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Young children today will grow up to see much disaster due to climate change in their lifetimes, but most people don’t seem to understand how immediate the danger is.
My daughter doesn’t ride her bicycle much in the winter. Her “Frozen” bike, with streamers hanging from the handlebars and princesses Elsa and Anna emblazoned on the side, sits next to the washing machine and dryer, waiting for warmer weather.
But back in the gray and cold of last winter, we were plunged unexpectedly into spring. Temperatures soared. Snow melted. We took the bike to our town’s common, full of people blissed out on the weather, and I watched my daughter pedal around and around. The sun shone, and the warmth felt good on my skin.
And yet, as nice as it was, the moment felt odd, unsettling. I couldn’t let myself fully enjoy it. Uncertainty gnawed at me. My daughter is only 6, but my thoughts drifted far away to a distant future. As she smiled and laughed and rode her bike in 2017, I thought of 2100. If she’s blessed with a long life, she will turn 89 at the turn of the next century, when temperatures and sea levels are expected to be significantly higher than they are today. I couldn’t help but dread what she will see and experience by then.
I know I’m not the only person concerned about climate change, but many people don’t understand how immediate the threat is. As a parent, this is frustrating and alarming. “My friend, we will be dust by the time anything happens,” a long-time pal, and a father of two, assures me. Someone else, a grandmother many times over, tells me the worst of climate change is still a long ways off. “I’ll be gone,” she says. “We’ll all be gone. None of us will be around to see it.” I correct her: “The kids will be around.”
Do I tell him of the apocalyptic disasters that await our children and grandchildren, or do I keep it vague and change the topic to football?
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But I’m not always so quick to correct people. Tell too much of the hard, daunting truths of
climate change, and people don’t listen. They can’t wrap their minds around it. “How bad is it going to get?” one friend asks me. I measure my words to him. Do I tell him of the apocalyptic disasters that await our children and grandchildren, or do I keep it vague and change the topic to football? “It’s going to be bad,” I say, and leave it at that.
What I don’t tell him about is the droughts and destructive storms, the forest fires, floods, and crop failures. I don’t tell him how life as we know it is slipping away from us, eventually to be lost forever, and our days on earth are turning, slowly but surely, into something harsh and unknown.
That’s bleak talk. In the face of such doom and gloom, you can be tempted to simply throw up your hands. “You know we’re doomed, right?” another friend tells me as we sit in my condo. He has no children, so perhaps that’s why he can be so flip about the future. I don’t have that luxury. I have skin in the game. As my friend and I talk, my daughter’s toys and books are tossed about us, a reminder to me of what is at stake.
I worry what climate change will mean for her. As the glaciers continue to melt, and our political leaders shrug, or outright deny, shunning international cooperation on the issue, I try not to lose hope. My daughter loves Dr. Seuss, and sometimes I read “The Lorax” to her at bedtime. With its warnings about greed and pollution, it’s a serious and sad book. Near the end comes the crux of its message: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
She is still much too young to know about climate change and the multitude of other complex problems facing her generation. But as I read those words, I slow down and emphasize them. I want her to hear them, and maybe one day, when she is no longer shielded from the danger that lies ahead, take from them a much-needed resolve.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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It sounds to me that deep inside, you know your childless friend is right. Here’s a reasonable harbinger: Last November, Stephen Hawking said we had 1000 years left before we had to leave this planet. This past March he changed his number to 100. Of course, he is not an expert in any of the scientific fields that monitor the various contributors to the Sixth Great Extinction, which is already underway with a rapidity never seen in the earlier extinction events. The bottom line is that we are moving towards extinction inexorably. All things are impermanent, including our civilization and… Read more »
it has been said that by the time a planet with intelligent life reaches into space they destroys themselves. We very well may be next. If we are what a shame the possibilities unrealized . I wish we could have imagined better. As we drift off into the abyss ,I will be thinking about John Lennon’s song ” Imagine” and pray God reconsiders.
Hi Fred – I’m not so sure if this generalization holds true across the vast expanse of space and time, but it sure seems true here. Some random tragic/funny examples. Al Gore won the Noble Peace Prize for his first firm, “An Inconvenient Truth”. And yet he seems content owning FOUR homes. Never mind the upgrades he’s made to it. His carbon footprint is probably about 1000 time mine. Laurie Davis (ex-wife of Larry) and Cheryl Crow went on a conservation tour to convince people to use 1 sheet of toilet paper (if possible). Of course, to get from venue… Read more »
You can blame Exxon for suppressing the report they had about global warming 40 years ago. Of course, these people like Rex Tillerson who work at Exxon are probably dead or in their late 60s, 70s, and 80s and they could care less about what will happen to them because, by the time all this stuff happens in 15 to 30 years, they will be long dead or close to it.