EcoHearth: Come Home to the Earth

As we enter a New Year, the news is replete with talk of recession, a return to soup lines, the mortgage crisis, interest rates and war. All of this is familiar territory to those who know their history. Even those who don’t can appreciate that as we move from an administration of fear into one of hope, every attempt will be made to ensure that history does not repeat itself. The problem, however, is that recessions and wars pass, but climate change is forever.

The front-page headlines scream about the collapse of the economy, but where is the news about the collapse of the very environment that holds it all together? We are pushing atmospheric carbon levels at 380 parts per million when we need to be at 350. If we don’t get down to that level by 2015, we will have reached a point of no return. This means that decisions made today will affect the planet for hundreds of years to come.

Unlike the end of wars from which new societies rise, and unlike recessions that birth new markets, we cannot avoid the far-reaching consequences of climate change. The future cannot redeem the mistakes of history without affecting generations to come. Careening toward carbon levels at 400 ppm is akin to watching a slew of nuclear warheads chug around the earth at a decade per hour. The only difference is that when we look up, we notice that somewhere in the future the fate of the earth is sealed. Unfortunately today, given the enormity of the problem we’re not addressing, most people are simply adding to the arsenal.

Perhaps it’s the very severity of the problem that keeps us from putting climate change at the top of all political agendas. After all, to get emissions on a downward path in the next five years requires that over 200 nations must agree to build a carbon-neutral energy system. Such political action needs to happen today… not tomorrow, not next week, but right now. This will require the greatest cooperative endeavor in history. Each and every one of us must be involved.

The problem of climate change will not be solved with a New Deal. It’s bigger than a negotiated settlement on nuclear-arms reduction, and bigger than the effort to stop the Nazi takeover of Europe in WWII. This problem is so big that it reduces the Cuban Missile Crisis to small fries, and makes the war on terrorism appear momentary.

We have the technology and the resources, but we now need the political and cultural will to act. A greening of the economy is a baby step forward, but ultimately every human on this earth needs to take a giant leap into a new paradigm, to ensure a future both breathable and fair for future generations.

The stakes are extreme. There are no lessons from the past to which we can turn on this one, so take your partner’s hand, hold your nose and jump; it’s the one and only chance to come together as a species and save what we’ve just spent a few hundred years devastating.

Visit 350.org for information on what actions you can take.

Dr. Fiona Sinclair lives completely off-grid in northern New Mexico where she harvests water, composts all waste, eats food grown within a 100-mile radius (including in her own garden), strives to have zero carbon emissions and is active in her community. She is currently a Visiting Professor of Natural Resource Management at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, NM. She may be contacted at cleugh[at]nnmt.net.

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