It’s that time of year again…15 October 2009 is the third Blog Action Day. This year the subject of conversation for the day is “Climate Change”. Close to 7,000 bloggers are participating this year.
What Is Blog Action Day?
Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. One day. One issue. Thousands of voices.
Why Climate Change?
Climate change affects us all and it threatens more than the environment. It threatens to cause famine, flooding, war, and millions of refugees.
Given the urgency of the issue of climate change and the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, we think the blogosphere has the unique opportunity to mobilize millions of people around expressing support for finding a sustainable solution to the climate crisis.
Living in the deep south of the United States on the coastal plain of Texas just a few miles from the Gulf of Mexico, keeps you watching the weather with a more than casual eye. Changes in weather patterns, whether natural or manmade, can and will have devastating consequences. As last year showed in the southeastern US and this year has shown in southern Texas, shifts in rainfall patterns cause rapid loss of crops and livestock. The economic and social disruption these losses cause, trickle throughout the economy.
In the decade and a half I have lived in my present home I have watched the seasonal wetlands in the woods around my home dry up. Where once you needed rubber boots to walk the woods each winter, water hardly stands after a rain these days.The drainage ditch running beside my neighbors place once ran all year long with water…Flowing water from a water table close to the surface. The last five years or so, that ditch has only flowed with rainwater runoff. In the drier time lately, even that runoff wasn’t always a sure thing as the ground saoked up most of the rainfall.
When we first moved here we had a large garden each year. Within the first decade, we gave up due to the higher summer temperatures and lower summer rainfall totals. The last three years of plantings where not even fruitful. The harvest in those years didn’t even make the table. What little grew went to the bugs and the animals.
Many people seem to believe that the whole climate change crisis is a hoax. The science is said to be fixed. It’s a conspiracy to allow for environmental regulations. My only answer is to invite them to move to the Gulf Coast. Try living in a hurricane target. Live through the increasingly more powerful threats each year as the Gulf of Mexico and the tropical Atlantic store more and more heat energy…Heat energy that is converted into the very storms that pound these shores. The Katrina’s, the Rita’s, the Ike’s…All of these storms in just a few years have added to greater and greater damages spread over a very wide portion of the Deep South. Add in the fact that this is the very same area where most of the country’s refining capacity is located and you have an additional threat.
This year the center of the nation has been experiencing cooler than normal temperatures. This was while my area had a warmer than normal spring and summer…While California was subject to the worst drought in a half a century. This was while the reports were showing that the oceans were warmer than ever. While glaciers and sea ice melted all over the world…We here from some people that this is all just a cycle we are going through…I don’t think so…Do you?
In planning for my future all of these things are entering into the factors driving my decisions. Where will the rising temperatures be moderated enough to be not too uncomfortable? Where will the patterns of rainfall be most conductive to the raising of food? Where can you find the traditions of self reliance that were used in the past to locally produce what was needed to survive? All of these questions need to be in our thoughts as we move into the coming decades.
And if, as some think, the climate change is accelerating, we could be seeing shifts in populations the likes of which the world has never seen. As it becomes impossible to survive in the margins, the margins will shift. America’s Southwest could be in real trouble if the rains and the snows don’t fall…To see what might happen you only have to visit Kenya. Dead and dieing animals, people dieing from the lack of food and water, malnutrition among whole populations.
