2021-08-11 08:14:00
Image courtesy of UN Climate Action.
"There's a price our grand-children will have to pay."
Remember that one? About the climate? We've been saying that for so long that we forgot what it means. Well, fun's over: we are those grand-children. My generation, the twenty-somethings I teach at school, my daughter! We're all going to pay the piper, starting this decade.
The IPCC, an international cooperation of hundreds of scientists, has recently confirmed that what they've been saying for decades is not only true, it's also happening right now.
The full report is a whopping 1300 pages, which is too much for mere mortals such as you and me to take in. But luckily there's friendly folks who create summaries.
Or as Zentouro puts it, if you really want to panic and feel desperate, try playing with the IPCC's Interactive Atlas which shows you exactly how things will be changing on the short term.
To put it bluntly: all of us will need to pull together and start taking measures that we will not like. Forego travel-for-fun, drastically cut down meat consumption and your consumption of luxury goods overall. Bitter pills to swallow and all that. But if that means that the earth will only burn for fifty years instead of a hundred, I guess that'll be worth it.
To make sure that it's not just us putting in the efforts, make sure to influence your local politics! It's not just the people who need to change, it's our nations and our companies.
Write to your representatives, to your congressmen, to your politicians. Refer them to the IPCC's summary for policy makers, refer them to the IPCC's FAQ on the AR6 report.
It's time to get angry and to help make changes. It was time thirty years ago, but better late than never.
kilala.nl tags: life,
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Posted by Tess
More actions undertaken, we are now monthly donators to:
* Our local food bank
* Just Digg It, who run re-greening projects in Africa
* Milieu Defensie, who run environmentalist campaigns in the Netherlands.
* Cordaid, a human-rights organisation operating both in NL and internationally.
All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Tess Sluijter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.
2021-08-11 23:18:00
Posted by Tess
A few small steps at a time will help, such as the suggestions made by the Act Now programme -> https://www.un.org/en/actnow/
1. I will cut back my meat consumption almost completely, only making exceptions for special occasions.
2. We will make much more conscious decisions about our groceries, aiming for much less wasted food. To this end we'll start meal-prepping to a degree.
3. We will aim to lower "food miles" and will no longer shop overseas (for books, DVDs and such).
4. Marli will aim to make most of her daily commutes full electric, which should be doable with her PHEV.
5. We have upgraded our energy contract (which already was at 100% "green" electricity) to also include "green" bio gas for heating.
6. I will strictly limit the amount of time I run my homelab, as 230Wh adds up real quickly.
7. We are switching banks, from the two we've used for well over two decades, to one which is socially responsible and has a proven track record of reputable and transparent behavior.
Another useful resource, the UN's "Lazy person's guide to saving the world".