I mean, I know that right? The only constant is change.... Well preping for sustainability class is always a big lump to swallow. I remain hopeful, at least I try, but when reports of us exceeding our greenhouse gas emissions by more than was even predicted by the worst case scenario a few years ago, THEN chalking it up to an indicator of economic rebound just makes me ill (literally). What do people think got us into an economic downturn in the first place... people spending money they didn't have.... so how is increased consumer spending (therefore increased ghg emissions) a sign of rebound? Sounds to me like we just keep digging the same ditch and are cheerful about it to boot... we need to restructure our priorities, increased investment in our future, our communities, our education and services anyone?
I start surfing furiously for some hope, a beautiful vision of the future, but am coming up shy of satisfactory. Of course as I am scrambling to update lecture and reading material, I get sucked into this rabbit hole of information and the soul sinks... further and further. I read the comments on the AP article and man, some people just stink... there are days that I have hope, days where I believe that more and more people are getting on board, but the incredibly ignorant and comments that support climate change (??) blow me away..I want to scream "What planet do you think you live on???". I mean our planet is resilient, seriously so and it will go on with or without us, but how much do you think WE can take without paying the price? Do we want to find out? To lighten the mood I check a few of my favorite blogs and the subject of bucket lists comes up and discussion of things that I have known that my children will never see and I start to think... a world for them without family members we have lost (and even those just far away who we miss so much), where travel is environmentally prohibitive, without glaciers, without coffee, without chocolate (EEK!), without cloud forests, where our charismatic (and otherwise) species become increasingly threatened or extinct... a world without polar bears? These fears aren't even just for my kids' lifetime, but my lifetime, those predictions for far off times like 2012 or 2050 aren't really that far away. Damn. Maybe I need to take more to heart what I say in my classroom... that we MUST be hopeful because despair doesn't instigate change, there is no other choice. It may seem dire, but politics and corporations and all of those ungainly, massive, nearly otherworldly concepts are really people, and we're people, my students, my children, are people that are entering that world, so we should be able to make those changes; we must make those changes. I hope for, what I am sure many hope for, that my kids will see is a future they will want to live in, a future that we want for them, one at least as happy and at least as beautiful as ours has been, don't let our generation have the golden age of humanity, let it be theirs. I want to see technologies and infrastructure in place that allow for the most efficient and the most responsible use of our limited resources, but more so I want to see an attitude shift, a human, a cultural change that values (emotionally and financially) our resources, our clean water, clean air, healthy oceans, atmosphere, our food supply, our education, our services, our communities, our selves and our future over consumption. Don't those things seem infinitely more valuable than the newest gizmo or fashions? Can I put that on my bucket list?
