There is a lot of bad news on the climate horizon. Emissions and temperatures are still going up. But I have seen some small, and large encouraging signs in the last few weeks.
My two-year-old grandson was playing with a block cart he calls his lawnmower. When it "stopped working", he opened it up to change the batteries - not pour pretend gasoline into it. I am working to get him to go all non-motorized push, as I have this year, but pretend-battery powered pretend mowers are a step in the right direction.
In more relative news, my eastern Oregon farming family is taking land out of production to plant native wildlife attracting hedgerows on the borders of their property. Those wild zones between fields are being removed in most of the world to facilitate border-to-border production to the great detriment of wildlife with only a small increase in revenue. I can hear the birds in the new hedgerow already.
In a big announcement, he U.S. government released a report on solar radiation management that calls for "research to better understand both the potential benefits and risks" of decreasing the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth. Injecting small particles into the upper atmosphere, and increasing the reflectivity of ocean clouds are both ideas that are being studied.
That would cool things off the same way volcanic eruptions do while long term emission reductions are implemented. Geo-engineering is certainly not a solution to climate change, but with a two-year deployment timetable, and a one year off switch, it may be needed - temporarily.
We should at least know more about the good and bad points - until the next generation takes over and takes the problem of climate change seriously.
I'm John Fischer with Living Less Unsustainably.
