Realpolitik is just one of those facts of life that you learn to accept as you get older…well, maybe not accept, acknowledge I suppose is a better word. If I accept that the struggle against climate change may be futile, perhaps it would be better to just let it go. Most of the effects will likely happen after I am gone. Mass species extinction, rising sea levels, dramatically altered weather patterns leading to drought and starvation – it is probable that all of this really won’t impact me at all. If the statisticians are right, I will die at around 80 or 90, baring some heart attack or accident just around the corner. So whatever happens after 2055 or so is out of my corporeal time line.
But what about my friends who are younger? Those 20 somethings, those teens who are, really, oddly, so remarkable. Most of them will see 2080, when the ocean should be up to about 46th Ave.
And Gabriella, and Amanda? What will they see, when 2090 comes? What will my grandchildren, not yet born see because I accepted something I should not have?
I think I choose rather to acknowledge that some things are horse shit, as my hero of the day Michael Reynolds says in his movie Garbage Warrior. And even if that is the way things are, I can shout into the wind.
So the NY Times depressed the shit out of me on Sunday when it ran a minor headline “Leaders Will Delay Deal on Climate Change” effectively cutting the balls off the Copenhagen talks in 19 days. And I was mad. Pissed. I felt that President Obama had abandoned me, personally. What good was throwing Bush out on his ass and putting in a new congress if we abandon a binding agreement.
Then today new’s analysis “Obama hobbled in fight against global warming” brought realpolitik’s cold water to my face. Even though we have 58 Senators in congress, without 60 to force a quorum and override a filibuster, only jack and a little shit will happen. And only the Senate can ratify a treaty, which is one of the reasons the Kyoto Protocols went right into the trash after Clinton brought them to the Republican Congress. Even with Barbara Boxer and other advocates on our side, the energy just isn’t there. We have jobs hemorrhaging from our economy after 28 years of disastrous Reaganomics. 2 wars, where our soldiers have been badly abused by chicken hawks eager to send other people’s kids off to fight,but scared shitless of going all in with a draft and a war tax. Health Care – where 18,000 people die each year because our health care system serves only corporations, not people.
And I want the Senate to give a fuck about Copenhagen?
So I acknowledge Copenhagen is not going to produce the change we must have. Global CO2 went up by 2 more parts per million from last year. The current number is 384 ppm – and the line by which dramatic climate change is acknowledge to be inevitable is 350 parts per million. I acknowledge this is a body blow to our future as a species.
But I think I will chose not to accept it. So whether it is the car I drive, or the house I live in, or the food my family eats, we can do something, anything, every single day. I will acknowledge that the steps are small, and taken alone probably as insignificant as my ranting here. But the accepting it part can kiss my brown/white ass.
When we think about climate change a.k.a. “global warming” one of the first things we westerners think about is our cars & power plants, and with good reason, since the EPA says “Transportation sources accounted for approximately 29 percent of total U.S. Green House Gas emissions…” Globally cars pump thousands of tons CO2 and other pollutants into the air every day. And of course things like coal fired power plants do nothing good for the environment.
But right behind cars and coal are … trees?
Yeah, trees.
Not the trees themselves, but the cutting and burning of forests to subsidize our consumption. How much, let’s say 80,000 acres a a year.
Here is a video for you, and think about the wood the next time you go to Ikea for furniture, or the Home Depot for your lumber. The next time you see something with wood in it for sale you ask yourself is it worth it? Do you need it?
Sometimes I get so deep into the details of climate change, I forget that not everyone is with me. As we approach Copenhagen, 24 days and counting, there is a basic review of the problem, what causes it, and what it means for us. This is really basic stuff, but also basically correct. Copenhagen is our next best chance to do something about the coming storm, don’t let what happen to the Kyoto Protocols happen with Copenhagen, don’t let them convince you to wallow in apathy and denial.
As a lot of you know one of my pet issues is the effect of our collective style of living on the ocean, specifically the pacific gyre, also know as the great pacific garbage patch. The New York Times had a great article on it yesterday, and though I have written about it before its worth talking about again. What I did not know is that the Pacific Gyre is one of as many as 5 similar zones in the world, where the debris from our daily lives accumulates. Thousands of square miles of plastic floating about in the waves, slowly choking the life out of the sea. I was thinking about the gyre just this past weekend, as it was sunny and beautiful and our new house is only a short walk from Ocean Beach. The girls and I decided to walk down and have a picnic with Jamey’s dad, who was visiting from the Midwest. Sitting there looking out at the waves I decided to do an informal beach combing type survey. I walked up and down a short way from where we set up our camping chairs and towels, and this is what I came up with:
Not that it is anything shocking to find trash on the beach, in fact I guess it would be shocking NOT to find trash on a beach. And let me tell you, Ocean Beach is a relatively clean beach. There are trash cans, volunteers come down frequently, folks pack out their recyclables and other sundries, but still, a short 15 minute walk on a clean beach and I came up with 28 pieces of plastic wrappings, various sizes,a granola bar wrapper, 3 straws, 10 bottle caps, 18 small pieces of hard plastics, & a small plastic tube.
Its not that we’re all a bunch of pigs, it is more I think that the way we have set up our lives it is next to impossible not to come into contact with plastic. And plastic is the number one type of trash finding its way into our oceans. It doesn’t break down, it doesn’t go “away”, it floats and floats, and in its own small way wreaks tremendous devastation; whether it is sea turtles that mistake the plastic bags for jellyfish and starve, their bellies bursting with clear bags; or albatross chicks whose parents skim bits of plastic off the surface of the sea, mistaking them for fish, and feeding their chicks until the starve; or the smaller plankton eating fish, who start the food cycle, who eat and are eaten until all that plastic, all those chemicals with their unpronounceable ingredients of pheno-bi-ethanol-petro-whatever end up in…us.
I try and use less plastic, but it is so very hard. The manufacturers of the world have decried that “plastic is the future”, and even if I bring my own shopping bags, wrap up sandwiches in wax paper, use re-usable (Plastic) containers for the kids lunches, I really feel I am battling against the tides. Guess it’s time to change the tides.
So what if you use one plastic bag for your evening broccoli. Or drink one bottle of water today. What does it really matter? Or if everyone on in your family does. Your block. Your neighborhood. Your state. Your country. Your world.
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