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Clotheslining climate change

ANDREW GSCHEIDLE

Jersey Shore

Not too long ago, my family and I stepped into a Starbucks in the area to purchase a bag of Decaf Sumatra coffee. We were told they were out because of a nationwide shortage of Decaf Sumatra due to climate change.

“Climate Change?” I asked, peering around at full shelves of regular caffeinated Sumatra coffee throughout the store… “yes, climate change” they remarked.

Let that sink in a moment.

Apparently, climate change has grown so complex as to uniquely impact decaf coffee. I found it supremely ironic that those who question any climate change dogma are the ones that are “anti-science”.

Let me be very clear, I don’t consider myself a climate change denier. In fact, I believe humanity has done a pretty lousy job caring for the environment whether or not the earth’s temperature is rising. I don’t seek to make a case for or against climate change or the role of CO2 emissions in warming the earth. I don’t need global “leaders” telling me so for me to know instinctively that we must take better care of our world.

Even most animals know not to defecate where they live. Being a good steward of the planet should not be an ideology owned by any political party or ideal, but all of us.

In my experience, the average local citizen in our community does this already also.

So I take umbrage at the constant shaming and admonishment of narcissistic elitists telling the rest, particularly in our rural community, that they need to make “unprecedented changes” in order to address climate change. They’ll be critiqued as uneducated, anti-science for their reservations, and alarmed at being told how to live despite many of these people living far more earth-friendly than their apparently better-educated neighbors critiquing them! This should not be.

You who tell us we need to make such “unprecedented changes.” Tell us – do you own and use a clothesline? Many of the most vocal alarming voices I’ve heard have answered “no,” usually followed by an excuse of why that would be too difficult.

As Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”.

Wait a minute … we need to make “unprecedented changes” but many of you can’t be bothered to hang your clothes outside to dry in the sun? Clotheslines are the most fundamental of solar devices available and have no carbon emissions.

How seriously do you take this problem of climate change? Seems as though many would rather legislate the nearly eight billion humans rather than buy a $5 solar device. Per the U.S. Energy Information Agency, clothes dryers account for 5 percent of residential energy consumption (www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/index.php).

The Guardian reports, “A household running a dryer 200 times a year could save nearly half a tonne of CO2 emissions by switching to a clothes rack or washing line.” (www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/nov/25/carbon-footprint-load-laundry)

According to the World Cities Forum, there are 1,677,386,135 households worldwide (www.worldcitiescultureforum.com/data/number-of-households).

Assuming every household could save the half tonne of C02e by using a clothesline, the planet would be spared a whopping 3,354,772,270 tonnes of C02 emissions.

I’d say that was a pretty worthwhile reduction, wouldn’t you? How about this idea… set a day apart to stay put and rest. Or said a more ancient way “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it separate”. Imagine for a moment if most industry, retail, commerce, and travel were substantially reduced for one day a week. What kind of impact would that make to carbon emissions? Bet that would also reduce a lot of pharmacological consumption as well.

Simple and achievable actions like clotheslines and sabbaths could make a big difference and are far from unprecedented. Humans have been doing both of these for millennia. Many of the communities being shamed about climate change already do.

Nevertheless, you’ll rarely hear admonishment to do simple things. Why? Because the 1 percent have much bigger “unprecedented changes” in mind: global taxation and global governance.

“The struggle against poverty in the world and the challenge of cutting wealthy country emissions all has a single, very simple solution… Here it is: Put a price on carbon.” – Al Gore

See what Al Gore did there? He married a concept of solving poverty and global warming by taking resources from wealthy nations all with one tidy “solution” – taxing carbon. If carbon emissions can be demonized, taxing them is the largest windfall in the history of humanity.

Of course, how does can global taxation be enforced without a global governing body? Hmmmm. It can’t and such would not be a benevolent global governance, but totalitarianism. You cannot control carbon emissions globally without controlling every aspect of society. There are already countless people calling for the criminalization and punishment of carbon-offensive practices and of those who would dare to have a differing opinion about them. Many would love to see deniers locked up and treated as an enemy of humanity. No matter what your view on climate change is, such ideas should frighten you.

The intentions are plain to see as these very same “leaders” want to tell you where you will live, what you will and will not eat, where you will work and how you will get there. Mark my words, one day, saying you’re “pro-choice” might come to mean you are one that wants to decide what you eat for dinner. The irony of it all is that many of those who are currently “pro-choice” are so adamant to preserve their liberty to kill and remove an infant from their body, yet they would rather heartily prevent the rest of us from killing an animal and placing it into ours.

If the leaders of the world who insist we make “unprecedented changes” are serious and have benevolent intentions, they should act as true leaders and lead by example. Stop telling us we must take drastic action. We’re not the ones flying private jets across the globe to “combat” climate change. We don’t walk around in “dry clean only” clothes (horrible for the environment) every day or ship ourselves the choicest foods of the earth using C02-belching boats and planes. We don’t spend our weekends galavanting around the Mediterranean in diesel-powered yachts. We don’t have 60,000 square foot mansions that produce more carbon emissions than nearly all small businesses. This will not happen, because for these so-called “leaders,” “unprecedented changes” would mean flying first class commercially instead of by private jet. They create more of a carbon footprint in one single day than most of this newspapers’ readership will in several years.

Yet who is shaming who about climate change? Who will be told they must forfeit freedoms for the greater good? Not the leaders of the world, but the rest of us.

We do need to change our ideas about climate change, we should start by no longer allowing 1 percent of humanity to dictate how the rest of us must change.

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