Climate Crisis — Overview

Recently I have been consumed by an urge to educate myself about the climate crisis, which has in turn fuelled a drive for immediate meaningful change. I’ve been reading dozens of books and reducing my carbon footprint; I’ve curated an art exhibition whose theme was the Climate Crisis; I’ve exhibited some of my own pieces of climate crisis related art (and received an honorable mention for one). I would like to dedicate this part of my website to sharing my progress, resources, thoughts, struggles, etc. [This part of the website is a work in progress that I will be working over the next few weeks and adding to over time.]

In the purely personal sphere of action I have been working on minimizing and offsetting my personal/familial carbon footprint. We are lucky enough here to have relatively clean (Hydroquebec) electricity, so this summer we transitioned to no longer owning any ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles. We’re planning to abandon natural gas heating in favour of electric heat, and are meanwhile cutting down on our gas usage by using as much supplemental electric heat as practical. I was an enthusiastic if moderate carnivore, and a big consumer of dairy, for most of my life, but have been transitioning away in the last years, and especially months. Most recently, at first reluctantly, I have decided to eat mammalian meat only on special, rare occasions, greatly reduce my consumption of chicken/dairy/eggs/fish, and depend on vegetable sources for the bulk of my nutritional needs. (Even fish, I’ve found, is now a dubious choice, between monstrous carnage of ocean populations, and surprisingly high carbon footprints of aquaculture. Sigh…). I bought some carbon offsets, too, to be on the safe side, supporting things like solar cooking in Africa and planting trees in tropical forests. Living in a condo, it may not be feasible for us to put up solar panels, but we have joined a local green energy coop to find some form of participation.

It’s still early days, in terms of any significant global adoption of serious measures to fix the problem — in one of my countries, the government announced its decision to let a pipeline expansion proceed the day after it declared a climate emergency, while in an another, the current government simply denies that there is even a problem!

Unfortunately, by most other standards, it is late days indeed. Far too late to assume that “someone else” will deal with it, be they climate scientists, inventors, economists, governments, etc. Some are doing all they can, and it isn’t enough; others simply do far too little. At this point, I can only see hope coming from as many of us as possible, each devoting as much effort as we can, coming up with our own solutions, until the Climate Crisis is no longer the principal problem that we face. It is in this spirit therefore that am trying to do my part in getting more people to join the effort, through my artwork and website. I am also working on reinvesting family assets in socially responsible funds, as well as active investment in renewable energy. Finally, I have made donations to several non-profit organizations who are working on the problem.