Thinking About Greta Thunberg

Another cold rainy day. Nursing a summer cold, tired of being chilled to the bone and buried in blankets, I broke down and acknowledged the elements this morning by putting a fire on in the kitchen wood stove. I spent my early morning as usual, checking email, surfing Facebook, and playing Spider Solitaire on my iPad before making breakfast. But such a day is a day to write, and while washing dishes my mind was thinking about Greta Thunberg, the 16 year old climate change activist we are hearing much about. She is heading out now, on the Malizia II, a racing yacht that uses solar panels to power underwater turbines, to go to climate conferences in the US and Chile. Why is she taking the time to travel by “sailboat”? She believes air traffic is a huge contributor to climate change and the casual attitude we all, including myself, have of hopping a plane to get quickly from here to there should be reconsidered. But, but, but... (I can almost hear people’s minds rejecting this premise) Canada is such a huge country! It takes days to get across it! And we really need to escape the north sometimes, go to a sunny tropical paradise and soak up copious quantities of vitamin D. What about vehicle emissions! And the time! How could we get places in a reasonable amount of time without air travel? How could I go to my cousin's wedding back east? ...

A meme I saw on Facebook today. Not sure of it’s accuracy but I can see the point. 

I often wonder if  our global economy was a huge error in judgement. 

Hmmm. If you think that this climate change chatter is all a lot of BS, that the science behind the idea is skewed, that climate has always changed (which is quite true), that human activity has nothing to do with weather or excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, or that this excess is no problem, well, that’s a comfortable place to be, and a good excuse to do business as usual.

Climate change is such a contentious issue, and I know thinking people on both sides of the fence, so I tend to talk about global pollution instead. Pollution is something we can see, smell, feel, something we can all recognize as out of control, something we can agree on. Addressing the causes of pollution and finding solutions to clean up our environment are bound to be a good for planet earth. So I try to find positive news to forward on Facebook, breakthroughs in science and industry that may address pollution and still enable us to maintain our current lifestyle, with some modifications.

In those parts of the world where we live the “good life” we have no political or personal will to make changes that will lower our living standard. No one wants to live without electricity, cars, central heating (or air conditioning), washing machines, running water, indoor plumbing, supermarkets, internet, TV... I could go on and on with this list. If you have it you don’t want to give it up. We’re even quite willing to turn a blind eye to our exploitation of third world countries so we can obtain all these things, things which are desired but not always necessary. 

Most of us live in cities. Cities pollute. The industries located out in the hinterlands are producing products to keep the cities chugging along as usual. Farms are keeping cities fed. City people seem to find all sorts of ways to criticize those of us who are out in the country serving their needs, while conveniently ignoring their collusion in the whole scheme of things. Campaigns about cow farts and burps, dirty oil and pipelines, clear cutting the forest, keeping dogs in warm houses, etc. seem, on the surface, to be noble and sensible. But trucks are still lining the highways bringing products to the cities, planes are still delivering fresh lobster to our table, container ships still chug across the oceans filled with plastic junk to gift at Christmas time. Very few people are changing the way they live in any discernible way.

I understand this attitude. When I came to our bush farm 45 years ago with a baby on my back, almost no money, no power, no outhouse, no water, a tiny shack to live in and an outdoor kitchen with a wood cookstove, I had a dream and a desire to improve. And we did improve, slowly. Now I’d fight tooth and nail to keep the improvements we made. If something breaks down we don’t throw up our hands and say, oh well, we’ve done it before, we know we can do without. No, we fix it! So let’s do some sensible things we are able to do as individuals, and let’s encourage our governments to tackle the big things, support science and innovation to clean up the mess we never realized we were getting ourselves into. For this we need to light the fires of political will. This is accomplished through activism.

Greta Thunberg, child activist - GOOD for YOU!