How old will you be in 2050?

Time is an odd thing. It moves quickly and slowly all at the same time. 2050 is the year set for many climate goals - including going '“net-zero” for our society carbon footprint. 2050 is 29 years away. So while I have a friend that just turned 30 - so this is a lifetime away for her - I was shocked to realize that I wrote a paper for 9th grade biology (on an Atari, with a dot matrix printer) on Global Warming - The Greenhouse Effect - and that was 33 years ago. So we’ve known (and ignored) what we were facing for more than my friend’s lifetime - and we haven’t - to date - taken a whole lot of action.

With a shrinking timeline (29 years) with an even “scarier” time line of 12 years (from the IPCC report from 2018) that is now 10 years and counting down - for taking serious action - we are going to need a plan. The 12 years from the IPCC report in 2018 wasn’t that the world was ending, more that if we haven’t taken serious and substantial actions for change it will be really really really hard to meet the goals of keeping warming below 2 degrees.

I like having a plan as a framework, as a map to get where I want to go. I’ll take a side trail and make decisions in the moment - but having a lay of the land, and a goal as well as knowing what time it is, helps me not miss out on the day.

Hence ramping up my plans for getting to a net-zero carbon lifestyle - while living in suburbia. I’m not off-grid, I have a job, I have hobbies, I really like to eat. I don’t have kids - but then some larger percent of adults in my age range than you would expect also don’t have kids. If anything, having kids adds an even greater level of ethics to act for their sake.

What I’ve realized is that there are a whole lot of people like me - demographically in many ways - age, (general) lifestyle, education, who do not deny that the climate crisis is driven by us humans. And yet - as a culture, as a society, the norm is still to mow the grass lawn with a gas (fossil fuel) mower, buy a brand-new gas (fossil fuel) car, cook on a “natural” gas (fossil fuel) range, heat our homes with gas (fossil fuel) and use electricity like its going out of style, eat a whole lot of beef. We prefer to have what we want when we want it, to be as comfortable as possible, to stubbornly stick to what we think is comfortable even if we know it contributes to someone elses discomfort either somewhere else in the world or some other time in the future.

If we believe there is a problem and we don’t take actions to solve the problem, then we are really no better than the basic climate denier. At this point there are no brownie points for accepting there is a climate crisis.

While acknowledging there is a problem is the first step, the key piece is moving towards action. I’ve seen videos explaining that the same challenge people face with saving for retirement (its so far away, and hey here is a great thing for me to buy (granted there are a whole lot of other issues too)) are similar to the challenge for acting on an individual level related to the environment and the climate crisis - it feels far away and many of us will be insulated from the worst effects - for awhile.

I don’t think solving the climate crisis is entirely in the hands of individuals, although all governments and industry/corporations - are made up of individuals. While I may be able to have collective influence on government policy or industry/corporate behavior, I have direct control over my individual actions.

My goal is to develop a personal strategic plan around my own climate and environment impacts - to share that plan and actions here, to continue to learn as much as a I can, to help move us as a society to a more sustainable culture. And I want you to share with me your thoughts, concerns, ideas, and your strategy too.

Thanks for reading!