Skip to main content

It's a Silly Time to learn to swim when you start to Drown

It's a silly time to learn to swim on the way down

Well why am I quoting this fabulous Tegan and Sarah song? It came on during my morning commute and it had me thinking- yeah! I bet a lot of society feels the same way about climate change.
It is beyond me how people can deny that climate change exists- or say they 'don't believe in it'. It's not a religion, cult movement, theoretical ideal or ideas spun by your average street-corner crazy. It is a scientifically documented, million researcher strong, thousands of pages-per-volume fact.

But- it would be so much easier to get by day to day if you didn't feel like the world around you was closing in and smothering you. We don't know how to swim through all this information- and with the policy makers in their later years, they have some trouble understanding what to do and think if they just ignore it, deny it, or drag their feet they can just tread water instead of swimming forward.

I totally see how that gets overwhelming. But that just looks like opportunity to me! Let's start moving politicians into skimpy bikinis and begin some synchronized swimming.
This environmental movement is a political advantage, a job creator and a way to pull communities together. We need to stop thinking that when we throw something into the trash it just goes away and doesn't affect anyone else. We need to realize that we depend on each other, and the efforts of each other for our health and well-being.

If Gaia theory is correct (the idea that earth is one big living organism) and I believe it is, let's give her more reasons to want to keep us here than purge us out via rising sea levels, melting ice caps, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes and disease. Let's start proving that we can do good here, and fix the hurt we've started. If we don't, we're drowning ourselves really. And you don't have to believe in that to fall victim to it.
Labels:

Comments

  1. DeaneMay 26, 2011 at 5:02 AM

    Great points Casey! We all need to start learning how to swim in the "deep end." Seems like you are the swimming teacher at the Willow School. It would be great to hear student voices and get them involved in blogging about their hopes and fears for the future.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eating Garbage

Garbage is Beautiful. And let me tell you why. In 2010, the EPA estimated the US produced over 240 million tons of municipal solid waste. That is over four pounds of garbage, per person, per day. We travel through our day throwing things ‘away’. But where do they go? Does your trash go to a landfill, incinerator, or Waste to Energy Plant? Currently in NJ, thirteen counties have solid waste landfills and five counties have resource recovery facilities (incinerators). Of the five counties with resource recovery facilities, three also have landfills to receive waste that cannot be burnt. Eight counties have awarded waste disposal contracts and require that all waste be sent to one facility for disposal. The remaining thirteen counties have a free market system and transporters may send waste out of the county or state. The majority of us don’t know information like this, and don’t care as long as we don’t have to look at it. But if we were forced to look at the garb...
Post a Comment
Read more

Covid, baby

Working in the sustainability field has been turned on its head during the Coronavirus pandemic. I went on a short hiatus to become a Mom (Elliott was born in March of 2020 only a few days before lockdown in NJ), and when I resurfaced, our approach needed to be different, here are some examples: Typically, the balance between ample fresh air within a building and energy use would result in driving the building toward lower energy use. Now, the ability to increase the outdoor air is desirable and is carrying more importance as a design consideration. We almost always pursued green cleaning operations and maintenance plans with our projects, however the Green Seal certified (or other healthy for people) cleaning products do not disinfect to the level desired for Covid- forcing teams to decide between abandoning their healthy cleaning policies and safety. Everything is packaged and sealed, and wrapped again. Cafes stopped allowing refillable coffee cups, towns that had plastic ba...
Post a Comment
Read more

Breaking News- Renewable Energy can STILL power our planet!

Yesterday, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an exciting report about the potential of Renewables and the world energy market. Over 120 world experts produced a scientific document over 1,000 pages long that provides a solution to 'business as usual' carbon emissions. They believe that we could meet the globe's energy needs with 80% renewable energies by mid-century . This would be a socially, politically, and physically strenuous task. If we eliminate all the complications and shift our paradigm, we still have issues like that which Ramon Pichs, Co-Chair of the Working Group III, added: “The report shows that it is not the availability of the resource, but the public policies that will either expand or constrain renewable energy development over the coming decades. Developing countries have an important stake in this future—this is where most of the 1.4 billion people without access to electricity live yet also where some of the best conditi...
Post a Comment
Read more