“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” The Usual Suspects

If you like horror stories, then The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions created by Greta Thunberg is your next read. Packed with intrigue and the terror that makes you spend the night peeking out from behind closed blinds, The Climate Book provides a detailed analysis of what’s happening on the planet because of climate change and what we stand to lose. Ms. Thunberg compiled essays from dozens of the world’s premier scientists and environmentalists writing on topics like droughts, floods, arctic warming, deforestation, methane, health, terrestrial biodiversity, government climate targets, the failed Paris Agreement, the over-carbonization of the world, and our failure to act to change the trajectory of a widespread apocalyptic future, to name a few. The book provides a starting point for educating ourselves on what is at stake and should be required reading for students, teachers, mothers, fathers, and anyone who breathes oxygen to survive.

Problematically, this is not a distant, dystopian future, but a highly probably outcome of our careless negligence, albeit our criminal stewardship of the planet, one we see play out weekly in our meteorology reports: floods, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, atmospheric rivers, mudslides, species extinction and more, every day, somewhere on our planet, a future that continues to ramp up exponentially like melting sea ice and won’t stop until the planet cries, Reboot! and shakes us loose like fleas on a dog.

It’s not like we haven’t been warned. It’s also not like we don’t care — I mean who among us wants to see their progeny go down in flames — but we are so enamored with our way of life, with a society where a few people make all the economic rules and the rest of us go along because, hey, capitalism!, but in reality, capitalism hasn’t worked for a long time, maybe never. By the time you add up the breaks — taxes, emissions, time to come into compliance, the overuse of resources by a chosen few, and the residual waste strewn across the planet by manufacturers who race to get new products to market with nary a care for the byproduct — you have grossly overestimated the benefit of having 52 new refrigerators to choose from and grossly underestimated the environmental consequences of manufacturing all those refrigerators in the first place.

Take plastic, one of my favorite topics to go on about because it’s quite literally choking us to death, our water, the creatures living in the ocean, and now, with microplastics, the air, clogging up the whole of society: landfills bursting with the refuse, rivers, streams, and oceans catching the overflow quite by accident when extreme wet weather events hit, sending trash spiraling into waterways with greater frequency, and leaving developing countries to deal with the piles of used crap no developed country wants to landfill. Imagine islands inundated with the world’s trash as the gulf stream washes it onto their shores.

You don’t have to. Manila witnesses this daily. This kind of offloading of our waste isn’t an isolated event but recurs with systemic frequency. And guess what? Out of sight doesn’t mean gone. The waste you send to India is eventually going to end up in your tuna which means it will also end up in your body.

Did you know we’re in the middle of a sixth mass extinction? Just let that sit for a minute — 6th mass extinction. What the heck?! We could lose 30% of all plants and animals within the next hundred years. That’s quite a Legacy we’re leaving our children.

Speaking of, my oldest kid told me she thinks she doesn’t want kids. With climate change lurking, the world is a dumpster fire and she doesn’t want to risk bringing a kid into this world. That’s a hard thing for a mother to hear and I get it, I do and I can’t begrudge her for feeling that way but here’s the rub: it doesn’t have to be that way, not if we stop play-acting at addressing the problems and actually take action.

Do you really need a thnead, or half a dozen of them?

The devil is in the details. Read The Climate Book. Educate yourself.

Forewarned is forearmed.

pam lazos – 5.19.24

Originally Published on https://greenlifebluewater.earth/feed/

Pam Lazos

Pam Lazos is an environmental lawyer and the author of the enviro thriller, "Oil and Water," about oil spills and green technology; of a collection of novellas, "Six Sisters," about family, dysfunction, and the ties that bind us; creator of the literary and eco blog www.greenlifebluewater.earth; a blogger for the Global Water Alliance (GWA) in Philadelphia; on the Editorial Board for the wH2O Journal, recently rebranded as the International Journal of Water Equity and Justice (University of Pennsylvania); an editor and ghostwriter for the newly published book, "Finally Home" by Deacon Mike Oles; author of a children's book, "Into the Land of the Loud"; and former Senior Assistant Regional Counsel for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where she protected water and wetlands for over 33 years. Pam continues this work through her writing. She practices laughter daily.