21 October 2024

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

-Alice Walker

This past week, I started a Climate Reality Leadership program. The first 45 minutes of Al Gore's opening speech was pretty depressing. Record-setting temperatures on land and sea, wildfires, declining ice mass…40% of the world is already facing water scarcity, yet climate change is increasing the need for fresh water while putting existing water supplies in the path of saline contamination (and this is just the tip of the iceberg - pun intended).

Climate change is not theoretical. We are now witnessing natural disasters at a horrific rate. A Florida meteorologist (and fellow Cornell alum) actually broke down on live tv when reporting on Milton. I don't know a lot about the weather, but if the scientists are scared, I know this is not normal.

The amount of man-made pollution being trapped in our atmosphere every day is currently equivalent to exploding 750,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs. But, even if you did not believe that this is a man-made problem, if you knew man had the solutions, wouldn't you want to try to fix things?

If you knew that certain lifestyle habits (diet, physical activity, not smoking) could reduce your risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease or stroke by up to 80%, wouldn't you want to improve your odds? If those same dietary choices (plant predominant) could help slow climate change, isn't it a win-win? Further, if you could reduce the impact of your food by 30% just by not wasting it, isn't that also worth considering?

Change is certain. Resilience is necessary. The good news is we already have all the technology we need to deal with climate change (no, carbon capture is not nearly adequate for our growing needs). All we need is the political will to implement it. It all starts with a vote.