Earth Protect Blog

by Jonathan Harrington

With each passing day, and despite or current economic problems, the warming of our one and only planet continues unabated. Everyone is talking about it: major news organizations, Hollywood elites, congressmen and members of parliament, presidents and prime ministers have finally joined the chorus of experts and activists who have long worried about this global threat. Concerned citizens, from the concrete canyons of Shanghai to the arid flatlands of Alice Springs, Australia are also fast coming to the realization that something is just not right with our planet’s climate. Weird weather patterns are popping up everywhere. The frequency and intensity of hurricanes is increasing.

The winter/spring of 2006–2007 was no exception. In January 2007, thousands shed their winter gear and flocked to New York City’s Central Park, where temperatures soared above 70oF (21oC). A few days later, the city was blanketed with snow. Australian farmers in the Murray-Darling River Basin, home to 40 percent of the country’s total agricultural output, faced catastrophic losses due to severe water shortages brought about by years of drought. Thousands of Arctic residents now watch helplessly as their homes sink into the ground because the permafrost on which they are built is slowly melt away.

But if the threat is so serious, why isn’t much actually being done to meet this challenge to our futures? One of the main reasons is that many of us convince ourselves that it is not our problem or our responsibility to fix. There are many culprits behind the global warming mess. But do you know who is most at fault? Clearly, we the consumers of North America and Europe have a heavy burden to bear for both the current and historical greenhouse gas emissions that are now destroying our environment and endangering our future. And today, every time we jump into our cars, turn on a light, take an airplane trip or buy a new pair of synthetic rubber soled running shoes we use fossil fuels, which produce the greenhouse gasses (especially carbon dioxide or CO2) that are warming our world.

It would be nice if we could just pass off the blame for climate change to elected officials or multinational corporations. Certainly they are complicit in this enterprise; greenhouse emissions regulations rang are lax in most United States jurisdictions (though a number of states have banded together to regulate CO2 without federal oversight). This allows big oil and mining firms among others to keep conducting business as usual in the United States even as they face increased scrutiny abroad. And while some European politicians make bold claims about how much progress they have made in adopting more climate friendly policies, the gap between rhetoric and reality remains large. At a recent European Union (EU) Summit held in late 2008, the leaders of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and other member states extolled the ‘greenness’ of their policies. However, details about how countries will implement these goals are few and far between. Most of these nations have little hope of meeting already watered-down Kyoto commitments. Canada, which also signed the Kyoto Protocol, will not live up to its emissions goals. Canadian emissions are increasing at an even faster rate than those of the United States. We should also remember that if EU leaders commit to and implement existing proposals, they are still far below what scientists say is necessary to significantly slow global warming, more than 80% by 2050.

This issue goes way beyond everyday electoral politics. It is fundamentally a question of personal responsibility. At some point, each of us needs to face up to the hard, simple fact that our energy-intensive and over-consumptive lifestyles are a direct cause of the current environmental crisis—and real change won’t happen until we start cutting back ourselves (as well as perhaps pressuring our lawmakers to do so). We can’t count on government or industry to make this crisis go away.

Somebody has got to do it—why not you? In the next few months, let’s start our own dialogue about climate change, and explore ways that we can make a difference, both for our own benefit, and the welfare of future generations.