Lately every time I log into Facebook I am reminded of climate change.
What a far way the website has come in the 12 years I have been using it. Originally Facebook was my way to communicate with my family and friends back home (and maybe to let my exes know that I was having so much fun without them). Now it is a way for likeminded political views to preach to people who need not be preached to. And it has become ubiquitous with my friends showing off their children, so much so that I have way more of any idea of how the children look than my friends themselves.
As a vegetarian health and wellness writer, I have a lot of green living friends in my feed. In the last month they have been scaring the crap out of me.
They have been putting up posts like the following: hundreds of millions of lives are at stake by 2040, if current trends continue of global warming, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The UN examined how much better 1.5 degrees of warming would be opposed to 2. A 2 degree Celcius increase means that the world’s food supply would become dramatically less secure, among other things.
We are on track for 4 degrees of warming.
As New York magazine writer David Wallace-Wells writes, “Permission to freak out.” (1)
I have gotten so used to rising temperatures that, as a Canadian, I complain when winter even happens.
We don’t only have to worry about food shortages, cities being wiped out and wars erupting. We also have to worry about our mental health. A study in the journal PNAS found that a 1 degree Celsius increase in temperature results in a greater prevalence of mental health issues. A five year warming of 1 degree related to a 2 percent increase in mental health issues. The women and the poor in particular were disproportionately impacted. (2)
So before you regret reading this article, it’s time to look at what can be done, if not to stop the rise in temperature but to slow it. You can get smarter about how you use energy. You can support carbon pricing. You can keep life simple, the way your grandmother did, and maybe even enjoy it more. “We use too much, too much of it is toxic and we don’t share it very well. But that’s not the way things have to be. Together, we can build a society based on better not more, sharing not selfishness, community not division.” ~ The Story of Stuff (3)
Also, a huge decrease in meat-eating has been declared as “essential” to avoid climate breakdown. Beef consumption needs to fall by 90% and be replaced with five more times grains and pulses. (4) I was told the best way to go seamlessly more plant-based was to find the recipes you make vegetarian anyway. Then you can swap recipes that have simple solutions, such as a meat chili for a veggie chili. As the final step, you can find new recipes that you love and have never tried before.
Halting or slowing this climate change is a massive project. It is going to require us to live differently and to think differently. My Facebook friends are spreading awareness, even if the awareness is frightening. Living with our heads in the sand is what got us here in the first place.