SUSTAINABILITY NOTEBOOK: Climate Change Heroes
Submitted by spiritandhealth on Mon, 06/09/2008 - 13:25.
by Anna Lappe
Even as spring approaches, I still feel nostalgia for the fall that never was. Seems the Onion headline I’d laughed over maybe isn’t such a joke after all: “Fall Canceled after 3 Billion Seasons.” You remember fall, don’t you? That “classic period of the year,” as the Onion said, that “once occupied a coveted slot between summer and winter.”
This year, here in New York City, we’ve gone from hot one day to freezing the next. Like last year, the Glory of the Snow flowers poked their heads up in January, then froze when the temperature plummeted.
As I talk with people about the climate crisis, it seems that many of us have a cherished memory of the way things used to be. For me, it was a winter 10 years ago when my mom still lived on 45 acres in southern Vermont. It was the day before Christmas and the snow had fallen in heaps. My older brother and I set out on a mission to turn a nearby logging road into a luge run. My brother was the digger; I was the guinea pig. Wherever my sled flew off, he’d build an embankment while I trudged up for another run. As evening set in, we had perfected the chute, and with flashlights in hand, we flew down the mountain into the night. The next morning, my mom got up early, before the rest of us, and soared through the white, white snow.
Since that time, it has never snowed enough in southern Vermont to repeat that holiday adventure.
Climate scientists tell us we can’t draw conclusions from personal anecdotes, but we have more than enough anecdotes on our side, and we also have the science.
Now, when I start feeling overwhelmed by the planetary scale of it all, I reflect back to the Power Shift conference I attended at the University of Maryland last November. This first-ever youth summit on climate change brought together more than 5,500 students from schools ranging from Amherst College to New Orleans high schools.
This is the Facebook-networking, text-messaging, You-Tube-ing generation, and they’re using these tools to build a strong, diverse, networked movement. I saw it in the scope of the geographic diversity of the attendees, in their carefully crafted videos and blogs that connected thousands more around the world to the activities at the conference, and in their knowledge about the issues and how to organize to make change. The three days of workshops, trainings, and panels culminated with hundreds of young people heading down to Capitol Hill to talk with their elected officials about taking climate change seriously.
We handed this generation a planet in crisis. They didn’t ask for it and they certainly can’t be blamed for it, but they just might be able to save it.
Learn more about this topic at www.PowerShift07.org
Issue:
2008 March/April
by Anna Lappe
Even as spring approaches, I still feel nostalgia for the fall that never was. Seems the Onion headline I’d laughed over maybe isn’t such a joke after all: “Fall Canceled after 3 Billion Seasons.” You remember fall, don’t you? That “classic period of the year,” as the Onion said, that “once occupied a coveted slot between summer and winter.”
This year, here in New York City, we’ve gone from hot one day to freezing the next. Like last year, the Glory of the Snow flowers poked their heads up in January, then froze when the temperature plummeted.
As I talk with people about the climate crisis, it seems that many of us have a cherished memory of the way things used to be. For me, it was a winter 10 years ago when my mom still lived on 45 acres in southern Vermont. It was the day before Christmas and the snow had fallen in heaps. My older brother and I set out on a mission to turn a nearby logging road into a luge run. My brother was the digger; I was the guinea pig. Wherever my sled flew off, he’d build an embankment while I trudged up for another run. As evening set in, we had perfected the chute, and with flashlights in hand, we flew down the mountain into the night. The next morning, my mom got up early, before the rest of us, and soared through the white, white snow.
Since that time, it has never snowed enough in southern Vermont to repeat that holiday adventure.
Climate scientists tell us we can’t draw conclusions from personal anecdotes, but we have more than enough anecdotes on our side, and we also have the science.
Now, when I start feeling overwhelmed by the planetary scale of it all, I reflect back to the Power Shift conference I attended at the University of Maryland last November. This first-ever youth summit on climate change brought together more than 5,500 students from schools ranging from Amherst College to New Orleans high schools.
This is the Facebook-networking, text-messaging, You-Tube-ing generation, and they’re using these tools to build a strong, diverse, networked movement. I saw it in the scope of the geographic diversity of the attendees, in their carefully crafted videos and blogs that connected thousands more around the world to the activities at the conference, and in their knowledge about the issues and how to organize to make change. The three days of workshops, trainings, and panels culminated with hundreds of young people heading down to Capitol Hill to talk with their elected officials about taking climate change seriously.
We handed this generation a planet in crisis. They didn’t ask for it and they certainly can’t be blamed for it, but they just might be able to save it.
Learn more about this topic at www.PowerShift07.org
