Make it Real
October 15, 2009 by Janice
This is a post for Blog Action Day on Climate Change.
These are some of my Chandeleur Island notebooks. These three little notebooks were rescued from my home after the storm. The barrier island itself was reduced by half. The ground I walked making the sketches in the bottom notebook does not exist anymore. It’s scattered or under water. The base camp houseboat is back up and running for sport and science after extensive repairs and rebuilding. The Jet Ranger helicopter the red notebook sketches were made in still flies all over the region. Still available for making movies too. Me and my notebooks are expats. The region is toxic for me and my lungs. I hope that won’t always be so.
What does this have to do with Climate Change?
Well, the one thing I know from experience is that abstract distant concepts will not cause people to take meaningful action. It has to be something people can see and feel and touch to make any change in choices made on a daily basis. Abstract doesn’t work.
I know this as much as I know that too much mold will kill me.
As much as I know that money spent planting grasses and mangroves will rebuild that barrier Island.
And barrier islands protect.
I know that you have to make it real, and small or people get lost in abstract and overwhelm. And sometimes people die.
I know this as much as I know that those cost cutting contractors who took a short cut so many years ago in that industrial canal levee, caused the deaths of many people and storm loss much larger and extensive than if they had done it right the first time.
I know that choices made on a daily basis have consequences that can bite us all in the butt somewhere down the road.
So shouldn’t we stop making them?
What if mere common sense was the best currency we could spend?
What if we changed the climate of our mindset?
And demanded care and stewardship above monetary gain?
What if?
We had clean air, fresh water and healthy bodies and extended that to all things?
What if we measured in real costs every choice we made?
Wouldn’t that be us awake, living and leaving things just a little better than how we found them?
I am not an expert in the whole climate picture, but I am a boots on the ground, years of experience, expert on coastal wetlands. Yes an artist. I was in the go to crew on those issues. Scientists, engineers, politicians, bankers, writers, educators, children who cared and more, we were doing something. I spent years doing that in and for my community. And for myself.
And I am saying prevention is less costly than the cure.
And that abstract doesn’t work, it has to be real.
So even if we just suspect that just maybe we are doing something in the short term that will bite us in the collective and individual butts in the long…shouldn’t we stop doing that?
Trust me, dealing with those things on a catastrophic level is no fun.
So ask for something that you can do today and everyday, something within arm’s reach that ensures you are not adding to the problem. Ask for something, some guidelines on how to choose better. And how to choose better industries to support. Which ones not to. Which projects to fund which ones not to. Ask for infrastructure that is solid and well executed. And ask for health and care and wise stewardship in all things…ask. Don’t delegate your real safety. Don’t settle for a false sense of security. Ask yourself, who really has your back? Ask how exactly your environment, yours right there where you are impacts you and how you impact it. Don’t our children deserve that? Ask for a bit more conscious wisdom about how we use what we have. And pass it on to them.
That to me is true wealth. And aren’t we a wealthy nation?
Ask and then do it. Choose better.
Make yourselves and our children truly rich.
Make it real.
Make a mindset climate change. And then we’ll be on course to deal with all the rest.
Comments
2 Responses to “Make it Real”
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“Abstract doesn’t work.” Exactemundo! Great post.
Thanks Mark,
We were kind of on the same page with our thoughts. Great story on yours too. Thanks.