It's an Emergency!

Climate change/global warming is a worldwide emergency that we are must acknowledge and take the proper action not only for ourselves or people who live in faraway countries, but for the future of the human race if we want to continue to exist!

This is the message that I got from reading Greta Thunberg's The Climate Book, which is a collection of short articles/chapters from leading scientists from different fields, social scientists, authors, and climate activists and of course Greta Thunberg, herself who call us to all pay attention to this emergency and the need to take the proper action.

We, as human beings, especially in the Global North are really clueless, in denial, and even hypocrites. We have the warnings, the science, we see it from the heat waves, Canadian wildfires, extreme rain events that cause once in a thousand year floods, the mass extinction of insects and birds that is taking place, and we have done little to change. And on top of that the mainstream media does not frame these stories in terms of climate change or being caused by the actions we have taken and are taking now, but instead just passes them off as loosely connected extreme weather events. This is pure deception and an outrage because these media corporations know the science and have the power, but because a big chunk of their investors and advertising comes from "dirty" fossil fuel money; they have to be careful and are scared of losing money!

There are places in this book that discusses the idea of what kind of change is needed the most, either systematic level change or individual level change, and the answer is both! There is a lot to be said to corporations like big oil in the 1970s that had the ingenious idea of selling the idea that each indivdual has a carbon footprint that they need to watch, deflecting the blame from the corporations that do much more damage than any individual can. In addition, the Coca-Cola corporation sold the public on the idea on plastic bottles that could be recycled in the late 1970s. This was sometime after the mid-1960s when Coca-Cola stopped collecting their glass bottles to be washed and reused that required them to hire additional staff and use machines to wash the bottles (but was of course better for the environment) in the interest of their bottom line. Many people know these days the ugly truth about recycling, especially plastic recycling, that only 10% or less of plastic is actually recycled and is often sent to poor third-world countries piling up on their coasts and waterways. It was only about fifty years ago that society was one that got milk, soda, and many other things in glass bottles that were collected and reused. We need to go back to this circular type of system.

There are things that citizens of the Global North (especially in the US) that we need to be aware of:

Consumerism: Most of us have way too much stuff! We are constantly buying new clothes, cars, and things to make ourselves feel better or to keep up with our peers around us. We need to stop and really ask ourselves if we need the thing before we buy it, especially clothes. Fast fashion is creating whole towns and slums built around the piles of that show up and are dumped in third-world countries from the US and Europe. No one should need to buy a whole new wardrobe every three months! We need to get away from this idea that we always have to buy the newest things or buy something just because we like it. There are many areas to blame for this: the widespread of advertising that shows up in every corner of our lives, influencers and celebrities telling us what we need to buy to look like them or be as cool as them.

Consumerism is actually a mask for often the deeper issue of a lack of connection with others and those around us, lack of spirituality, or feelings about having a sense of purpose in one's life; thus, leading us to buy more to try to fill those inner deficits as individuals and as a society. By making changes to be more sustainable we would actually be creating deeper connections with nature and others, valuing experiences and time with others more than feeling the need to buy stuff.

Relationship with Nature: This starts in our yards if you have one. We need to get away from the mindset, especially in the US, that our yards need to be always green soft grass, free of any weeds, and well manicured because nature is not like that. We certainly do not need to be wasting water, a precious resource, on watering our lawns during dry times to keep our grass green because grass doesn't really have any benefits. We certainly do not need to be putting chemicals and herbicides on our lawns that can easily seep into the ground and get into our water, not to mention can be harmful to insects, birds, and animal life. We need to realize that a lot of what we consider weeds are actually native plants or wildflowers that are enomoursly beneficial to the ground and pollinators that we rely on for our continued existence as humans on earth. We need to invite nature and biodiversity into our yards and explore and understand the vast benefits that this can bring to us and the environment.

Educate Yourself: Not an easy task because by educating yourself, your eyes will be open to the utter devastation that is being done on this planet. This is mainly due to human activity and choice that scientists have known about for a long time and corporations, and politicians have also known about for a long time and have done nothing. It will show you how in many cases the life you are currently living now is one that is not in line with the actions that we need to take now to mitigate the effects of this emergency as much as we can.

Worldwide the goal is to keep the planet at rising no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, but we have already used up 67% of our carbon allocated to keep it at that and to avoid the worst effects from climate change. As many know, the world is not anywhere close to being able to reach this goal as the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere is continuing to rise despite the fact that we need to completely stop using fossil fuels right now, this very second! At this rate, many scientists think that by the end of this century or by 2100 that the earth's temperature will rise by 3.0 degrees Celsius. The effects of that on biodiversity, weather, and human beings will be extreme!

I am not trying to strike doom and gloom here, but as Greta Thurnberg makes the case for in her book that by knowing all of this and realizing this is an emergency, then we have to act and do whatever we can to stop even a rise of a tenth of a degree because even that will make a big difference!

So with that being said, here are some readings that I would recommend:

• Greta Thurnberg (2022) The Climate Book

• Ben Rawlence (2022) The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth

• Richard Powers (2018) The Overstory - fiction, but a powerful environmental novel

Let's do what we can and start acting like we are in an emergency because we are in one!