So, I'm writing this to figure out what I'm thinking. Can't remember which writer said that, but I've always found it to be true.
I keep trying to come to grips with Climate Change, but my brain has figured out all kinds of things to stop me from actually thinking about the whole issue of how we've destroyed the world and the fact that the apocalypse is basically here. And before I know it, I'm playing games on my iPad before bedtime instead of trying to figure out how we are going to Save The Earth.
A very long time ago, an Earthlife Africa activist said in a talk about environmental activism, that the first thing you need to do is to get really pissed off. That's a brilliant starting point normally, but there days I find that instead of getting really MAD, I just get really SAD. And I want to start crying about our amazing world and how it might be too late already. And about all the places that I haven't seen. And about all the animals and insects and plants that are going extinct on a daily basis. Maybe even species that we haven't even discovered yet. And that no one will ever make a BBC documentary about.
[People are not really all that amazing. Obviously, there are some people that I'm mighty fond of (my family, some of my friends, Sylvia Earle). But the natural world! All those animals and trees and the fish (I love all the fishes!) and the beetles (I love beetles!) and birds and weird things with snouts and the amazing insects. And I could go on forever. All the things that you share photos of on Facebook -- look at this bird! Can you imagine that it's a thing? Isn't nature amazing? Wow, look at this cool frog! And so on.
Talking about amazing nature -- we have this absolutely magnificent sunflower growing in our garden. It grew from some leftover sprouts that Shannon planted in the pot with the leopard tree. It has taken a while, but it is now huge and the top sunflower has finally opened its face. I am in awe of this sunflower! ]
Anyway....
All I see on my Facebook feed these days is doom and gloom and how close we are to the Climate Breakdown Apocalypse. And it's also the reason why I was staying away from Facebook. It's all just too depressing. Better to watch some shark videos or turtle videos, maybe even some of the pig videos Shannon is so fond of sending me.
But this denial has to end. For all of us. We really are facing the End of the World and time is so very rapidly running out for us to be able to do something about it. It might very well already be too late, but I'm not ready to accept that.
Not many people want to talk about Climate Breakdown, I imagine. Let's rather talk about the weather... Or not! Have you seen what the weather has been up to lately? So much destruction and chaos. Not a safe topic, after all.
Unfortunately, I am still stuck in the denial phase. I cannot quite get my head around the fact that everything can so abruptly change, and that we could all very soon be plunged into a reality that we no longer know and that we might not survive. I think of all the wonderful wild spaces that I see on the nature documentaries -- all the forests and the oceans and the lakes and the mountains, and it all seems so permanent and untouchable. Surely, we cannot destroy all of this?
But then, there are the other documentaries. The ones not narrated by David Attenborough. The ones about the melting of the polar icecaps and the glaciers, the ones about the destruction of the ancient forests, about all the animals that are going extinct. So many things that we will never get to see with our own eyes. So many things that our children's children will never know about. How sad is it to think that the creatures we take for granted, could one day soon be gone FOREVER. There's no coming back from extinction.
I can't look at the list of critically endangered animals without crying. Did you know that most species of gorillas are on that list? Gorillas! We all know gorillas. How amazing are they? And they (our cousins) can die out just like that. Their survival hangs by the thinnest of threads. They are being pushed out of their habitat, displaced by wars, killed by poachers, dying from human diseases. This is just a single example of a very well-known animal. What about all the insects? How do you get anyone to care about an insect if they don't care about gorillas (or tigers, or dolphins, or pangolins)?
Let's leave the endangered animals for now. Back to Climate Breakdown and what we can do about it.
The time for individual action (only) is over. By all means, keep switching off the lights when you leave the room, take the bus if you can, grow your own veggies, clean the beach, refuse plastic, save water, adopt a penguin. Whatever you're doing to Save The Earth, don't stop doing that. But. You cannot just do that. You have to stand up and be counted. You have to make your voice heard loud and clear. You now need to get off your behind and fight with everything you've got for everything you're about to lose.
The science is clear: we are killing the world and we need to fix things pretty damn quick. But to do this, we need The People to tell The Politicians that they need to stop whatever it is that they are doing, and make the laws and enforce the laws to make sure that we no longer send greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It has to happen now. It is an emergency and we need emergency measures to deal with it. We cannot wait and see how it goes, and see if other countries do it first. We need to act immediately, and act like we mean it.
There are solutions to this. We will never get our Earth back to how she was when we started our Industrial Revolution, but we can limit the harm and possibly save ourselves from extinction. We need the political will to make this possible. This, we will not get without a huge fight. We need a revolution, and it has to happen right now.
Are you with me?
I keep trying to come to grips with Climate Change, but my brain has figured out all kinds of things to stop me from actually thinking about the whole issue of how we've destroyed the world and the fact that the apocalypse is basically here. And before I know it, I'm playing games on my iPad before bedtime instead of trying to figure out how we are going to Save The Earth.
A very long time ago, an Earthlife Africa activist said in a talk about environmental activism, that the first thing you need to do is to get really pissed off. That's a brilliant starting point normally, but there days I find that instead of getting really MAD, I just get really SAD. And I want to start crying about our amazing world and how it might be too late already. And about all the places that I haven't seen. And about all the animals and insects and plants that are going extinct on a daily basis. Maybe even species that we haven't even discovered yet. And that no one will ever make a BBC documentary about.
[People are not really all that amazing. Obviously, there are some people that I'm mighty fond of (my family, some of my friends, Sylvia Earle). But the natural world! All those animals and trees and the fish (I love all the fishes!) and the beetles (I love beetles!) and birds and weird things with snouts and the amazing insects. And I could go on forever. All the things that you share photos of on Facebook -- look at this bird! Can you imagine that it's a thing? Isn't nature amazing? Wow, look at this cool frog! And so on.
Talking about amazing nature -- we have this absolutely magnificent sunflower growing in our garden. It grew from some leftover sprouts that Shannon planted in the pot with the leopard tree. It has taken a while, but it is now huge and the top sunflower has finally opened its face. I am in awe of this sunflower! ]
Anyway....
All I see on my Facebook feed these days is doom and gloom and how close we are to the Climate Breakdown Apocalypse. And it's also the reason why I was staying away from Facebook. It's all just too depressing. Better to watch some shark videos or turtle videos, maybe even some of the pig videos Shannon is so fond of sending me.
But this denial has to end. For all of us. We really are facing the End of the World and time is so very rapidly running out for us to be able to do something about it. It might very well already be too late, but I'm not ready to accept that.
Not many people want to talk about Climate Breakdown, I imagine. Let's rather talk about the weather... Or not! Have you seen what the weather has been up to lately? So much destruction and chaos. Not a safe topic, after all.
Unfortunately, I am still stuck in the denial phase. I cannot quite get my head around the fact that everything can so abruptly change, and that we could all very soon be plunged into a reality that we no longer know and that we might not survive. I think of all the wonderful wild spaces that I see on the nature documentaries -- all the forests and the oceans and the lakes and the mountains, and it all seems so permanent and untouchable. Surely, we cannot destroy all of this?
But then, there are the other documentaries. The ones not narrated by David Attenborough. The ones about the melting of the polar icecaps and the glaciers, the ones about the destruction of the ancient forests, about all the animals that are going extinct. So many things that we will never get to see with our own eyes. So many things that our children's children will never know about. How sad is it to think that the creatures we take for granted, could one day soon be gone FOREVER. There's no coming back from extinction.
I can't look at the list of critically endangered animals without crying. Did you know that most species of gorillas are on that list? Gorillas! We all know gorillas. How amazing are they? And they (our cousins) can die out just like that. Their survival hangs by the thinnest of threads. They are being pushed out of their habitat, displaced by wars, killed by poachers, dying from human diseases. This is just a single example of a very well-known animal. What about all the insects? How do you get anyone to care about an insect if they don't care about gorillas (or tigers, or dolphins, or pangolins)?
Let's leave the endangered animals for now. Back to Climate Breakdown and what we can do about it.
The time for individual action (only) is over. By all means, keep switching off the lights when you leave the room, take the bus if you can, grow your own veggies, clean the beach, refuse plastic, save water, adopt a penguin. Whatever you're doing to Save The Earth, don't stop doing that. But. You cannot just do that. You have to stand up and be counted. You have to make your voice heard loud and clear. You now need to get off your behind and fight with everything you've got for everything you're about to lose.
The science is clear: we are killing the world and we need to fix things pretty damn quick. But to do this, we need The People to tell The Politicians that they need to stop whatever it is that they are doing, and make the laws and enforce the laws to make sure that we no longer send greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It has to happen now. It is an emergency and we need emergency measures to deal with it. We cannot wait and see how it goes, and see if other countries do it first. We need to act immediately, and act like we mean it.
There are solutions to this. We will never get our Earth back to how she was when we started our Industrial Revolution, but we can limit the harm and possibly save ourselves from extinction. We need the political will to make this possible. This, we will not get without a huge fight. We need a revolution, and it has to happen right now.
Are you with me?
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