Family engages in fight for habitable future

“It is worse, much worse, than you think.”
That is the sombre start to the book The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, which has kickstarted our family’s efforts to more actively engage in the fight for a habitable future.
In urgent and riveting writing that flings out all the terrifying statistics like a category five hurricane, Wallace-Wells throws down the gauntlet, as climate change is “not just the biggest threat human life on the planet has ever faced but a threat of an entirely different category and scale. That is, the scale of human life itself.”
“I’m not alarming you; the science is alarming,” says Wallace-Wells. “I think that as a journalist, I feel like the main job of all of us in this kind of storytelling field is to share our best understanding of the world. And I think it’s very clear that we are suffering more from complacency than we are from fatalism.” The lead authors of the 2018 UN IPCC special report on 1.5 Degrees of Warming warned we have less than 12 years worth of current carbon emissions before we need to be completely net zero, or else we risk – well, really, all bets are off.
“Each of us imposes some suffering on our future selves every time we flip on a light switch, buy a plane ticket, or fail to vote. Now we all share the responsibility to write the next act.”
The hope with this column, “To a Habitable Future” is to keep the climate crisis top of mind with an edited collection of climate related info, and encourage change (and hope) by highlighting local efforts to help mitigate the climate crisis.
There was an excellent interview on CBC’s Metro Morning recently, with the mother who started covote.org to include her daughter in the upcoming vote. This is a brilliant idea that should really resonate with the many active parents, grandparents and engaged kids in our community. From the CoVote site: We’re in this together: It’s simple.
1. Talk to a young person you care about. Listen and learn from each other.
2. Promise them that you’ll vote in a way that protects the planet and their future.
3. Take a picture together and post it to your social media with the tag #covotenow
4. Take them to the polls with you on voting day.
And if you are too young to vote, take this challenge:
1. Pick up the phone and call a grandparent or sit down at the table with your parents and talk with them about the election and how important addressing climate change is to your future.
2. Ask them to covote with you.
3. Follow us. Tag and share a picture of you and your covoter. #covotenow”
Rogers has put the sold out federal all candidates meeting at Clarksburg’s Marsh Centre online, offering an easy way to see all the main local candidates in action. This is an excellent opportunity for everyone planning to vote to make sure theirs is an informed decision.
It was great to see the Creemore Festival of the Arts highlight the environment this year with three exhibits – JJ Jasperson’s subtle Shifting Landscapes, Deborah Farquharson and Jocelyn Hirtes’ poetic On the Curiousness of a Fieldstone Pile, and Denis Bolahan’s N 44° 19’ 37” E -80° 06’ 19.” The breakout award goes to CLEAN’s activist art installation at the Creemore Children’s Dress-up Dance sculpture, highlighting the blight and folly that is single use plastic.

Suzanne Wesetvik is a country dweller, mom and goat lover writing on climate change and action for a future where all the kids are alright.