Today is Blog Action Day 2009 & the topic is climate change.
“Climate change affects us all and it threatens more than the environment. It threatens to cause famine, flooding, war, and millions of refugees.
Given the urgency of the issue of climate change and the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, we think the blogosphere has the unique opportunity to mobilize millions of people around expressing support for finding a sustainable solution to the climate crisis.”
As a somewhat sceptical individual I’m not bought into the idea of global warming nor of a coming ice age. But as a rational thinker it seems prudent to be a good steward of the place where we live & which sustains us.
While I do not want us all to return to hunter-gatherer times and eschew modern conveniences, it does seem like a good time to direct our substantial collective intelligence towards find better ways of doing things.
In Australia we are already seeing the effects of climate change. The recent devastating bushfires in Victoria appear to be a mere harbinger of what is to come. We can expect to inhabit a much dryer and more fire-prone environment in some parts of the country. While in other parts of the country we are seeing increasingly bad storms and cyclones.
To me this seems like a very big problem. But all very big problems seem daunting unless they are chunked up. This is a great case to apply the old maxim
Think global! Act local!
Here are some simple things some friends & I have done:
- tweet about Blog Action Day 2009 on Twitter – use the hashtag #BAD09
- leave the car at home whenever public transport is viable
- carpool with friends when going out
- plant a vegetable garden
- try to eat locally produced food & support initiatives like Live Local #livelocal
- lobby my local member of parliament to support action on climate change
- write a blog post about Blog Action Day 2009
- talk to people about Blog Action Day 2009
- start debates with the people at work about climate change
- start a neighbourhood project & blog about sustainable living like my friend Inderjeet & his Healthier Neighbourhoods – A Community Project to Reduce Carbon Footprint
- sign the petition asking President Obama to act on climate change
Aide Mémoire 
If you’re not completely convinced about climate change yet, please see my post for Blog Action Day:
http://selfdestructivebastards.blogspot.com/2009/10/wake-up-humanity.html
You might also want to check out the FAQ on the IPCC site:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/FAQ/wg1_faqIndex.html
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Great blog post. I think it we can all take the advice of looking at the way we live our lives and, climate change or not, see ourselves as custodians of the planet for generations to come.
But the real impacts happen at a political level. Unfortunately, the government’s ETS offers compensation to polluters, which just undercuts all our efforts to be energy efficient. Writing a letter to Obama is a nice gesture, but what really matters politically is understanding how much of a non-difference the government’s position is making and what is possible to be achieved in this country by way of reduced emissions. Once we do that, we would do a lot more, and a lot more with our own leaders.
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