I'm baaaack! I know I'm a sporadic poster here. This time I have a pretty good excuse. Hub and I went on a 3-week vacation that took up most of September. We traveled through Ireland on a tour as well as some time on our own. It was a lovely trip. Hub took many, many photos of energy-producing windmills. I don't know why. I think it's because his radar is always up for anything climate-change related. We learned coal-fired energy production is still a thing and drove past a couple of the plants. But windmills were in abundance in certain places as well, with plans to move more off-shore in the future. Their government policy is to reduce greenhouse gases by 51% by 2030.
The effects of climate change are all around us right now, literally in the air we breathe as once again this year smoke hangs in the air from a nearby forest fire that seems to be particularly persistent. I read the other day it has been determined the cause was human misadventure of some sort. It has burned for many weeks now, all the way to the edge of a main east/west highway over the mountain pass, closing that route for many travelers and residents who use it to commute back and forth.
Skeptics will say "human caused fires" are not about the climate. Yes, they are, as they become more common and more persistent due to disease and drought which ARE climate-related. It's all connected. Mother Nature...get it?
And of course, Hurricane Ian recently wrecked its havoc in Florida, as a Category 4, "500 year storm", devastating coastal areas up and down the east coast. These storms are more frequent (much closer together than 500 years), much bigger, and much more damaging to human life (as we persist in developing coastal areas for recreation and habitation), as ocean waters warm and jet streams go wonky. (That's a scientific term.)
Is this fixable anymore? Hub is taking a course online for which the premise is we are now in "climate collapse". We can't stop it. We're screwed. This is depressing.
He showed me a chart from the course that I found discouraging. Here I sit writing about plastics recycling and dutifully dividing my 'plastic film' from my 'multi-layer plastics' from my 'recyclable plastic' from my 'clamshell' plastic....and for what? Is any of this even making a dent in what we are facing? I see that I am naively in the second column of the chart, with awareness of all the issues being interconnected from the third column.
We had to quickly go out and buy some quantity of fruit last week for a family get-together. We discussed that at Costco all of this would come in clamshell packaging. I said, "Oh well, I guess that matters little in the collapse scenario." I was obviously discouraged and ready to give up.
Still.....there's total collapse and then there's not that bad of a collapse? Is taking no action in the face of disaster the wise choice? NO! We can begin to mitigate the extent of the disaster with our every day actions. The Inflation Reduction Act with its big pay out for climate policy is a start and is very encouraging. We, as citizens, can still do our every day absolute best to live more lightly on the earth, with increasing information and awareness of how we made this mess, to knock it off, and take responsibility for helping clean it up best we can in order not to leave some barren armageddon for our grandkids.
So, I'm gonna keep on keepin' on with my efforts. I hope you will too. It's what we can do.
Here's to health, for ourselves and our planet. ©
Photo Credit: Hub, Official Trip Photographer; Chart: www.heartcommunitygroup.org
