Climate Change - a hard truth

I have a good friend Andre who lives in Salmo BC and writes regularly for the Nelson Daily News. A couple of his most recent pieces speak to the global emergency we call climate change. This paragraph in his February article "Midpoint Crisis" is a profound call for a reality check:

"It took a century of burning fossil fuel to create the blanket that is trapping the sun’s heat, and scientists tell us that it will take a century of fossil fuel abstinence to rid the world of the blanket. This means that we are faced with the prospect of having to start paying for something from which neither we, nor our children and their children will benefit. Nobody alive today knows with any degree of certainty whether our efforts to reduce greenhouse gases will be sufficient to preserve the Gulf Stream or to recover the glaciers and polar ice caps. The first beneficiaries — if there are to be beneficiaries — of the sacrifices we must make for the rest of our lives will be the generations of the 22nd century. The shift from a lifestyle built on wasting resources to cater to our cravings for pleasure and convenience to a lifestyle requiring sacrifices to hopefully benefit humanity (and all other life forms) hundreds of years from now calls for a sweeping change in our thinking."

This is a call to make choices about our lifestyle habits from the perspective of the greater good of all. Those words have come easily to me in sacred ritual space, I'm wondering just how easily I will embrace them in the reality of day to day living. When we consider that almost every choice we make whether it be, walk, cycle, take the bus or drive, eat local food or imported, use recycled or new disposable products, buy new or used clothing, has a direct impact on energy emissions. As Andre says - it's time for a sweeping change in our thinking. Are we up for it I wonder??

For more food for thought check out Andre's website at www.andrecarrel.com