Climate Change: Running out of time.
Why write about climate change on a farm website? Because a changing climate is seriously impacting food production. With predicted and actual droughts for western US, Central and South America, food shortages fall not far behind.
Won't government take care of this? Government cannot respond to climate change as long as corporations have the rights of individuals and block government efforts. People must take individual rights away from corporations so that government can serve the people as it was intended to do.
Citizens' United must be overturned.
Can't new technology solve these problems? Few engineers and scientists are actually working on climate change. See US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most engineers are currently employed by the defense industry paid in full by the US taxpayer. The approved 2018 military budget consuming more than half of the entire budget is just shy of $700 billion. See 2019 Defense Budget Overview.
What can I do right now to make a difference?
- Divest of fossil fuels.
- Overturn Citizen's United.
- Think about every possible away that you can reduce your personal greenhouse gas emissions.
- Demand a massive shift of US military spending, possibly the world's largest producer of carbon emissions, to climate change reduction education and research.
- Immediately reduce the amount of travel, both air and ground. Short airplane flights produce the highest levels per mile, but with long flights the miles add up.
- Walk, ride a bike, and share a ride.
- Turn your heat down in the winter and air conditioning up in the summer.
- Reduce consumption of new products. Buy used, rent or share whenever possible. Buy locally.
- Become a vegetarian or only eat animals raised on pasture from local farms.
- Convert lawns into vegetable gardens.
- Host clothing exchange parties.
- Vote for candidates who support alternative energy.
- Stop spraying herbicides, pesticides and fungicides to stop the insect apocalypse. Buy organic foods when possible for the same reason. Food production must have pollinators.
Does reducing, reusing, and recycling harm the economy? What difference does the economy make if we are dying from fires, floods, and starvation?
Nature has limits and is responding to increased carbon emissions by increasing global temperatures, ocean acidification, droughts and storms. It is past time to incorporate the environmental costs of doing business. The health of planet earth belongs front and center. Temperatures are changing exponentially. We are swiftly running out of time.
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