Actively fighting climate change is our responsibility

Hits: 263

Weather chaos threatens us

In the last 2 years we have witnessed sustained hurricane winds up to 200 MPH . Irma is one example with 185 MPH winds. In the last 3 months we have seen a year of rain falling in just a few days in Texas.  Twenty million Floridians were threatened by a hurricane so wide it covered nearly the entire state east to west and north to south. How many billions of dollars in damage? – nearly half a trillion with Irma weighing at up to $300 B and Harvey at $190 B.

Climate will keep getting more erratic, surprising us with rising oceans, loss of coastal cities and destruction of crops. This can easily lead to food insecurity and mass migrations. The forces that drive a solution lie with us just as much as with experts, corporations and governments – if not more so.

We need to be part of the solution

Promising solutions lie with innovators in agriculture and engineering. Some of these are driven by major corporations like SpaceX, Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft. A portion of these innovations lie in governments like Australia’s, farming desert coasts with sea water and sunshine. Elon Musk’s brother is farming indoors in New York City making use of shipping containers to grow reliable food locally.

What can we do? We can bring food security to our own communities. How much will this cost? Not a whole lot. When we grow local food indoors and year-round, we can make a difference between starvation, chaos, disease, mass migration and warfare on the one hand and survival on the other. Having enough food to eat is a major stabilizer that can be the difference between maintaining our civilization and letting chaos rain.

It’s easy to accomplish this powerful goal

We can no longer rely on vast international supply chains to bring us the resources we need from afar. Have you checked on the availability and cost of plywood recently? Let’s be pioneers in our own communities by growing food in our schools, basements and underused commercial and industrial buildings. We can do this now.

Author: herkimerblog

This blog is my perspective on dwelling in our small village nestled among beautiful forests, farms and open landscapes. Educated in Israel and the US, I have an MS in Computer Science. My viewpoint has been shaped by world travel, friends and benefactors both strangers and people I know. Linda Kaidan