This is what climate change looks like, American style. But it’s the same or worse, around the world.
Record breaking storms and heat waves. Millions and millions are struggling. Yet in this in-depth coverage, there is not one mention of climate change. Why not — let’s blame the electricity utility…
Are we awake, alive? Do our lives matter? Or maybe even… our kids? Or do cars and corporations matter more? Would you let billions perish as a result of thoughtless driving back and forth, belching climate chaos? Will you act as if your life matters?
Or do you prefer extreme weather, food shortages, housing crisis, war?
Please think about this and rise to the challenge! Do what you can, no less, no more. All our lives depend on it. There is so much you can do — if only you wake up, turn off the Neflix, get off your butt, act as if life matters.
I picked up my son from work today, driving my “car”.
Why?
Because the air is so bad that it would be unhealthy to walk or cycle.
Bitter irony. The wildfires — caused by fossil-fool driving, flying, consuming — gave me no choice but to burn more fossil fuels. So I drive, only to cause more wildfires, more climate chaos.
Once in our car, temporarily sealed off from the world, my son says, “it feels like I’m cheating”.
“Everyone is cheating”, I replied. We’ve all been lured into a world where we’ve forgotten how to use our own legs, how to live in our own bodies, our own communities.
Instead we sit on our butts and press the gas pedal.
It’s killing us and our world.
There is a better way, a better life! Are we even looking?
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?
If you care about our children, and haven’t watched this extraordinary 10 minute speech by @Elizabeth May you need to do so right now…
“The good news is we still have a chance to save ourselves. To save the lives of our children, what would we not do? We as homo sapiens, the clever species, the smart ones, have at most 10 to 12 years to ensure that we stop greenhouse gas emissions. We are stepping up. We are going to rescue everybody…” — Elizabeth May | Youtube | Facebook
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