This week I saw a video by Extinction Rebellion by Marc Lopatin and read a book by Jonathan Safran Foer . . . both dealing with . . . when are we going to act on the climate emergency.
Extinction Rebellion posted a video called, “Making the ‘Emergency’ feel like one” by Marc Lopatin this week. He spoke about how vulnerable we are. How vulnerable our food system is. I couldn’t agree with him more. That was one of the main reasons why I moved to my cabin in the middle of rural America.
The truth is that the grid provides our heat, food, electricity, and water. And, the 1% running that show do not care if we live or die. They only want to make money. The class I took on the environment taught me about resource depletion besides all about the CO2 in the atmosphere. That is when I realized I wanted control over my food, heat, and water.
Why don’t people take action all the while hearing this is a climate emergency? We are insulated . . . in a bubble . . . pushing buttons to turn on our heat, electricity, our water. Driving to Big Box Stores buying whatever we want from thousands of mile away without any thought of the ramifications of all of those actions. And, we are stuck in many ways.
I am trying to grow my own food. How many people really know how to do that? I know I have so much to learn. This year I made progress, and my soil is a little better than last year. I grew a few more vegetables . . . but not enough to get through the winter . . . let alone the next growing season. How many people have this as a goal? How many people know this is important?
Where is the emergency? There are forest fires, droughts, and flooding . . . but they are isolated incidences that we are not in the middle of if we don’t live there . . . and we forget . . . we go back to the day to day routine. The Earth is warming up very slowly . . . too slow to think this is an emergency. And, much of the evidence is far away. Or is it?
In the area in Wisconsin where I live, there is so much more rain. In the spring, the farmers couldn’t plant, and the in the fall, they couldn’t harvest. As I harvested my pole beans, many pods had mold inside or were starting to sprout because of the moisture. This November, several nights were at 4 degrees. Really? In November? Never. This week we had five cloudy days in a row. Last night I was eating by candlelight because all my solar lights were dead. I could say it was romantic . . . but not really.
If we look, we all are experiencing some form of the climate crisis where we live. It is not life threatening right now for most of us . . . but how long until it is. Until we decide to act.
Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, “We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast,” was a gift from a friend. It is about the need for us to go to a plant based diet. But, more than anything, it is a discussion on how we get people convinced to act and make that change. He states that a plant based diet is not a silver bullet solution for the climate crisis . . . but we can’t solve the climate crisis without it.
Yes, how do we get people to act. After that class I took in 2009, I was already a vegetarian but still on dairy. A friend threw down the gauntlet and told everyone in our activist group that if we are environmentalists, we will be vegan. He ruffled a lot of feathers . . . but I knew he was right . . . and that is how I got off of dairy.
Safran Foer brings up so many ways to look at the reality of the climate crisis . . . calling everyone to act. He brings up our relationships with each other as one of those ways. I don’t know if my friends and family look at me as just an annoyance or an inspiration to become vegetarian and vegan.
There were many curious things he brought up in the book. Who acted and who didn’t . . . knowing what we all know about the climate crisis or other atrocities in history. Why don’t we make a sacrifice and change our eating habits. It is our life we are saving, too?
Time is running out. What will push us over the edge to act? Will there be a tipping point? I hope so . . . and I hope it is soon.
I highly recommend watching the Extinction Rebellion video by Marc Lopatin and reading the book by Jonathan Safran Foer. They both just may get you to act.
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An Off Grid Life - Climate Crisis Solutions 
The truth is, most people don’t care. People have become very detached from the wider world and when I look around me here where I live, people just want whatever they can get for their budget. You will never reach out to everyone, or most people. You will only change them by changing the companies they feed off of, not the other way around.
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I think people are getting it but the change is slow. Extinction Rebellion in the UK, where the video was filmed, had some 30,000 people in the streets. They have been able to keep the momentum going, which is awesome. The last global student strike had a remarkable increase here in the US from the student strike March 15 just six months ago. So I have some hope. The video really spelled out what we are up against, which is food, and how we just take it for granted.
I think we change what companies sell us. There are many more vegan choices out there. Just look at the no gluten world. It is catering to all those people. General Mills and other companies of the like are starting to buy their grain from farmers who practice regenerative agriculture. Hopefully it is not just greenwashing but it is a positive step. Regenerative ag is a big solution for the climate crisis. Obviously we have a long way to go.
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