I am both a cyclist and a driver. But much more than that, I am a father in the age of climate crisis.
Fiona. Ian. Derecho. Floods. Fires. Famine. It’s almost back to back, but we’re doing next to nothing about it. Can we face the elephant in the room and prevent runaway climate change, collapse? Can we pause for a moment and reconsider our obsolete, short-sighted, rat-race lifestyles?
“We fly where we want. We drive where we want. We eat what we want. We buy what we want. That’s what’s driving growth. That’s what’s leading us to ecological & societal collapse. Thats what needs to change.” — ClimateDad
Do I love my car more than my kids? Not in a million years. We need to get most cars off the road to make way for real, people-centered community. When parents drive their kids to hockey practice, is it love? Or is it killing them?
The only way to survive the climate behemoth is much more radical change than most of us have even begun to think about.
Out of necessity I too drive when I must, in these crazy, suicidal times. But my heart sinks every time I turn the key. I’d love to park my car, share it, recycle it — anything but private car ownership for each of us.
Nobody knows for sure when we will cross the tipping points to runaway, unstoppable climate collapse. It’s not looking good. Those of us who choose not to drive might just be saving your kids lives.
But we can’t do it without you. It’s easy to be cynical… just a little bit harder to truly be alive. Besides, survival is so much more fun.
Let’s rebuild our lives, our world that the car has done so much to destroy!
“The extreme flooding in B.C. is unusual. In the future, it won’t be.” – CBC News
Anger, is what I feel.
Anger, and also compassion. Because the people who are fanning the flames of the #climate crisis, with greed and blind materialism, are ultimately hurting themselves as well as everyone else. We’re all in this together.
I’m watching the devastating floods unfold on CBC. Just seconds later — multiple, aggressive ads, pushing huge, belching trucks to whomever will buy. At the same moment we have both the destruction, and the cause. Thoughtless, selfish, socially acceptable greed.
In each ad the shiny new pickups are shown destroying nature, each in a unique fashion. One has driven out to a caribou herd. Another is tearing up the ground, just for the fun of it. In the third, believe it or not, an idling truck roars so loudly that it destroys a snowman. A spitting image of exactly what we’re doing to the climate — too crazy but true.
The farmers and tradespeople who actually need trucks already have them, and are not the target of these ads. But the ads function as intended. Profiteering corporations pay tens of thousands of dollars to seduce their targets — many good people, our neighbours and friends. Through climate everyone is the victim.
Is this the world we want? Is this the best we can do?
What’s happening in BC is just the beginning — it’s up to us just how bad it will get. Our choices, our priorities, our actions or inaction. Lifestyles that once were okay, becoming nothing less than murder.
The ads themselves are criminal, should the law treat them as such? Or better yet, increase carbon taxes so high that such behaviour would be untenable?
We live in a society where we are ruled more by old habits and norms, than by using our brains. We’re more worried about doing what’s ‘cool’, than doing the right thing. That has to change, or we will perish.
Every day I see well-meaning people obliviously idling their cars. In parking garages, I see moms idling SUV’s with kids in the back, hatches wide open, slowly loading or unloading. Meanwhile, millions of us overheat our homes and workplaces, rather than dressing properly for winter.
What can you do about climate change?
There’s no longer any excuse.
There’s nobody to blame but ourselves.
We need to stop pointing fingers, pull together and act.
Or… don’t complain when storms, food shortages and even war, kill us and our children.
Will you be part of the change, the action, the work that needs to be done?
In our time — the anthropocene — how many of us are doing what really matters? How will history remember you, me, all the others who denied or despaired? Bilbo & Frodo didn’t run away from what needed to be done, or sit around and blame everyone else. Models of action, against all odds — exactly what we need today. Shall we rise to the challenge?
“I share this photo every spring, of a Scarlet Tanager pair that I found on the ground by a neighbor’s glass door. It was spring, and he must have been chasing her (she’s the one with yellow plumage). They both hit the glass and died instantly.
“I thought about the long journey these stunning neotropical migrants had made from their wintering grounds in South America, and all the challenges they’d overcome to return to their breeding grounds here in upstate NY. It just seemed heartbreaking and senseless for them to die this way.
Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace and togetherness. For many it’s a happy, joyous time of year. But it’s also a time when we drive around madly, feeling obliged to shop for everyone on our list. Each year we also use millions of plastic bags, throw out tonnes of packaging and food, and try to buy just about everything in sight.
Is this good for us? Our children? Are there better ways to show our love for each other and the world?
This was a healthy tree. And behind it? That was an apartment building.
True, you can’t prove that this specific tornado was caused by climate change. But there’s an abundance of evidence that climate change is causing more frequent and severe extreme weather events — and that climate change is caused primarily by humans. So while we can’t prove this tornado was entirely caused by climate change, the chances are pretty good it would have been less powerful or occurred somewhere else. 1600 homes damaged or destroyed. So the next time you hop on an airplane, or choose fossil fuels over solar or pedal power: think again. What are you doing to your neighbours, your children, maybe even yourself? This is what climate change looks like. We all need to kick the fossil-fuel habit as best we can!
“A study has detected microplastics in human excrement for the first time, raising larger questions about how the tiny particles can affect our health.” – EcoWatch | “We’re eating plastic without even realising it.” – Huffington Post | “We are eating our waste — mismanagement has come back to us on our dinner plates” – Chelsea Rochman.
Top 5 plastic polluters: Nestlé, Tim Hortons, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Coca-Cola (Greenpeace | CBC)
The environment is not something “out there”. We become the chemicals we eat, we drink, we breath. There’s no separation. It’s time to stop single use plastics!
PeterBlanchard.ca 
