My entrance into grandmotherhood (on July 4) coincided with an interview I did with environmental journalist and author Mark Hertsgaard, whose latest book, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, came out last year and was inspired by the birth of his own daughter, Chiara, who's now 7. He says parents are the most under-mobilized constituency around this issue, which he calls "bizarre" given the stakes for their children.
He and other parents have just launched a new group called Climate Parents, whose goal is to have parents (and grandparents, and anyone else who cares about kids) apply political pressure to move the world off fossil fuels, starting with ending the billions in subsidies American taxpayers are providing to them. He says, "It is remarkable, and bizarre, that our tax dollars are now being spent, in the billions, to subsidize ExxonMobil, the single richest, most profitable corporation in human history. We are subsidizing them to wreck the climate for our kids."
Hertsgaard says tackling climate change on a personal/family level (changing light bulbs, biking or taking transit more, etc) are all worthwhile things, but don't get caught up in them because alone they won't come near to making the difference government policies can make.
And just to add fuel to his fire, so to speak, a new study came out this week, as reported in The New York Times, tying specific events to climate change, and saying, for example, that the severe heat wave in Texas last year was made 20 times more likely than in the 1960s, due to climate change. (The link to NYT isn't working but it's from July 11 and is headlined "Global Warming Makes Heat Waves More Likely, Study Finds.") The study will be published soon in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Association. I guess the bad news is that it's happening; the silver lining is that we now have more data to connect the dots.
Having a new little one in our family certainly makes me think more concretely about life on Earth 50 or 80 years on...and I don't feel optimistic. Maybe I need to join Climate Parents so I can fight depression with action.
He and other parents have just launched a new group called Climate Parents, whose goal is to have parents (and grandparents, and anyone else who cares about kids) apply political pressure to move the world off fossil fuels, starting with ending the billions in subsidies American taxpayers are providing to them. He says, "It is remarkable, and bizarre, that our tax dollars are now being spent, in the billions, to subsidize ExxonMobil, the single richest, most profitable corporation in human history. We are subsidizing them to wreck the climate for our kids."
Hertsgaard says tackling climate change on a personal/family level (changing light bulbs, biking or taking transit more, etc) are all worthwhile things, but don't get caught up in them because alone they won't come near to making the difference government policies can make.
And just to add fuel to his fire, so to speak, a new study came out this week, as reported in The New York Times, tying specific events to climate change, and saying, for example, that the severe heat wave in Texas last year was made 20 times more likely than in the 1960s, due to climate change. (The link to NYT isn't working but it's from July 11 and is headlined "Global Warming Makes Heat Waves More Likely, Study Finds.") The study will be published soon in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Association. I guess the bad news is that it's happening; the silver lining is that we now have more data to connect the dots.
Having a new little one in our family certainly makes me think more concretely about life on Earth 50 or 80 years on...and I don't feel optimistic. Maybe I need to join Climate Parents so I can fight depression with action.
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