Everybody Talks About The Weather, But Nobody Does Anything About It
– By Ed Kociela –
We’re barely into summer, yet it seems like we are all suffering from the blistering heat, the kind that steals your breath, depletes your energy, melts your face.
Growing up in the Midwest, I can remember hot summers. St. Louis has always turned into this sweltering, humid, sticky place in the summer, so much so that our pickup baseball games or bike riding expeditions were called every day around noon so we could go inside, recoup in front of a cool breeze, and rehydrate before going back out again to hang with our friends. We didn’t have air conditioning, just fans placed strategically to ensure a good flow of moving air.
It was hot, it was humid, it was uncomfortable.
Now, it is growing increasingly dangerous not only in St. Louis, but here, there, and everywhere.
The furnace blast heat, expanding drought, and thick air, threatens our well-being. Kids and the elderly are being cautioned to limit their activities. Those in between are told to be sensible, which means work hours are often shifted to give those working outdoors an earlier quit time to get them off the job as the mercury rises.
It’s climate change, which, is one of those road markers along the political highway dividing the line between sense and stubbornness. It became part of the political landscape years before a guy in the White House pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement that is, in essence, an attempt to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Most of the world saw the importance of this and, thankfully the U.S. has rejoined to throw its weight behind saving the planet.
You have to be half-past daft to not believe that climate change is real and a genuine threat to our planet.
Higher temps? Check.
More droughts? Check.
Crazier, more unpredictable weather? Check.
Puzzling changes in rain and snow patterns? Check
Shrinking snowpack? Check.
Melting glaciers? Double-check.
There are more indicators, but the result is the same: We are destroying Big Blue each day as she makes her trip around the sun.
There has little that has come from our COVID-19 experience that could be considered positive, to be sure. But, perhaps we have learned one thing and that is how our lifestyles can be changed for the greater good.
During the pandemic, many of us worked from home, leaving the roads and highways uncluttered. Fewer vehicles on the road, means less fossil fuel usage, fewer emissions, less stress, which helps preserve our mental health.
We’re making fewer trips to the store, learning how to shop more sensibly, and not run out several times a day for stuff we could have gathered in one trip.
It may not sound like much, but it is meaningful in the grander scope.
Our power needs pretty much remain the same. You use as much energy pounding a computer at home as you do in an office with the benefit of being able to raid the fridge at lunchtime rather than running out for fast food. Our doctors are using telemedicine techniques more and more to alleviate the swell of people in their offices and, in general, we live much more compact lives even though we are living and experiencing life as part of a global community.
A lot of businesses are learning that it can be profitable to give up the brick and mortar and have workers telecommute. It certainly lowers the overhead and maybe some of those concrete jungles we’ve built can be torn down and replaced with more green space.
It won’t eliminate, of course, all of the emissions and filth pumped into our skies by manufacturing, but it will begin to repair some of the damage that is hastening the existence of mankind by shrinking the ever-growing carbon footprint. Perhaps the lessons we learn on one hand will spill over to the other. Perhaps.
There are still the naysayers, of course, the folks who want to scar the Earth looking for coal, which, in turn, fouls our air. There are alternatives, you know, for renewable energy – from hydro to solar to wind.
But, the politics of the uninformed right will argue there is no such thing as climate change, that renewable energy is a waste of time and energy, and is dangerous, that we have plenty of water and clean air and that it is better to make a buck than to scrub the environment.
I remember once attending an event in the Parowan Valley. From a hilltop, I saw a beautiful vista of open country, thriving wildlife, a snapshot from God’s family album. One of the others attending the event, a local developer, walked to the crest of that hill and caught me in a moment. “That’s the difference between you and me,” he said. “You look out there and see animals and trees and hills and a pretty sky. I see condos and mini-malls and housing developments.” It was the last time I exchanged words with the guy, thankfully.
The thing is it is important at all levels, whether global or in our own backyards because there is little difference anymore. The value in xeriscaping to help conserve water, driving more fuel-efficient vehicles, and reducing our industrial footprint of carbon emissions is equal.
This planet is a delicate balance, at least as far as humans are concerned. We need the various species to thrive to keep that balance, we need to clean our air and not foul our waters, we need to apply science, not politics, to solving our environmental problems.
When the glaciers melt, when the air turns brown, when the water is in short supply, we step ever closer to the day when we exit the planet and allow Mother Nature to heal herself, without the selfish, ignorant humans spoiling her splendor.
The “now” matters, of course.
But, let’s please be aware that the future matters as well, that we need to do some cleanup, that we need to not be so selfish, so arrogant as to think that we can continue to abuse the planet we call home.
A wise newspaperman named Charles Dudley Warner once wrote that “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
It’s time we do something about it.
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