Feelin' Hot, Hot, Hot

By Geoff Peach, Lake Huron Coastal Centre

This Christmas, one of my daughters presented me with former US Vice President Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." It's one of the best educational resources on the issue of climate change that I have seen. If you haven't seen it, I encourage you to do so.

An Inconvenient Truth provides an excellent overview of the global mechanics of how climate change is occurring, presenting the science in an easy to understand and compelling way. The movie points to how quickly changes are occurring and underscores the urgency with which we need to act. As Mr. Gore points out a number of times in the movie, global warming is not as much a political issue as a moral one. In other words, we cannot leave an issue as important as this solely to politicians to solve. We are all contributors, so we all must be willing participants in addressing the problem.

One of the difficulties with the issue of climate change and one of the reasons why action has been so slow in coming, is that the issue is hard for many people to get their minds around because it’s viewed solely as a global problem.

It is important to realize that climate change will have profound impacts on our local environment and our Lake Huron coast. Lake levels are expected to decline, soils will become drier in summer, precipitation will be more localized and intense, winters less predictable, changes to the lake's ecosystem and changes to our beaches. These are things to which we can all relate. The scientific aspects of this are found in more detail on the Coastal Centre’s website at www.lakehuron.on.ca.

For those who are less science oriented, climate change has serious economic implications that need to be acknowledged.

The United kingdom's Stern Report on the economics of climate change, released this past fall, put some dollar values on climate change if we do not act.

Worldwide, it spoke in terms of trillions of dollars (5% of GDP annually) lost to our economies. On the other hand, the benefits over time of actions to shift the world onto a low-carbon path could be in the order of $2.5 trillion each year.

The conclusion of the Report is essentially optimistic. There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, if we, in the words of the report, “act now and act internationally.

Governments, businesses and individuals all need to work together to respond to the challenge.

Strong, deliberate policy choices by governments are essential to motivate change. But the task is urgent. Delaying action, even by a decade or two, will take us into dangerous territory. We must not let this window of opportunity close.”

While most accept climate change as a serious problem, and that something needs to be done, it's a big issue to get ones head around.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who go from denial to despair without pausing on the intermediate step of actually doing something about the problem. The film ends on an upbeat note of providing a number of actions that individuals can take that will have positive results in lowering Green House Gas emissions.

A lot of the solutions I recall from the old "One Tonne Challenge," that encouraged Canadians to make individual choices in how they used energy and in how they made consumer purchases.

Alas, due to our current government’s shift in priorities, that program is no longer available, and instead, the government is proposing measures that won't take full effect for another 10-40 years. By that time, we will be witnesses to fundamental changes to our environment.

The question that I ask myself is "Can I just stand by and let this happen?" My answer, for my kids sake, must be, that we did take action, that we chose a new direction.

Our family has begun to make some conscious decisions in recent years about what we purchase, and how we use energy.

Our house is heated with a ground source heat pump, we use energy efficient lighting, have switched to Energy Star appliances and drive a fuel-efficient car. We have a clothes line for drying clothes in the warmer weather, we recycle and compost.

We think about our purchases at the store – look for the least packaging, purchase locally produced food and buy re-cycled and re-cycleable items.

These are all easy, manageable things that we can all do.

Of course, once we have made our individual choice to take climate change action, we still need our governments to take action on industry and businesses, including action within the government itself.

We need to let our politicians know how important this issue is.

Al Gore provides some insight into how the political mind works. He says “If an issue is not on the tongues of their constituents tongues, it’s easy for them to ignore it, to say ‘well, we'll deal with that tomorrow.’

Climate change needs to be on the tips of our tongues. Our politicians need to hear from us today.

Please join me and the Coastal Centre in educating people about this urgent issue, taking actions that lower carbon emissions, and making sure our politicians know that this issue is on the tips of our tongues.

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