{"id":42,"date":"2009-09-05T13:41:39","date_gmt":"2009-09-05T17:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/?p=42"},"modified":"2009-09-07T14:40:29","modified_gmt":"2009-09-07T18:40:29","slug":"climate-change-making-it-personal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/2009\/09\/climate-change-making-it-personal\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change: Making it Personal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Blue<\/a>My viewpoint on climate change most closely resembles the \u201cecological lens\u201d described by Parker and Blodgett.\u00a0 I grew up chasing frogs in muddy streams and burying walnuts for the squirrels to eat in the winter.\u00a0 Yup, I was that kid: the one with mulch in her pockets, who never owned a white shirt because they couldn\u2019t keep me out of the red Virginia clay.\u00a0 Needless to say, I developed a sense of belonging outside, and my passion for environmental action comes from a powerful feeling of moral obligation.<\/p>\n

At times, it\u2019s an angry approach.\u00a0 Often, it\u2019s a fearful one.\u00a0 The climate crisis to me doesn\u2019t feel like a great opportunity for new technologies, for human creativity to triumph again.\u00a0 Let\u2019s not forget that it was our own technological brilliance that got us into this mess.\u00a0 While it will certainly be a major part of combating climate change, it seems to me that technological progress has proved itself dangerous as a dominant philosophy of humankind.\u00a0 The cautious little voice inside me murmurs nervously that we cannot just keep living the wasteful, everyday lives that we lead and trust technology to clean up after us.\u00a0 It\u2019s too late for that to be enough, and we have too much to lose.<\/p>\n

And there is the heart of the problem: our increasing disconnection, this perceived \u201cdistance\u201d from the natural world.\u00a0 Now that so many people live in high-rise, concrete apartments on \"New<\/a>wide expanses of asphalt, of course the earth feels far away!\u00a0 If your water comes from a pipe in your kitchen and your food comes from a cold, white grocery store, of course nature doesn\u2019t seem like an active member or influence over your life.\u00a0 It\u2019s too distant to inspire a personal appreciation for the soil that grew your tomatoes, or the chicken that laid your eggs.\u00a0 Even if you know where your food is from, and even if you know all the dangers and potential, consequences of global climate change, without some personal attachment to the earth, making changes to your lifestyle to protect it may seem abstract and forced.\u00a0 To really inspire effective changes on an everyday level, you have to know the issues, but more importantly, you have to care about them on a personal level.\u00a0 Sadly, it\u2019s a smaller number of people who grew up playing tag behind the stalls of the farmer\u2019s market, for whom the earth is an integral, obvious member of our lives everyday.<\/p>\n

The success of the environmental movement is hinged upon inspiring governments, business, and individuals to care about the earth, and to make choices everyday to limit their impact on the planet.\u00a0 The technological and economical lenses are means to an end, but first, everyone has to know, and everyone has to care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My viewpoint on climate change most closely resembles the \u201cecological lens\u201d described by Parker and Blodgett.\u00a0 I grew up chasing frogs in muddy streams and burying walnuts for the squirrels to eat in the winter.\u00a0 Yup, I was that kid: the one with mulch in her pockets, who never owned a white shirt because they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1441,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-two-human-caused-climate-change","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/copenhagen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}