Climate Change: what are we waiting for?

Solomother is participating in Blog Action Day today, and I’ve got a word or two to say about how we’re not dealing with climate change.

How many times have you said to your kid, “If you keep playing with it that way, you’re going to break it, and I’m not going to buy you another one?”

Well? We’re going to break the whole Earth someday soon, and it’s not as though we can just waltz down to our local WalMart to buy another one. This is the only planet we have, and the only life we get. Why are we bothering to have children and struggle so hard to raise them right, only to leave them this craptastic mess to clean up?

I’m not going to bombard you with facts and figures. I’ve read Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. I’ve worked on projects to define the gold standards for green building and community planning in our cities. I’ve seen what places like Portland, Oregon and San Francisco can do to reduce a carbon footprint of millions of people.

But if we’re always waiting for someone else to take care of it, it’s never going to get done, and we’re going to run out of food, air, and water. Climate change is serious and we’re doing it to ourselves.

It’s time to stop waiting and start doing. Walk more, or use public transportation. Switch to alternative fuels, and lobby your cities and states to do likewise. Join boards, volunteer, and pay attention. Hold your representatives responsible, and the factories and corporations in your home towns to a very high standard. And during elections? Listen, ask questions, find their stance on fixing this global mess we’re in. Our representatives don’t represent us anymore, and that has got to change.

We might not be the health care industry, or the Plastics lobby, or the big PR firm, but collectively, we are a force to be reckoned with. We are women. We give life. We nurture life. We should be the stewards of this planet, and hold it in trust for our children.

I don’t get why we’re so apathetic about that. Women have power, and if we band together to use it, we could change the world.