Distractions from Climate Change-Observations

 Imagine there’s one issue that most people should be focused on and trying to help, but there are other things going on in society in the world that take energy away from that cause. Let’s say that cause is climate change. Let’s say some of the distractions are politics, crime, financial issues, and other concerns that may be a result of those issues. Every day people are presented with news often of which is very tragic and consuming. Take for example mass shootings. All the concerns with guns and automatic weapons, long rifles, and proliferation of major shootings can be very  traumatic and time-consuming for millions of people —even people not directly affected by an incident. Because of these concerns, the energy that millions of activists,  other people are directing towards this is time and energy taken away from what could be a much bigger picture the condition of earth in the very near future the point being societies would need to be able to solve. These issues were which are really much more in their domain, much more in their control to solve than climate change, more energy ,more people,  more time , more effort could be dedicated to mitigating climate change.

Before we assign too much responsibility on individuals and society, we really need to consider the role of governments throughout the world. These governments first must be the entities to lead the way to help find ways to legislate towards the goal. With rare exception, these governments are failing. Notably in the Scandinavian countries, there seems to be more progression and more care within the governments to implement changes, to mitigate to help slow the deadly effects of climate change.

Shoreline Relocation Mitigation: an Observation

 One can’t help, but wonder if enough is being done now to plan for onshore, or near shore relocation of homes and businesses. It’s understood that some people don’t want to discuss this subject, especially perhaps people in real estate businesses people that feel like they would be economically sacrificed or harmed by discussions such as what are we going to do about all these houses and businesses that are right on the shore when there’s evidence that in 20 years or maybe less, maybe a little more, the ocean will move in further, and these homes will be at risk. During recent hurricanes, we’ve already seen homes basically falling into the ocean, and we haven’t even begun to see the extreme serious effects of rising oceans. Since flood could be considered to be more of a concern than wind, some building owners have redesigned their homes to lift them up to be able to withstand significant flooding. People who choose to remain on the beach, should consider such measures. But one day even those measures may not work and so hopefully engineers, architects, civil authorities -  others, are thinking about the future and thinking about what could very likely happen. Where will these these dwellings and other buildings be relocated. Even if these efforts were to begin, imagine the time it takes to plan and orchestrate, and to fulfill such a massive project. The effects of climate change are already occurring, especially in some developing and third world countries. 

Burning Residential Trash-An Observation

 I noticed there are some people who like to burn straw and leaves residential yard debris even when they have a local service that will pick it up on a by monthly or every other week basis. Even in locations, where a pick up service offered by the town or the county or the state it’s not available we still need to find ways to dispose of yard debris, and to minimize burning in our cities and towns and country sides. 

One solution could be a network where people who need straw and leaves who live in areas where there are not as many trees, but they still need mulch or they need the cover of straw leaves on their property who could pick up this debris free of charge and therefore the resident will not have to burn the debris. So this effort or this solution is tied to communication and building networks in which people can convey quickly what they have and what others could want that would help the environment.

There are so many things so many projects that we can do and continue to build so that the burden of solving or slowing climate change does not rest completely on corporations, large nonprofits and major entities who are working in this effort. We need to bring individuals into this mix and by the millions and millions so that hopefully soon it will be intertwined in our daily lives and we all understand without having to say climate change what it is we’re doing and the reason why. 

A Carbon Footprint-Observations

 No telling what you will be calling it 50 years from now, but here in 2022 we still refer to our impact on the environment as far as all climate change is concerned as a carbon footprint. It seems inevitable that over time the importance of each individuals carbon footprint will be even more important, and that there would be ways to track everybody’s footprint with more precision than is done today. if it’s only fair that I share my own disclaimer, I’m not some perfect person making a blog about climate change who is free of the footprint.

 Currently , in November 2022 I own two  gas operated cars  I don’t drive them very much hmmmm but I do have those. I ordered an electric vehicle almost 4 years ago , the president of that company is behind on production and is also involved in other extremely large projects. I’m not sure how much this affects the production of the vehicle that I ordered but I’m patiently waiting and if that one doesn’t come through I may have to order a different one. 

I own my home and I do not use gas of any type not even natural gas it’s all electric. I live under a forest of trees and sort of in the woods but it’s in the city and it’s not really conducive for me right now to put solar panels on my roof but it is something I thought about and would be interested in utilizing solar power  as it becomes more available to residents and the technology improves.

I have a little greenhouse and I have little garden, on my property. I’m very into planting herbs and vegetables. I have quite a few herbs and I plant trees on my property as well. I try to plant trees that can yield fruit you know, and also provide shade and be helpful to my neighborhood and the environment. I try to daily to consider my impact on the environment in any way that might be detrimental to the greenhouse, gases are fossil fuels, or carbon pollution. 

I believe the more individuals, the more people that we can get to be conscious of their footprint that we can continue to make more progress on slowing of the damages that are being caused by climate change. I noticed there is progress being made with electric vehicles in particular, the US Postal Service united parcel service are, have actually put electric vehicles in their fleet. All these still have a ways to go. I believe the US Postal Service is in about 50% electric across the country and I believe that governments and large companies need to continue to set an example for making the switch to cleaner vehicles and processes. 

Carbon footprint is something that I will be bringing up frequently and hope to maybe in some way contribute to tracking individual and entity carbon footprints as others are doing and to utilize it in a way that will be a positive for the environment.

Climate Activists/Observations

 By 2022 climate activism was in full swing, but probably still far off the mark that it needed to be to make really quick and significant change. A young Swedish girl named Greta has gained a lot of attention, and her actions and her stance on climate change, including organizing other school students across the world and strikes, and other forms of peaceful  demonstrations, to attract attention to the issue. This type of activism seems on the right track and pointing to the fact that it’s a young person, and a very young person, and that many of these young people do not feel, do not think that adults, that enough adults are stepping up to address the urgency that these young people see. Other forms of climate activism do not seem to be as affective, for example, throwing food or paint on famous paintings while it does garner some attention it’s not clear how this is going to affect change, or to bring more people around to understanding the emergency of climate change, and therefore of reassessing their own positions on the subject, and perhaps helping to solve the problems.

It’s clear there needs to be a lot more activism on broader scales, more participation by schools and students more freedom of expression on that subject to bring even greater attention to it and perhaps affect quicker change. 

It almost seems like an impossible task to convince oil producing countries , coal producing countries to change the way they produce energy. Unless their pocket books are suffered it doesn’t seem like they will be motivated to make change or any significant change. There’s still a lot to be done and the question that remains is will it be?

Climate Conferences, an Observation

 There was just a climate conference in Egypt COP 27. I didn’t go, but I’ve got some information about what happened. There was a big push for developed countries, rich countries, to help financially, developing countries with their battles against climate change. One example was Pakistan who recently suffered historic, very historic flooding and devastation. There was some sort of agreement, but the people who were fighting for it had to put up a very ferocious fight to get some commitment to compensation for these developing countries. It’s been reported that China who as no surprise is the biggest emitter of poisons that are destroying the planet, shied away from committing to very much including committing to helping developing nations. Arab oil producing countries did not do very well at the conference either and this has been understood in previous postings here and basically almost common knowledge throughout this whole area of interest countries that have great reliability on oil are still putting up a big fight, though diplomatically, against stopping their productions.The United States is the second worst country for climate pollution, and the commitments made by the USA are still short of what’s needed. Climate envoy John Kerry, it is said, left the conference believing there was progress, while some others believe we should just prepare for the inevitable for the temperature of the earth to rise for sea levels to rise for more catastrophic weather events, and primarily the worst flooding around the world. It can be fairly said that there was not enough commitment at the COP 27 conference and ever since the very beginning of the Paris Accordord, the Paris Agreement not enough progress has been made to truly feel confident that global warming, that climate change will be controlled and harnessed to the point that it will minimize catastrophic damage to earth. it would only follow that if organizations and on boys and politicians and professionals whom the public around the world rely on to represent them, and these negotiations, that the solution may lie with the people themselves in mass to come together, and to insist that there be significant agreements, significant changes made regarding the emissions of coal,natural gas, fossil fuels, things that are causing great harm to the planet.

Klimatechange.com_Observations of Care

 During this time, during this critical opportunity to change the world for the better we had to consider how do we get each other, how do we get people to care enough for people in the future for people who will live on this planet when we are gone how do we do that? 

The easiest most obvious way is to point out to grandparents and parents and other older people are people with younger relatives especially like say grandparents with grandchildren all right you know you’re going to be gone your child’s going be here. They’re going to have children their children are going to have children—do you care enough about the planet and the condition it’s left in for your offspring to recognize the signals that we’re getting now about our planet changing due to fossil fuels another human generated activity that is causing harm to the planet and doesn’t have to because we can use other forms of energy? 

So this turns back to the point that the big things that we wanted to that we want politicians and leaders to do can’t really successfully be done without the small people without the every day people and important individuals and organizations to get across to everyone possible that we do need to look much closer at future humanity, and what we’re leaving behind .

This subject, I will give a lot more thought and respond.