Speak Up! Climate Action How?
Photo: Howard Lake (Flckr.com). (CC BY-SA 2.0)
2021 brought an alarming number of natural calamities that have been linked to global climate change, such as devastating hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and heat waves. What’s more, according to an unsettling recent study New England is warming up faster than the rest of the earth.
Growing numbers are waking up to the need for climate action. Last fall, COP26 brought 120 world leaders to Glasgow in pursuit of national commitments for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Locally, Amherst’s Energy and Climate Action Committee (ECAC) released a 173-page Climate Action, Adaptation and Resiliency Plan (CAARP). Grassroots organizations such as Climate Action Now, Sunrise Movement, Mothers Out Front, and Extinction Rebellion continue ardent efforts to awaken the public to the urgency of the climate crisis. Environmental activists like Russ Vernon-Jones, Darcy Dumont and Laura MacLeod have written articulate appeals for climate action in The Amherst Indy and elsewhere.
Yet denial, ignorance, and foot-dragging are rampant, and our ability to pass on a healthy planet to future generations may be slipping away.
What is to be done? Please give us your thoughts by completing the survey form below. Responses are anonymous. Results will be published in the January 29 edition of The Amherst Indy.
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Town should setup a revolving no interest loan fund so homeowners and landlords can borrow to implement energy saving renovations-regardless of their income. Town also can put solar on town and school buildings, parking lots and explore geothermal options.
Thank you for starting this survey, Jeff. I recently re-read Ecotopia and Ecotopia emerging (in reverse order) by Ernest Callenbach, a great story about how much we can do, if we put our heart to living sustainably. A very inspiring novel even for die-hard resiliency folks, like myself. For me the question is more like: can we do enough to change the trend we are on, or is that opportunity gone already? I am bending toward the second answer, and thus, do my best to accept where we are, where I am in the greater story, and do my best so I can live life fully and feel good about how that happens. Knowing, that there are *no* long-term survivors on Earth, every living being dies after a while.
To Gabor’s statement, I get that you think we are past the tipping point and that we just die anyway.
But if everyone lived the way you do, riding your bike, eating local food and living extra sustainably, we wouldn’t even have this problem. Your individual contribution and everyone’s individual contribution help a lot. For example, if every individual simply decided not to eat beef and to eat less dairy, that would create a huge reduction in emissions. If everyone who needs a car bought or leased an EV the next time around, that would help too. And on and on.
Pushing government and business to do their part doesn’t have to be a full time endeavor but it helps for all to pipe up in whatever way they can – in the streets, writing a letter to the editor, contacting legislators.
My current status is that I’m gaining more hope based on good things I see happening.