As the weather in Maryland is reminding me more and more of Florida each year...we can't pretend we don't see what is happening.
Why do some of the media outlets support climate denying positions?
Because of their business model, of course. Their source of income is from advertisers. Advertisers want us to buy things, in order for us to stop climate change we have to drastically stop buying things, and using energy. The advertisers don't make money if we really take the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra to heart, because the most important piece of those big three is the Reduce. Reduce consuming meat and cheese, reduce consuming factory produced items that have been shipped a long ways, reduce the amounts of electricity and gasoline, reduce flights, reduce food waste, reduce eating highly processed foods, reduce the size of homes...all this means that we need to spend less and the current American consumer economy is not designed to flourish under that model. The economy needs us to spend more each year or we end up in a recession.
We need to change, this is not a political position, it is a scientific position, it is a survival position. If we do not change we will change the climate of the world so quickly that there will be mass migrations and upheaval as land floods, wells go dry and the rains either wash away the soil or the rains don't come at all.
What's to be done? We need the mindset of my grandparents and great grand parents, people who lived through the Depression, don't buy what you don't REALLY need, live frugally, don't waste food, and grow a garden and sometimes do without something. What does get bought is used until it is completely unusable and all types of re-use are expended, then the materials can be recycled. Recycling should be the last resort, reduce and re-use are where the powerful change happens, recycling consumes more resources in the process. All of this will come to a head very soon, many countries are now refusing to take our recycling, we don't have the landfill space for all that recycling, nor the capacity to recycle it, nor the markets for the recycled materials. Soon (actually, it is well past the time, as this has been spoken of for decades), we will need to be more conscious of packaging, single use items like zip bags, bottles and those infuriatingly tough, sealed plastic bubbles that everything seems to be packed in will go the way of the dinosaurs. Shampoo bars, reusable cutlery sets of bamboo (my spouse received one of these at a recent business conference), metal straws (eliminating plastic straws is very low hanging fruit), and water in consumable bubbles are all happening now, there will be more innovations and some return to the "old" ways from before the time of plastics. Maybe the marketers can get behind these new/old ideas.
Lots of people talk about reducing, and very few actually want to do
this, but it is getting to the point when we will no longer have the
choice. All of the little changes are just little changes, we need big changes. Better planned cities and towns with transport systems, smaller homes that are closer together to make those transport systems work, businesses integrated into the communities rather than far flung outside the communities to make commutes shorter and/or more teleworking. Solar and wind power used in every community that can use them. The list goes on and on!!
Now, if we all start doing our part, the world economy and climate are going to change and how we deal with that change will determine how countries (and species) come through to the next century. We all need to remember that survival of the fittest, really means survival of the fittest for the current, changing conditions, if we do not adapt quickly we will find out the hard way that we are not the fittest. No one wants that.
If anyone who has made it this far still doubts that climate change is real please come visit my lilac bushes, they don't like our recent warm Decembers after chilly Novembers. They flower slightly in December and then freeze in January. They are clearly dying. We were on the southern edge of being able to grow them successfully and now I think the line has moved farther north, inland and upland. There will be more plants to die off like this. Still doubt? Try to go skating on the ponds I skated on as a kid in Southern New England in early January, actually, no, don't try that, that's suicide. Here's some documentation on that, my husband sent me this article right as I clicked post on this Blog the first time, Rhode Island 2.5 degrees warmer!!
I recently taught a group of kids about the impacts of climate change,
one child raised her hand and said, "What if you
don't believe in climate change?" The answer to that is, it doesn't
matter if you believe it or not, it is going to happen anyway. (It turns
out that she believes in climate change, but a family member is
vehemently denying its existence, and makes fun of her efforts to be
green.) Some of the kids asked "But hasn't the climate always changed?"
Yes, but the earth on its own takes tens of thousands of years to change
as much as it has in the last 150 years. Some of
the older kids in the back of the room rolled their
eyes, of course, they're 13.
