12 Sep Life and Climate Change

Climate change is not a problem because of temperature increases, or weather changes or melting sea ice in the Arctic. It is a problem because it impacts Life.

Life as we know it is disappearing before our very eyes. Ecosystems are dying as they are caught in the wrong environment. Worst of all, we are aiding and abetting this death not just by pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere, but more importantly, by deliberately eating up the food chain.

Photosynthesis is the main Life process that removes carbon from the atmosphere and sequesters it. Despite all that we’ve done, photosynthesis is still sequestering 20 times more carbon annually than we’re emitting through human activities. If we start nurturing Life, mainly by choosing wisely what’s at the end of our dinner forks, then we can enable photosynthesis and the ecosystems that regenerate around photosynthesis to undo the damage that we’ve done.

If forests regenerate and the ocean once again teems with Life, climate change will be mitigated buying us time to fix our energy infrastructure issues. To achieve this, all we have to do is to leave Life alone. Stop catching it, grazing it, mowing it, milking it, killing it. Just leave it alone.

Even a small child can do that. Why can’t we?