The Palisadian-Post has partnered with locally founded environmental nonprofit organization Resilient Palisades to deliver a weekly “green tip” to our readers. This week’s tip was written by Sheda Morshed.
Last month’s high temperatures in Oregon, Washington and Canada could not have happened without a boost from human-caused global warming, researchers have concluded in a rapid climate attribution study of the heat wave in the Pacific Northwest.
Lasting from June 25 to July 1, the heat wave affected areas that rarely, if ever, experience such temperatures. More than 500 people and an estimated one billion marine animals along Canada’s Pacific Coast perished.
The British Columbia town Lytton burned to the ground due to fires caused by soaring temperatures, according to Independent. More locally, intense heat and record-low snowpacks have led to severely depleted reservoirs and the Colorado River—Southern California’s two major sources for freshwater, the Washington Post reported.
You don’t have to be a detective to recognize rapidly changing weather patterns across the globe. And you don’t have to subscribe to a scientific journal to understand the link to human activities, i.e., global temperatures began to spike following the Industrial Revolution, and data shows they’ve steadily increased in line with human-induced global warming emissions.
The answer is not to give up hope or, worse, look away. Instead, now is the time that every individual can reexamine their actions to identify steps that reduce their daily carbon footprint.
There are so many opportunities to do so without sacrifice. Would you care if your lawn is cut with a gas or a battery/electric operated mower? Wouldn’t a “plant-based burger” suit your family just fine every other time you went out for a burger? Could you plant a tree or support a local tree planting project to improve our city? Small actions really do create big impacts.
This week’s tip: Calculate your family’s carbon footprint using any online “carbon calculator.” Your carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) generated by your daily activities. Then Google “climate change heat dome” and read just one of the myriad articles describing the extreme weather phenomenon, which is expected to reoccur in the next five years.
Doing both these things can propel you to see the world with hope goggles that identify easy, actionable solutions to help reduce your output of global emissions.
At this critical time, we each have the choice to either be proactive or, we wait and become reactive. Which option will you go for?
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