by Pa Rock
Earthling
The incoming President assures us that climate change is a hoax and that he will protect us from the dangers and inefficiencies of energy technologies which he does not like, such as wind and solar, and instead create American jobs by more digging, drilling, and clear- cutting our very limited natural resources until they are used up and the air and water so noxious and poisonous as to render the planet essentially uninhabitable. Squandering our resources and destroying Planet Earth is good for business, don't you see?
The flaw in that "comprehensive" energy and environmental plan is that it is based on nonsense. Climate change is happening. I can look out my living room window and know that for a fact. Ten years ago when I first moved to this house, almost all of the leaves were on the ground by Halloween. This year, halfway through November, they are still falling and will be for another week, or possibly even two. There has only been one light scattering of frost so far, and I still have roses blooming and a lilac bush that is trying to bud again. The tomato plants in the backyard have blooms, and yesterday I even picked a delicious little red tomato and ate it.
People are still mowing their yards in this area during the middle of November. I will give mine one more good mow, but I am trying to wait until the leaves have basically all fallen. It would be nice to get the lawn put to bed before Christmas.
I grew up in southern Missouri, a hundred-and-seventy-five miles due west of here. When I was a lad in the late 1950's we had two years in a row where the first snowfall happened on Thanksgiving Day - and they were major snows! Thanksgiving this year is two weeks from today, and we haven't even had a decent frost!
I did see one encouraging climate story in the news this week. Darren Woods, the CEO of ExxonMobil has gone on the record encouraging the incoming President of the United States not to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords - like he did during his first term as President. Mr. Woods sees climate change as being a global concern and says "we need a global system for managing global emissions."
All of the world's countries have been a part of creating the climate change that is happening, and all of the world countries have a shared interest in combating and fixing the problem. The United States has been a major industrial force and polluter for the past two centuries, and we own a good share of the current climate and environment problems that the planet is experiencing. Of course we should be involved in finding solutions. Thank you ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods for making that point.
People who will be living on the Earth a hundred years from now will not be strangers who are of no concern to us. They will be our grandchildren's grandchildren, and they will (rightfully) be holding us accountable for the condition of the planet on which they struggle to survive.
In a week or so I will be mowing and mulching the leaves which are covering the yard in order to help build the soil for the benefit of people who will be living on this property years from now, people I will never meet - and I should be doing even more. Somewhere someone else is out planting a tree today, and tree that will make shade and oxygen and perhaps even fruit for someone who hasn't been born yet, perhaps one of my great-grandchildren - or yours.
The Earth is our home and it will continue to be a home for humanity for a long time. We must protect it for ourselves and for our future selves. Politics be damned!
1 comment:
“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.” (Rabindranath Tagore)
Post a Comment