You and Your Climate

     Are you concerned about climate change?

      . . . So am I.

     Have you done anything about it?

      . . . Neither have I. 

     My general attitude toward the concept of climate is that it would be best if there were no human race. There are maybe 8.5 billion of us humans running around the globe right now, every one of us using up oxygen and emitting pollutants with every breath. And all of us are breathing all the time. 

     And we billions of humans are burning fossil fuels every day in our cars, trucks, furnaces, etc. None of this was happening a few hundred years ago, There were just trees contributing to cleaner air and other generally favorable stuff going on.

     Not so any more. Our situation is one bristling with ominous possibilities.

     We the people are so pervasive, and the climate is so enormous, that the situation is infinitely beyond the ability of any one of us -- or any hundred, thousand or million of us -- to do much about it.

     That is not to say we can't do anything about it. How many of us 8.5 billion people would it take to collectively control-reduce-eliminate fossil fuel combustion? What if we really, REALLY decided to change our recreation and transportation choices, our home heating systems and other pollution-generating activities? 

     The alternatives -- walking, bicycling, reducing, substituting -- are available now, and others could be developed if we put our minds to it.

     Individuals can make relatively minor lifestyle changes without much inconvenience. We have to have reasons to do so. and there are such reasons. The challenge is to make those reasons real and effective to enough with enough people.

     As with all matters human, the initiation of individual change comes with dialogue. If we talk enough to each other about the benefits of a particular change, the avoidance of a particular developing disaster, habit change seems almost automatic.

     So the effective action is the individual decision to raise and share thoughts and information about the conditions and actions we can do something about. That action is well within the perimeter of possibility for the individual human being. If we talk about it, we'll do it.

     Let's give it a go. Pick a couple of occasions today to share and seek individual thoughts about what people are doing, and what they can do. about their personal envelopes of climate. And tell 'em what you think.

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