What if the grid bringing electricity into your home, assuming you have no essential health needs for power, were turned off for two hours a day? What would you do? Read a book, work in your garden, go for a walk, visit neighbors, take a nap, sketch, swim, mend...? The possibilities are endless. Our worries about policies that have an overall benefit for the planet may be groundless. We might even learn to relax.
This website was built by AI. It's allowing me to write and show what I want, but if I were less concerned about maintaining an original voice, it would have written and chosen images for me. Okay, AI, you win -- but at a hidden cost. This website costs me less than $100 a year, but the use of AI raises electricity bills. In a Dutch researcher's peer-reviewed analysis reported in Scientific American, the New York Times and elsewhere, by 2027 use of AI servers could require an equivalent of what entire countries such as Argentina, the Netherlands and Sweden each use in a year. Don't think you won't be paying for that. Just ask AI.
Climate change can be like Voldemort: that which shall not be named. But if we don't talk about it, we may be giving up our chances to take a stand. Individually we can only do so much: drive less, make our housing more energy-efficient, eat local, shop local -- it all makes a difference, but real change comes from above. One way to learn what government is planning is to attend meetings of local sustainability groups. Mothers Out Front is a welcoming organization with many local chapters. Click the button to learn more.
Remember the required reading in middle and high school when we were introduced to dystopian literature? Books like 1984, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies. Author and school teacher Nick Fuller Googins says that dystopian reading, especially in our formative years, can lead us feel helpless in the face of a traumatic future. Check out Nick's new book The Great Transition that demonstrates (with a hell of a good story) his belief in a more hopeful and less resigned future.
I like to see and talk with people in person. I think being in the same room with other thinking humans leads to stronger memories, more potential for long-term connections, and incentives to take action. Even before COVID turned us all into Zoomers, social scientist Robert Putnam lamented the loss of shared activities in his book Bowling Alone. Putnam's research indicated that being alone damages our physical and "civic" health, that is, our ability to interact and help make determinations about what we want. I'm willing to take a chance on in-person gatherings. I hope you will, too.
Well, mine, of course. I'm Wendy Skinner, citizen of Ithaca New York. A former journalist and editor/ghost writer for a small press, I am pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Stonecoast, University of Southern Maine, where I have the joy of learning from and working with authors Rick Bass, Lily King, Morgan Talty and others. My focus on climate writing extends to my own work. I am writing a novel set in 2050 about life and endless war in a hot and waterless prairie state, life that while arduous has many rewards.
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