Very late week #2 wrap up

Week #2 task- to get educated!
Read about climate change and hopefully be more effective in action with new found understanding.

Well, I have to admit failure in this task- I was hoping to be able to provide a dot point summary of climate change causes and effects, but have avoided doing this for months now. I did lots of reading, but fell victim to the sort of problems I was talking about in the original post- that climate change is such a huge and confusing problem (set of interrelated problems), with so many ramifications and scary scary predictions attached, that I really did never sit still with the reports for long enough to write a coherent summary. I got depressed and anxious, and went to do something else.

So, I have decided that this is something which I will keep working at, but since it was blocking my personal greening progress (and the progress of the blog), I'm going to put it aside for now. I am also a little scared to write a summary, since there are so many summaries out there, and very few of them agree with each other.

Here is what I think is essential.

Climate change is real. For evidence, go here to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
Climate change is happening now, and for a report that says the above report is far too conservative, gives a very good quick summary and action plan, go here, , to Climate Code Red.
To mitigate climate change will require action from communities, businesses, governments, nations and the international community. And I want to be part of that.

So, I think reading this information actually made me less effective at what I want to be doing (becoming closer to carbon neutral, talking and collaborating with other like minded people), simply because I was paralysed with, well, fear.

So I am now going to put my new knowledge aside and get back to doing what I do best- being optimistic. And getting back to taking action, because really, action is what we need, so if not thinking about the problem in such detail makes me more effective, that is what I will do. Not think about it. Just think about solutions, and actions and successes. Seems counter-intuitive, but there you go. My own personal trial and error process.

so, expect more very soon!

(By the way, I am now an environmental and social psychology PhD (provisional) student!)

Comments

[Warwick]

I was reading a Brisbane City Council Brochure today on their recommendations for reducing carbon emissions. They suggested I cut back on hot water shower time, but my suspicions are that the BCC are secretly trying to solve water issues at the same time.
:-)

[Anna]

those sneaky things! but yes, heating water is one of (is?) the biggest uses of energy in households.