The first blog is the hardest.
This blog is part of a New Years resolution, but also part of a shift inside me. Climate Change is real and it is a huge problem. The change required of us individually and collectively in order to meet the challenge ahead of us is daunting. Daunting enough that Hope must be a requirement in our action plan. I think about our effects on our planet everyday. I think about what this world will look like as I hand it down to my unborn son. We've got to start now. I've got to start now. I decided to write this blog to catalog my thoughts and actions about our environment and how they intersect with my life.
Watching An Inconvenient Truth had a catalyzing effect on me. It opened my eyes to the scope of the problem. I felt frustrated that our society had already know about climate change for quite some time and yet had done almost nothing. It inspired me to the first steps of action and I tried an interesting film combination: Al Gore + Ski Porn = Weather We Change. I made a global warming ski movie and toured it around the Western states. I was helping to spread awareness about the problem, but I was also shocked at how little people knew and cared. I also realized that my lifestyle was part of the problem. OK, everyones lifestyle is part of the problem, but I could start to do something about mine. It was just a start.
A few years have past and much has changed. The world seems to be listening now - people are aware that this is a big problem. Our country seems to be listening now - a call for change has been issued. For a lot of progressives, the election of Obama was very emotional. For the first time in my life, I got emotionally (and financially) involved in a political campaign. Hearing some the the rhetoric that Obama used in his Iowa primary acceptance speech put me firmly onboard. My thoughts were never that this man could save us, but rather that he would at the very least not hinder us.(the environmental movement, or any other logical movement). In following the campaign, I've come to see that Obama also represents empowerment at the personal level. I feel it in me and I want to do my part. I keep reminding myself, and the eminent birth of my son reminds me, that I must be as active as ever in changing the fate of our future.
I feel I must clarify my scope in addressing the worlds problems. Although 'environment' and 'global climate change' and my buttons of choice, I feel that everything is connected, all is one. The same mentality that allows us to pollute our air, also plays a part in wars around the world, economic woes, water uses, agricultural policy, even domestic animal abuse. It all boils down to Compassion - compassion for our earth and all the creatures that inhabit it. I'm sure there are volumes written about this (some I've probably read), but it's something I feel deep inside.
That feeling allows me to carry on even when many signs around are flashing red warnings. I recently saw a great short video posted on GreenTV (I can't find the link outside my podcast subscription) with an English professor lecturing to a group of activists. The speakers main point was that even when optimism wavers, hope is still essential. I see this myself, in Obama, in an upcoming movement around us. The mountains seem insurmountable, but the power is building.
And so, I've created this blog to try to sort though the ideas knocking around in my head, to see my environmental/engineering brain and how it works against and with the forces of desire, family, politics, and the world. I hope for a brighter future for this hand-me-down world.
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