies to require corporations and elected representatives to do what needs to be done.