War and Climate Change

I think this view of our garden is rather telling. We lost a lot of plants in the fire. Others, especially those we have planted since the fire, have failed to thrive. The plants that do best are those that take little to no water and are also the same plants that helped protect our house from the flames. The oak trees survived but the one on the right has been heavily pruned, and the one at the top had to have a lot of its lower branches removed. We are very grateful that both of them seem to be leafing out along with several others we were worried about.

Drought and the kinds of firestorms we have suffered in California are both a result of climate change. As most of the developed world struggles with how to deal with Putin without causing world War III (or worse) an article in the newspaper this morning caught my eye. A group of climate scientists in New Zealand have suggested that world leaders are not heeding their warnings about how dire the situation is. Decisions keep being made that favor economy over investment. Our dependence on oil has not gone down. We continue to drive gas guzzling cars and burn oil and even coal to heat our homes. The building of green energy production solutions (solar, wind, etc.) is lagging.

We spent a lot of money installing solar panels on our roof and a lot more to get a storage battery so that we can produce our own power. But now the power company, facing a third bankruptcy due to fire reparations, is going to charge us more for using their grid and pay us less for what we put into it. As individuals we are frightened by the specter of irreversible climate change but we feel powerless to act against corporate and governmental decisions.

Another article in the paper suggested that Putin, increasingly paranoid and isolated from the rest of the world is surrounded only by a small group of advisors who are afraid to tell him that Ukraine is not the simple conquest he envisioned and that the rest of the world is far more united to stop him than he thought. 

We could do our part as a united front to cut off our demand for oil from Russia. And the climate scientists, rather than going on strike, should use their research to educate the world on how to make climate change happen on both a personal and a national level. Their message that the clock is ticking and there is very little time left to be able to effect climate changes has been very clear and stated at countless global summits on the subject. In the 1980's Susan Soloman, an atmospheric chemist, presented research that helped lead to a sweeping agreement to restore the ozone layer. That effort succeeded because people grasped how the issue affected them personally.

Perhaps the united front against an unprovoked invasion will be the argument that persuades governments to ban imports of oil from Russia and spur them to seek alternative sources of energy. Something has to....