On Climate Change Shaming

               

          If I were to be honest, I would tell you that I am sick to death of hearing about climate change. I was raised to conserve everything, pollute as little as possible, to avoid packaging, and to coexist with the animals and the planet, and so when others, particularly from other nations who know nothing about me or how I live, tell me I must change, it's all I can do not to laugh at the wasteful misguided souls who lecture me.

                 I live on a large acreage farm surrounded by woods. I grow a great deal of our own food, our own eggs and our own chickens. We coexist with the animals here which include turkeys, bears, fox, raccoons, poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, coyotes, squirrels, and opossum. We leave the farm about once weekly and lump all our trips into one to conserve resources, and because we don't wish to be away too long from our rescue horses, sheep, alpacas, dogs, cats, and all manner of poultry. We are essentially organic here. There is one intervention we allow, and that's rabies immunizations for all the animals who are mammals, because rabies in such rural places in the US is endemic.  I own other farms, and they are managed organically as well.

               I haven't boarded a plane in about seven years. I drive proficiently, but as little as possible. I work hard to impact the planet as little as possible, basically because a lot of the American Indian values made sense to me, and because one of my parents hailed from post war Europe, and the other went to college there for an extended period. They weren't known to waste much either.

                 The fact is that if you build a home below sea level, as in New Orleans or in Bangladesh, that cataclysmic flooding will occur.   If your government steals the aid freely given by other nations and misappropriates a small fraction of the remainder, then starvation will result.  There will be periodic glacial melting, and then reforming of Antarctic glaciers. There will be some degree of climate change as the Earth ages and moves on. There will be cataclysmic disasters. Why? Because there have been before.

                  More than seventy percent of the Earth consists of oceans. Does it really make sense to you that actions of people who reside on less than 30% of the planet are changing the environment ?  I lean more toward the idea that the planet will gradually change. It will heat and it will cool whether we stop driving cars or manufacturing anything at all.   Before you tell me that I am hopelessly out of touch, let me tell you that I hold a degree in Environmental Studies, and I am not yet convinced that anything we do to change the gradual progressions of our planet can do anything at all.

              So I will continue with my low impact activities here on Earth. You continue with your obsession with electronics, addiction to Starbucks, letting social media think for you, and shaming those who don't look, speak or think exactly as you do.  Chances are, we will both live until we both die, and we will do so, on the planet's time.