The awareness phase of the campaign to stop global warming has reached a crescendo, which may also be a plateau. With the exception of front groups sponsored by oil companies, it is becoming more and more accepted that we, in fact, are the cause of global warming.
The action phase, however, trails the awareness phase significantly and most troubling of all is the growing belief that someone else is going to be the somebody to actually do something about global warming. Even worse, and most naively of all, that our federal government is going to solve the problem.
A federal bureaucracy and the people within have significant strengths, and they must be part of the solution, but frankly, can we afford to wait for them? When was the last time your local, state or federal government led the charge on anything? Far less something that is so important, so critical and whose solutions will cause hardship to some. In fact, the stronger the actions, the greater the distortions from those affected — it simply is not a solution custom-made for government action.
So who has the power to stop global warming? Who has the power to lead the environmental movement? You do. I do. And every person who reads this does. Not as individuals, true, but as a collection of people, a constituency of those who are willing to do small acts of greenness every single day. A vast movement that can literally change the world if we green our days and our nights and our weekends.
These actions we must ask of ourselves can be as simple as the tried and the true, ‘turn out the lights’ or as cost-effective as changing to energy-efficient lightbulbs. It’s not that the actions are hard, or difficult, or extreme, it’s just that we need to remind each other and ourselves, constantly, of the constant collective good we can do.
The cumulative effect of these actions would be simply astronomical. I have just finished reading a new book by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas Kostigen that outlines over 400 of these simple action items. The Green Book is a marvel because it shows a series of simple steps that are easy to execute and the vast majority save you money while you are helping save the environment.
Here’s an example from the book. If we each bought Fair Trade coffee, which is a good idea for many reasons, for a whole year, we would each save 9,200 square feet of rain forest. If every household in Seattle did this every year, every year, then in a wonderful ying and yang of research, we would save a rain forest the size of Seattle. The destruction of rain forests is one of the factors behind global warming. So there, in a simple action, multiplied thousands of times, is a solution to what is ailing our planet.
As a coffee drinker, this is something I can do. If it’s not your cup of tea, flip through The Green Book and find things you can. That’s the beauty of it. No one has to do everything. Everyone can do something.
The questions are “what can I do about global warming?” and “how can I help the environment?” The answer is plenty. If we do it together.