Big Issues: Climate Change

Well, it's starting a bit late, but here we are!

For those that aren't in the know, I'm starting a new blog series - because why not? - looking at some of the big issues in the world today. I asked Facebook what they thought those were, and these are the ones they came up with. This series won't be so much trying to solve these issues; rather, it's looking more at trying to understand why these are such big issues for here and now.

Strangely enough, one of the ones that popped up was climate change. Global warming. All this fun stuff. And so that's what we'll be tackling first.

Now. I don't really want this post to be about proving that climate change and global warming are real things. Because if you can't figure that out by now, I don't know what's going to prove it to you. Natural disasters are going crazy, temperatures are very much misbehaving, and fossil fuel companies have been trying to cover it up for decades. But let's move on from that for now.

It's not too much to say that this may well be the biggest issue of our time. Within our lifetimes, we're likely going to see things around the world getting worse and worse, even if we start making some big changes right now (which probably won't happen). How bad are we talking? Well, given enough time (and what that amount of time is is still pretty up in the air at this point), it would be looking pretty similar to an extinction-level event. We're talking about whether or not the human race will even exist, in a few generations' time. Or at least, exist in the way we know it now. That's the seriousness we're looking at this with.

And perhaps there are some (though I hope not many) more conservative Christians that welcome this idea, and see it as the promised end times - the quicker we all die, the quicker Jesus comes back! Right?
Ahem. Rest assured, that is not where I stand on the issue of climate change. This an issue of tremendous weight that we have needed to combat with serious action for decades, and have done very little about. As such, we are starting to feel the repercussions.
It's starting to get to the level where I think there are probably people that are deciding not to have kids, because they see things only getting worse, and they don't want to raise children to face that future. (Not to mention the other things we'll be talking about over the rest of the series.) And I can understand that. Things are getting pretty crazy, and a lot of the time, they don't seem to be getting any better. Maybe we'll be able to fix it, maybe we won't - but right now, we don't really know. And that's a tough spot to be in.

But hey, let's not end on too negative a note. Let's find some things that we can do. These aren't solutions - but if enough people start doing them, maybe it will help a bit.
1. Eat less meat. This is actually a thing. Meat production is super-bad for the environment. If everyone ate less meat - we'd be doing a lot better. I'm not saying everyone should turn vegetarian (though it's much easier to do these days), but less meat is good. Just make sure you're doing it properly and getting your protein and everything! Eggs are awesome.
2. Don't just recycle. Particularly with China not accepting recycling as much any more, it's tricky to know what's happening with our recycling now, and that process of things. In some cases, depending on where you are, it may just be sitting in storehouses waiting for things to happen to it, or even going to the tip. As such, it's much, much better if you can re-use things as much as possible. Buying less plastic is always good, but hopefully you know that by now. And when you do recycle - please, do it properly. The right things in the right bin. Recycling contamination isn't good.
3. Make a little noise. I'm not very good at this - but if we keep letting our politicians know that this is a big issue for us, that this is the big issue for us, then they might actually agree to do something about it. We only have so much sway as individuals, so we need to get the people that can actually do things to start doing things, you know.

I'm sure other people can add other good things to that list, but there are three to start off with.
This was a tricky issue to start with, because it's both so big, but also rather obvious in many ways - at least, in terms of why it's an issue for our time. I mean, we kinda made it one, because we done goofed and all that jazz. Hopefully we'll be able to get a bit more nuance with some of the other posts to come.

In the meantime, feel free to comment below, and let me know if you like these sorts of posts. Maybe I'll do more!