This past week I survived some of the most brutal heat and humidity I will hopefully ever have to endure. I say this not as a rant or as a boast, but as a lament. It never used to be this hot in the summer here, and it’s not just that I haven’t been here for a while. Things are changing rapidly on a global scale, and it scares me.
It seems to me as though we sit back, crank up the air conditioning and wait for the air to clear. This week it did so here in the form of a storm that scared me. But the thing that makes me angry is that we don't change anything. We become shocked that the lights in our kitchens flicker while we are simultaneously running dishwashers, washing machines and fans. We continue to drive across the street in the comfort of a “climate controlled” car as an excuse to "beat the heat".
Until about a year and a half ago I would have considered myself exempt from the "we", as I did my best to convince myself I was somehow above and beyond the abuse of the earth I live in. It wasn't until, much to my dismay, I took a long-winded monotonous series of weekend classes pertaining to Environmental Issues that I woke up to the fact that humans are not being kind to the planet we have no trouble calling home. There is a definite need for us to be aware of our surrounding environment and the ability, power and need we have change, reduce if not eliminate the destructive affect we have upon it.
Ever since that fateful class, I’ve become more hopeful. I’ve grown to be somewhat of a geek about recycling, about buying energy smart light bulbs, and I dream of living in a location that permits me to never own a car, or at very best fork out the dollars for one that is good for the globe, which I would like to be around for my kids to see (the globe more so than the car). But here's the honest truth... I'm not doing so well. I fall short, I get lazy and I drive (thanks to my parents for letting me use their car) instead of walking or biking, I carry a re-usable cloth shopping bag with me which I am never bold enough to pull out while I’m at the till, and sometimes paper ends up in the trash instead of the recycling. But all those things pale in comparison to my flying patterns. I don’t even want to count how many flights I’ve taken in my life, let alone in the past 6 years of my life! I will say that they have left me with one gigantic ecological footprint, one that seems to squash all my recycling efforts, before a single one of those flights even lifts off the tarmac.
So what do I do? I get angry. I feel hopeless and want to give up. But here’s the thing, I’m trying to care more than I do. I looked intot taking the train from Ontario to Winnipeg, MB later this month for my new job, but the cost (in both time and money), of a one-way train ticket was greater than of a plane ticket by almost 4 times in dollars and 12 times in hours! I found this disgusting!
The problem is that we all pay the price; you for my flights, and me for your car exhaust, and all of us for our neighbour’s pollution. I can write this now as the humidity in the air has lifted in the past 48 hours allowing me to breathe again. Sometimes storms help things. But one of these days we will have a storm that won't end with clear air. Hopefully I'll realize before then, that as much as I am a product of my environment, to a relative degree my environment is a product of me.
1 comment:
It's so true. While some consider global warming to be a myth because the earth goes through natural cycles (a valid point) I find it difficult to imagine that we have little or no impact on our environment. Perhaps we aren't causing the earth to warm, but I'm positive that we, with our 'ecological footprint,' are perhaps causing unseen damage that will come back to bite us at some point. Have courage - whip out that cloth shopping bag!
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