Greta Thurnberg #2

It is all rather exhilarating to read about millions of young people getting out on the street and demanding that their governments do something about climate change. As one reads about the protesters marching in the streets and listens or reads about the powerful, impassioned speeches that young people are making, one could easily believe that this time - the world will change. This time someone in a position of power will do something, almost anything to not only stop the seemingly inevitable environmental disaster about to face us but in fact - start to reverse it. However, that could only be true if politicians are listening to and will respond to the protesters, protesters who cannot vote. One could believe that change is imminent except for the fact that none of the protesters has a plan to effect the needed change. None of them has a solution. The truth is that there is not a single plan - there are so many possibilities that politicians can promise to work on, that nothing will change. The changes needed at the political level are so complex that it will take a number of political cycles to effect those changes. No government in the democratic world will stay in power long enough to ensure that something happens.

Unlike the protests that revolved around the Vietnam war or the protests that demanded some sort of voter equality for Afro-Americans - there is not a single solution to climate change. There is not a quick fix. No country can unilaterally declare that they will immediately stop polluting the air. No country can change the amount of carbon in the air - at least not in the short term - by planting a billion trees. No country can quickly cut its dependence on oil. The solutions - and there are some - are all long term. Before we can stop spewing carbon into the air - we need to create the industries that can build the alternative forms of transportation. Before we, at least at a national level, can be carbon neutral we need to invest billions of dollars into creating the infrastructure. For example, getting rid of the internal combustion engine will do much to reduce all of our carbon footprints. But not only do we need to create a network of charging stations, but we also need to create trucks that can carry our goods across the country. It is possible - it just requires the political will, a pile of cash and time.

There are a number of long term solutions that make take a decade or more before they are in place. That is not a reason to do nothing. But it is a reason to be both practical and to take responsibility for our own personal carbon footprint. The inability of national governments to develop some sort of consensus for any sort of action does not mean that we should not protest. Rather it means that people should get out the streets to yell and scream even more often- if for no other reason than it reminds the politicians that we are watching them. But we need to do more on a personal level.

Every time we buy new clothes from offshore we have increased our carbon footprint, every time we buy a green pepper or a head of lettuce we are both increasing our carbon footprint and lowering the water table in some part of the world, every time we buy or use some new technology - we are putting the climate at risk.

It is not the big corporations or the governments who have caused the problem - it is us and our insatiable desire to have the newest thing, different clothes or the newest super vegetable or fruit. We may need the government to do the big global things. But if every protester and all of their families and friends did the small things - I would b a lot more optimistic about the governments of the western world finally getting the message.