Archive for the ‘global warming’ tag
The Life-Changing Blog Entry
Hello. Welcome to my life-changing experience blog entry. Be prepared. You may decide to kick a bad habit in the next five minutes. Are you ready? Are you up to the challenge? Then go for it. Read the first two parts and watch the YouTube video. Let me know how it works out. Read the rest of this entry »
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If you like this then please subscribe to the I am afraid for our planet, the way I was afraid for my dad
During the three years my dad lived with incurable cancer, I tried not to wallow in fear. But shielding myself by living in denial wasn’t an option. Dad needed me to find clinical trials, look for new treatments, talk to doctors–anything to try to keep him alive. I spent hours and hours on the computer, trying to find something that would give my family hope.
It was hard to keep trying. Because I knew all along that he wasn’t going to make it, no matter what I did. Just three weeks after he was diagnosed, I found a retrospective study that showed that no one, not one person in all the case records they had found, had survived this cancer more than five years.
Sometimes, I would find myself drifting away from the hard reality. Hey, let’s not think about it. Forget the cancer newsgroups tonight. Don’t bother with checking clinicaltrials.gov. But then that tight lump of fear in my chest would return.
My dad’s been gone for a long while now. When my dad died, I was very sad, but I was also relieved. He wasn’t suffering any longer. And I no longer had that lump of fear.
But now the fear is back. James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis, says there will be less than a billion people on Earth in 90 year’s time. Wildlife and whole ecosystems will vanish… Polar ice is melting faster than scientists had anticipated. Polar bears are drowning. The glaciers on Mt. Kilimanjaro are disappearing. That will mean drought and death for the elephant orphans I love so much in Tsavo National Park.
It’s like coping with incurable cancer. The years ahead will be ones of pain, loss, and sorrow. Each animal extinction will be a death knell for me. The large mammals will go first. Polar bears, penguins, tigers, gorillas… Then birds, amphibians, whales, fish, coral reefs. And trees! We will lose so many beautiful trees.
Are you afraid of global warming? Please leave me a note. They say there’s strength in numbers…
I also have a request for global warming naysayers who may read this: Please do me a favor and surf on by. Or discover what thousands of Nobel Peace Prize winning-scientists have to say on the subject: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Dear World Leaders: We are ready to save the climate!
Last Saturday, I attended a Greenpeace action. 21 cities across the country came together to send a message to the UN climate delegation that’s currently meeting in Poznan, Poland. Well, the message was loud and clear: Americans are ready to stand up and demand strong leadership for science-based climate solutions here at home AND overseas!
Only about 50 people came to the event in Boston. Here’s a link to some photos from a few of the events.
http://members.greenpeace.org/go/redirect/552
Check out photo 11, the one where the security guards at Fanueil Hall made us take down the banner.
Be an optimist! Go Veg!
People often ask me why I’m a vegan. Kind of in the same way someone might ask you why you raise pet tarantulas. In the past, they were expecting to hear either than I was a health nut or an animal nut. For me, actually, it’s a personal decision. Like Bartleby the Scrivener, my reply is: “I prefer not to.”
But now, it turns out that eating vegan is the new equivalent of driving a Prius. Animal agriculture is responsible for eighteen percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. And the decision to unhook from one of our strongest cultural moorings and sail off into uncharted territory by turning to a plant-based diet becomes an act of wild optimism. We vegans are showing than man can evolve. By treading lightly, we can lead the way back to the Garden of Eden.
For an inspiring blog post on this subjects, see: Common Ground Magazine
The BALLE conference
The BALLE conference was this weekend. BALLE is the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. Last year it was in Berkeley. This year was Boston’s turn. BALLE is cool. It’s not just a bunch of people who care about the planet getting together. It’s a bunch of business owners. It’s not about talk. It’s about action. It’s about food security, green jobs, and creating community. And it’s about climate change.
Bill McKibben was one of the keynote speakers. His new website: 350.org is all about getting global CO2 levels back down to 350 ppm (they are currently at 387 ppm, up from 278 ppm in pre-industrial times.) My key takeaway from his speech was that, as business owners, we need to do more than simply try to reduce our carbon footprint. We need to leverage the power of the business community to affect public policy on the environment.