One of my friends said that she can’t sleep sometimes, thinking about the possibility of an asteroid strike destroying the planet . It’s a pretty unsettling thought, the idea of earth being gone in one swift moment.
I believe that there’s a fate even worse. The fate of inaction – of watching passively while our earth’s climate turns against us – is the worst I can imagine.
The suffering will be widespread and lingering. Water shortages will plague mountain villages, cities along our coasts will be lost to the ocean. Food will become more scarce as farmland changes to desert. Diseases now relegated to the tropics will spread rampantly as temperatures rise. Displaced people will be forced into mass migration, and where will they go?
That’s what keeps me up at night. A fear, burning in the back of my mind, turning my stomach, making me imagine that my future -our future- has the possibility of being bleak. Very bleak. If you ever thought that environmentalists wanted to stop climate change for the sake of the polar bears, here’s some food for thought: it’s all about us. People. Our happiness, our livelihoods, our very survival. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that you should be scared.
Fear is a powerful emotion. It helps keep us alive. It makes us alert, wary - it makes us run when we need to and fight when we should. Right now, we’ve really got to fight. If the idea of erratic and destructive weather patterns makes you uneasy, please join the fight. If you sweat at the thought of malaria returning to the United States, please join the fight. If it makes your heart pound to imagine New York City under water, please join the fight.
Insulate your homes, eat locally, pressure your representatives to make progress on climate legislation, fly less often, change to energy efficient light bulbs, take public transportation, pressure your representatives, drive an efficient car, don’t drive a car, pressure your representatives, ride your bike, do anything, something, everything.
Please be afraid. And please, when it comes to flight or fight – fight. This is something we can change. Despite all appearances, it is not an unstoppable asteroid. It is inexcusable for us to sit this one out. Let’s do it for the sake of humans. For our own sake.
- Alice H
This is an excellent post. Shout out from the Trebers in Frostburg Alice, by way of me here at Colby.
Thank you! You know the Trebers?