A Piece of my Mind

Global warming. Boom! This is global warming. It is raining today, it was raining yesterday and it is supposed to rain tomorrow. The day before yesterday I was volunteering with Cotati Creek Critters doing understory tree work in eighty degrees of heat and the day before that I was out at Bayer Farm turning over the soil for a new harvest under the blazing sun. What’s wrong with this picture? It is nearly May!

What I don’t understand is how people can deny that global warming is occurring. Why would we be having conferences in Copenhagen if there was no problem? Why would the weather be so unpredictable on a daily basis? I guess some people live in bubbles, while other people simply do not understand. Global warming does not mean that it is going to be ridiculously hot all the time. Global warming is unpredictable weather patterns and strange weather changes, not necessarily hot weather changes. I would say that in the last couple of years the patter of weather has provided good evidence of global warming.

Increasing perception for United States engagement has constantly been the goal amongst the 193 countries wrapped up in ambiguous climate negotiations for the last couple of decades. Conferences, protocols, treaties and endless other amounts of what seems to be official business, have not been so official. Global warming cannot be treated, it can only be helped. The problem is that we are treating global warming like we would other global issues, one that can be fixed. It is not a war or a battle, it is not a matter of trade or economic scale’s. We keep taking precious resources from the Earth that we cannot give back. It is not a fair trade. Everything that was realized at the Copenhagen conference last December was something that scientists and environmental activists have known for decades.

So what now you may ask? Well now that diplomats and government officials are finally on bored with the real problem and recognize it’s different levels of consequences, we can begin to minimize them. Andrew Revkin, journalist for The New York Times and blogger for Dot Earth is right, the United States and other superpowers need to address this just as seriously, if not more, than other countries. It is not like many other cases where we hand off money or aid to poorer, less advanced countries. This problem is distributed equally around the world.

I do not have the answer. I am not sure how we can make significant changes that will decrease the effects of global warming and begin to heal the huge hole we have put in the ozone layer. But I know where we can begin. This is what my blog is about, starting small, at the community level. If we can all became active agents in our communities, doing our part and more to help improve the local land and educate others on what HAS to be done we may begin to see the changes at large. We need to live in a way that less advanced countries have been living like for years, in a less wasteful manner. I think this would be a great start to helping the United States become a more engaged country with the real issue, global warming.

Go help, Go Volunteer, Go Green!