Saving the World

Every now and then I worry that it is so easy to live in a bit of a bubble.  I go about my daily grind and think that I am doing my bit to live responsibly and then I get a wake-up call that maybe the bubble is a little too small and not enough is being done.

I recycle plastic, glass and paper and take it to the Oasis Work centre for disabled adults down the road – I pat myself on the back every week because not only am I caring for the environment, I am also supporting the disabled. Every week we get an organic vegetable box from a township project – Harvest of Hope. So, again two birds with one stone – supporting the community project and going green. My kids have been collecting newspaper to take to school recycling projects since they first started school. So I have this illusion that the country is going greener.

This morning I was waiting in the car for my daughter (as moms do) when the dustbin collection was being done. One guy dropped a black bag and out tumbled cereal boxes, bottles and paper. Further down the road the local bergie was retrieving cans from a bin. I wondered if these people had not heard about recycling. This is a middle-class neighbourhood, with kids at schools in the area who are probably also promoting recycling.

I think we way underestimate the effects of global warming. We live as if there is no tomorrow. We have become a wasteful society, throwing away half of what we buy – either in terms of the packaging or going by sell-by dates and pitching into the bin reliant on computer dates rather than what should be our experience of the look and taste of food. Even the organic produce at the supermarket comes in plastic and Styrofoam which cannot be recycled.

When we were in Greenland a while ago, we experienced firsthand the effects of global warming on the glacier and saw how it affected the lives of the local people - changing their hunting, living and eating patterns. The irony is that the Inuit people live very close to nature, taking only what they need from the land or sea. Now life as they knew it no longer exists. While we are talking about climate change and global warming around the dinner table, it is actually happening in Greenland – they are the first to be feeling the effects and already having to adapt their lifestyles which is something we are all going to have to do.

The Illulisat glacier - a churning mass of icebergs.

Our young guide pointed out to us how the knowledge of the ancestors has become less valuable because of the change in climate patterns. The river that was once there is now dry, the glacier that covered the hills has disappeared, the reindeer that were always there when hunting season opened, no longer show up. Before it never rained in December and January, now it does.

While the world is being wracked by extreme weather – droughts and floods – it washes over us from the television screens in our living rooms and we once again think that “it can’t happen to us”. But it is happening to us now. And we can make a difference. Our children and future generations bear the greatest burden of the effects of climate change. We owe it to the children to leave behind an earth worth living on. 

World image courtesy of Google Maps