A Climate Rant

The holidays have come and gone. I am nearing overdue for my next post, so here we go.

Recently I have wanted to write about my growing sense of dread, particularly as it relates to the climate crisis. Unfortunately, it’s not a very fun topic, and I have struggled to produce words that I feel adequately represent my thoughts and feelings, so the going has been rough.

While I don’t know how to truly express my feelings, I do know some things: I know that concerns about the state of the environment continue to dominate my thoughts. I know that I’m not always concerned, but am reminded of my concerns daily. Recently the weather has been rambunctious, swinging from a ten-below windchill to 69 degrees Fahrenheit in something like 36 hours. While I have seen my fair share of crazy midwest weather, this example and others like it have me on edge.

What has been tengentially bothering me is my family’s, friend’s, and peer’s general lack of motivation or concern about our changing climate. Some have concern, and some don’t. Even the ones that do seem to sometimes just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ when I bring it up. Why do so few seem to truly understand that everything we do today does not matter if there is no tomorrow? If we let our world continue to die, not only will biological life be affected, but everything about our existence. Rapidly, the crisis will begin to change things so much that a power struggle will ensue, and life will never be the same for anyone after that moment.

Positively, what I am saying is that I do believe our climate catastrophe will bring about the end of human society – and startlingly soon – if we continue to do nothing. I understand that many readers may recoil at that stance, and think I am a doomsayer. If the shoe fits, I suppose. We seem to think our world can continue in its consumptive and capitalistic manner and the issue will just go away if we eat enough Impossible Meat or subsidize some solar farms. Or perhaps just too many people don’t care, and see no point in caring. Whatever the reason, my greatest growing fear is that our want to bury our collective heads in the sand will delay real action until it is far too late.

As I’ve been writing this, I have several times created a section to discuss something like “What can I/we do?”, and every time, I find myself running out of gas. Sure, there are things I could probably do to minimize my carbon footprint a little more. But the reality is that this strategy probably just won’t work. It’s not my carbon footprint that is the problem. It’s industrial scale production, in just about any line of work, that is the cause. We, collectively as consumers and as propagators of the polluters, contribute to the crisis each and every day, and frankly I don’t think many of us want to stop enough to actually have an impact.

And this is where my sad and somber post will end. I have drug my feet on writing this because I want to wrap my sour content in something sweet. I wanted to work my way toward some kind of hopeful conclusion. That, however, would be contrary to the mission of my own blog – to remaining as authentic as possible. These are my feelings, and I need to try to share them as truly and honestly as I can.

I hope to come back to this topic in the future when I’ve had more time to consider what things I can do to ensure tomorrow remains.

Cheers, lol.