Climate Change

In Harwood Community Garden, southwest corner of Whitridge and Greenmount Avenue, Baltimore (The garden is briefly discussed in this 2018 article: "What’s Growing in Baltimore? Community Gardens!")

Many of my previous posts could be tagged as about climate change since trying to reduce greenhouse gases relates to a lot of my habits going back to the 1980s, such as walking or eating close to a vegetarian diet. This past October, as I looked over the points raised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C,  I realized that I should have been much more and consistently active over the years.

I like this perspective from environmentalist Paul Hawken:
"The single most important thing to do about reversing global warming is to recognize there is no one single thing, that addressing global warming is a way of seeing the world, a way of being in the world, a pathway to understanding that human systems created the problem and thus the cure is within the whole of the system. The most impactful act an individual can do will depend on that person’s life, knowledge, community, influence, relationships, courage. It will be different for everyone. Together, we act and make a difference. It is not about what 'I' can do. It is about what we can do. Carbon is an atom (and molecule) that holds hands and collaborates. That is what global warming is telling us to do.” From "16 Sustainability Leaders Weigh In: How YOU Can Help To Reverse Global Warming"

While I was teaching in China, I was so immersed in living there but losing touch with life in the US that in 1994 I decided to go to the English-language room of the Beijing National Library and read Al Gore's Earth in the Balance. So much has changed in China since then. I usually felt happy there from spending time with my students and Chinese colleagues. I have too many thoughts about that time and my life now. 

"--for time is the longest distance between two places." Tom in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. I'm quoting Tom, but I more often feel like what his sister felt. That's one reason why going to China was one of my best decisions.