About ClimateChange.Tips
March 2019
My husband Tom and I were having a conversation, we had just watched Greta Thunberg’s heart-stopping speech at the Davos Climate Summit. We then watched her eloquent TedX talk about the burden on all of us, to take a realistic assessment of our personal responsibility. She earnestly warns that if we don’t take Climate Change seriously and make significant changes in our lifestyles, future generations are in for dire circumstances and hideously expensive and quite possibly ineffective solutions. The science supports this.
I have been under a lot of stress lately over the state of the world in general and had almost started taking an ostrich-like position (or curling up fetal position on the bed) in order to handle the constant stream of bad news. Instead of just feeling impotent, Tom and I decided one thing—that we have the tools, as web developers, to create a site that can pull together links to articles, websites, quotes, and movements, into one site. Better known as an aggregator site.
We want to share, as well, encouragement as to how each of us, as individuals, can take steps to make a difference. This process has made us feel so much more empowered and optimistic in light of the ominous information we are sharing. I would like to share our journey with you. We are encouraged to discover a groundswell of movements happening right now that take on different levels of intensity and commitment. We hope to avoid over-politicizing our own views and work to share scientific information from sources we trust. We hope to encourage others to take part in this process and try to find ways we can all become more responsible citizens and care for those who come behind us.
I have to say, I feel much better now, we are living more consciously and sharing these ideas with others on how to take manageable steps in their communities. Simply refusing plastic straws has rapidly become main stream in our community in the Mid Hudson of New York. Over night it seems restaurants are offering them less and switching to paper straws. We had already cut way back on our consumption of of single-use containers but the volume still concerned us. We installed a reverse osmosis water filter and each found reusable bottles for our water. We have been using reusable shopping bags in the grocery store but have made the effort to do so in every store. We like to eat out so we now bring our own reusable to-go containers for left overs (also less food waste that way). We politely complained to the manager of a local chain restaurant about how many straws they automatically hand out and she said she felt the same way. I asked her if the servers could at least ask if people want them first. There are some drinks that need to be stirred or drank from the bottom where they are more necessary, but if enough commentary comes from the public even a big chain can react.
We are starting to look for volunteers to help us make this site successful. We will be posting, by skill sets, options for taking part. Like AOC’s Green New Deal, we feel society needs to step up like they did during the Great Depression and then WWII. People banded together and made sacrifices to support the group efforts of recycling paper, metal, etc, and by gardening, buying and using less, etc. They learned to live more frugally but felt the positive glow of being part of something bigger than us. We can do it again, despite vocal political opposition.