Now more than ever, it’s important that every single one of us believes that climate change is real, dangerous, and happening right now. We can either let this situation end poorly, or we can try to save what little we have left. When Margaret Atwood talked about the three “pictures” of our future in her piece “It’s Not Climate Change – It’s Everything Change“, I found the first “picture” intriguing and almost overly upbeat. In the first picture, she talks about a world where people willingly go out of their ways to conserve energy and food – nobody eats protein, everybody wears warm clothes instead of using heaters, etc. As I read through it, I found myself hopeful, but also not convinced that any of it is possible.
I could not believe picture one because, put simply, people do not like to change. Picture two scared me – the thought of a “war of all against all” is particularly unsettling. However, I also didn’t find this 100% believable, because some people really do care. When she finally got to picture three, I finally thought to myself “this could actually happen”. Some countries change, some do not, but people come together to fix what we set in motion.
In class we talked about this notion of “believable”. What makes something believable? Is it the actual statistical likelihood that it will occur? Or does it depend more on our engrained beliefs? Even after discussing in class last Friday, I still do not have a concrete answer to these questions. I guess I found out that I don’t know enough about climate change (and environmental action) to make a decision yet. In her piece, Atwood talks about how now, scientific literacy is more important than ever – we all need to question, study, and confirm statements that we read or hear.
For that reason, I really enjoyed the group activity at the end of class. We all browsed the internet for relevant factoids about our area of study, and had interesting discussions on the validity and trustworthiness of certain sources (interesting factoid – climate change causes rise in aeroallergens, increasing allergic sensitization). Now that I more understand the importance of evaluating climate facts, I will approach all that I see with the same level of scrutiny. It’s important that we all do the same so that we can understand what is truly believable/not believable. I believe that is the foundation from which we will build our action plans.
On a final note, I particularly enjoyed this picture from Atwood’s article, courtesty of gettystation.com:
It speaks so much to how our use of oil harms the ecosystem. I never think about it when I fill up my car, but if I had to fill it up next to this art installation, I would probably hesitate a little more.
