Can we change minds faster than the climate is changing?

Let's start with the good news. This morning we got to read a wonderful story, very well told, titled In the Kingdom of the Bears, by Jude Isabella, in Hakai magazine. If offers, we think, a needed and profound insight into the relationship that should exist between humans and the rest of nature.

we also live in a kingdom of the bears

Photo by J. Harrington

Now, for the, as Paul Harvey used to say, "rest of the story."

There's a very cautionary opinion piece in today's Star Tribune that struct close to our heart. More frequent, intense rains imperil 'local foods' sector fits well with the recent release of the IPCC's report on our necessity to promptly respond to global warming. Unfortunately, it may be analogous to whistling past the graveyard if the data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communications is to be believed. That's where we learned, to our dismay, that the number of Minnesotans who believe that global warming is happening is less than the national average. That doesn't seem to fit well with an image of "above average" Lake Woebegoners, does it?

There's even worse news, as we see it. From Yale again: Most Liberal Democrats Say Global Warming Will Be a Very Important Issue When Deciding for Whom to Vote in the 2018 Congressional Election, but Moderate-Conservative Democrats rate global warming as less of a priority than All Registered Voters. Have the Russians, or the Chinese, or the Martians, managed to get some sort of perception-altering drugs into our water supplies or the air we breathe? Have Moderate-Conservative Democrats given up on their children's having any kind of decent future?

The New Yard Times focuses the issue this way: Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040. If we consider local foods as a significant part of a local economy, as we do, the piece in the Star Tribune intimates the crisis has already started. And yet, almost one-third of the voters in this country, and in Minnesota, don't believe there's an issue. Are all of them supporters of the misguided, malevolent, individual currently occupying the White House?

Here's a list of three resources, some of which we admit we haven't yet managed to  make time to finish reading our very own selves. Shall we read, or at least skim, each and see if we can do something to help educate each other, including the Moderate-Conservative Democrats? (And, now that we think of it, did Yale not survey any Independents?)

• Drawdown, 100 solutions to reverse global warming


• Climate Change Needs Behavior Change


• Overwhelmed by climate change? Here's what you can do 

The Question

by Theo Dorgan

When the great ships come back,
and come they will,
when they stand in the sky
all over the world,
candescent suns by day,
radiant cathedrals in the night,
how shall we answer the question:

What have you done
with what was given you,
what have you done with
the blue, beautiful world?

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.