Hotter than boiled beef

By Craig Westcott / July 21, 2023

Last summer, we broke down and bought an air conditioner for the bedroom.

Whoever would have thought we’d need such a thing in Newfoundland? But with the bedroom boiling every night, and the certainty that things are going to get even hotter because of global warming, it was time, to employ a much-overused term by government press release writers, to make an ‘investment.’

For a while, this past spring it looked like it was folly to have bought it. But by late June the planet lit up again, literally, with heat waves and droughts and wildfires, and enough humidity, even in Newfoundland, to choke a cat.

Historic temperate records across the planet are being broken nearly every day. How much hotter will it get, and how soon, before more of the planet becomes unlivable?

So far, governments the world over, and ours perhaps most of all, have paid a lot of lip service to climate change. They’ve sputtered bureaucratic jargon and proposed window dressing policies like ‘net zero’ and ‘carbon credits,’ none of which actually do anything to reduce oil consumption or reverse climate change.

There are real things the government could do besides talk. It could legislate the size of cars, SUVs and pickups to make them smaller and more fuel efficient. It could spend less money on roads and more on public transit. It could regulate the transportation industry better so that on the mainland, at least, travelling between cities by electric train is as good an option as flying. Closer to home, municipal governments could ban drive-thrus and also spend more on public transit.

But, as you can only judge someone by past behaviour, governments of any level are not going to do much to actually fight climate change.

That means it’s up to us little people to do what we can to turn down the temperature.

But, what, realistically, can we do?

Not a lot, individually. But if everyone does something, it will add up. You can stop using the drive-thrus when you see lineups of cars stacked out to the street. You can go for a Sunday walk, instead of a Sunday drive. You can try to carpool with a neighbour or colleague and cut down on the factory beef when you eat out (it sounds funny, but cattle herds contribute tonnes of gas to the atmosphere with their flatulence). Stop ordering so much from Amazon, delete your Wayfair account, and buy stuff that is shipped to the stores in bulk, instead of employing a fleet of courier vans and jets to rush you a lipstick or a new pair of jeans.

Look, I’m no David Suzuki. I know oil is not going away, not for a while. But it is going away sooner than many people think. We’ve got no choice but to cut down on it, if we want to continue living in a hospitable and civilized world.

It’s not hyperbole to say the earth is burning up and things are getting hotter and scarier much sooner than even many climate scientists expected.

Do we really want to be remembered as the generation of morons who were too stupid and greedy to save this beautiful planet for our children and grandchildren?

The clock has run out for arguing whether climate change is real. It’s here. Each of us has to do … something. Maybe many small things, but things that count.

What are you doing to save the planet?