I'm not a religious person in the conventional sense, but this new presentation on climate change made me sick to my stomach, put the fear of god into me, and doubled my resolve to do far more to reduce my carbon and ecological footprints. I'll share those actions on this blog, through posts and video, in the coming weeks and months, and I hope you'll do the same.
The presentation is boring in some parts, and it uses charts and scientific jargon. Please be patient. At a minimum, you should thumb through the slides, and listen to the last third of the presentation to get the key points. The key takeaways for me are:
- If we don't make big changes, we're looking at dangerous global warming by 2035, front and centre in our lifetimes. I don't even want to think about our kids' lifetimes.
- We, the 1%, are responsible for 50% of global emissions, not China, not India, not the world's billions of poor. Changes to our lifestyles (flying less, driving less, eating less) are the only place and the only hope for avoiding the worst effects of climate change.
- Action is critical. This is about individual action, community-level dialogue, and collective action in the form of climate politics at the local, provincial and federal levels. We must demand regulation from our governments, starting now.