2021 Life Logs, Day 217: Not My Thing
Date: Thursday, August 5, 2021
Weather: Overcast with Continued Rain; High Temp 71, Low 63 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Two days ago I said in this log that I would not be winning any gold medals for my house cleaning hurdles this week. That is still true, but today I decided I just might pull out of the games. I’ve never loved house cleaning, but I am finding it intolerable right now. It is just not my thing right now. I’d rather go get a job so I could pay someone else to crawl on their hands and knees to clean floor level cabinets. I will persist, but I am having trouble convincing myself that this is fun. What was fun was watching the US women’s soccer team win the Bronze. It was not the Gold they were expected to win, but today’s game against Australia was a good one. My soccer hero, 36 year-old Megan Rapinoe scored two goals today as did 39 year-old Carli Lloyd. This made Lloyd the first US women’s soccer player to score in four different Olympics. Those two women were the oldest on the field and they were spectacular. If Lloyd decides that this was her last game, she certainly will go out on a high note. And I just finished watching the US ‘A’ Team will the Gold in women’s beach volleyball. April Ross now has a Gold, a Silver, and a Bronze and her new partner, Alix Klineman, gets a Gold in her first Olympic competition.
Despite not liking it, I reached my cleaning goal for today but haven’t set one for tomorrow. Maybe I’ll take the day off. At 1 pm I meet with a woman from the Falmouth Arts Center to have her give me guidance in how to get my table loom up and running. I haven’t used it for 40 years so I am assuming I will need to replace some parts. I took it to Heather’s as Ollie has expressed some interest in learning to weave. It could be a fun winter activity.
This morning I saw a video on Facebook of Camp Yawgoog in Rhode Island where Sam and Jonah are in Scout Camp. It was pouring rain and not a creature was moving about. We had a few hours this afternoon with no rain before it started again. Hopefully that was the case there and the boys got to get out of their tents and do something fun. I’m trying to imagine what a wet, muddy mess the boys’ clothes and shoes will be when Heather picks them up on Saturday. I also saw a post on Heather’s Facebook page of a Newsweek Opinion article from her debate on a Newsweek podcast last week with a climate denier. The debate question was, “Is global warming an emergency?” The headline, “Climate Change Is the Biggest Threat We’re Facing—Period.” Go, Heather. I am posting the article here in case you are interested in reading it.
OPINION
Climate Change Is the Biggest Threat We’re Facing—Period. |
HEATHER GOLDSTONE
CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER, THE WOODWELL CLIMATE RESEARCH CENTER
The following is a lightly edited transcript of remarks made by Heather Goldstone during a Newsweek podcast debate on climate change. You can listen to the podcast by Googling The Debate Podcast.
Is Global Warming an Emergency?
There is extensive science that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are completely unprecedented. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have not been this high in over 800,000 years. Modern humans have been around for a little bit less than half that. If you look at the last 10,000 years, at the evolution of agriculture, at the entire development of civilization, that has all taken place in a time of remarkable climate stability. It’s that stability that has made it possible for civilization and the societies we know to develop.
The fact that we are now so far outside the bounds of anything that we’ve seen in the course of human evolution is an emergency. It’s a cause for huge concern.
Carbon dioxide has always been in the atmosphere and it’s an incredibly important part of our planet that we have had this warming layer. What’s really critical here is to realize is that you can cherry-pick specific statistics to support an argument, but there is no scientific debate about the fact that the buildup of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is causing dangerous climate change.
So you have to really stop and ask a deep question: What would drive some people to deny an overwhelming body of science that tells us we are headed in a really dangerous direction.
We have a body of science that has begun answering that question. There are a few answers, but in general, what seems to motivate this denial is that when information conflicts with a deeply held worldview, deeply held values or beliefs, we will often reject that information.
When we talk to climate scientists there is no question that human beings are causing dangerous climate change. This conclusion has been come to over and over in large consensus reports in individual studies. Does that mean we know every single thing about climate change? Absolutely not, and nobody’s claiming that. But we certainly know enough to know that we are in the midst of an emergency and that we need to act urgently and dramatically to respond to it.
It’s really a false dichotomy that has been around for a long time, that we have to choose between a healthy environment and a healthy economy, when in actual fact, what the science tells us is that a healthy environment is the underpinning of a healthy economy.
At Woodwell Climate Research Center, we’ve been working with McKinsey and Company, and what our work is showing is that climate change is material, it poses material risks to economic prosperity. Investments in green energy in renewable energy, in the kinds of changes that we need to make to meet the challenge of climate change, they actually earn back more than you invest in them.
In the past month, we have seen more than 500 deaths due to climate change- fueled extreme weather events. They are more extreme and made more extreme and more deadly by climate change.
Heather Goldstone is the chief communications officer of the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
