On Monday evening I was sitting at a sidewalk cafe with a friend, enjoying the spring weather after having taken in the sights of DC’s beautiful cherry blossoms. As I sipped on a martini the conversation turned to global warming, and in particular to the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs instead of incandescent ones.

My friend bought these light bulbs and installed them. After trying them a few days he removed them and replaced them with the original bulbs. Why? Because he felt their light was simply too unnatural and ugly to bear. He felt terrible about it, but he simply had to get rid of them.

That got my mind to thinking about how much easier it is to care abstractly about global warming than it is to do something about it. And this is true for all of us, not just my friend. In my case, I know that eating meat is very destructive to the environment because of the huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane spewed by the meat industry, but hell will freeze over before I become a vegetarian.

Why is it so difficult for us to actually DO something about global warming? Maybe because it’s just hard for human nature to accept the reality of an emergency and the need to take proactive action when it happens in slow motion. It’s like the proverbial frog in a pot, which sits there while the water is slowly heating on the stove and doesn’t try to leap until it’s entirely too late.

The evidence of the impacts of global warming are out there already, but most of us are not in a position to see them either individually or in their aggregate. We don’t see the ice melting every day. We don’t see the hungry polar bears. We don’t see the mountain frogs going extinct right now. We hardly notice that the DC cherry blossoms bloom almost a month earlier than they used to, a change so drastic that the accompanying festival had to actually be moved back earlier on the calendar a few years ago because the blossoms were already gone by the time the festival happened. But whether we see these things happening or not, they ARE happening, and the emergency is real.

Or maybe the reason we are slow to act is because we feel impotent, powerless to stop something ourselves that encompasses all of humanity…and if we can’t stop it then why should we change our behavior? Does it really matter much if *I* recycle or not, when most people don’t? Does it really hurt much if *I* use plastic bags because they are convenient, because so many other people do? It seems that if we did away with using plastic bags and installed the CFL light bulbs and did all the rest that we are inconveniencing ourselves while not seeing any measurable result from our personal sacrifices.

That’s a tough argument to counter, but we must. Inventor/architect/poet Buckminster Fuller said,

“Never forget no matter how overwhelming life’s challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person.”

It doesn’t matter if the person next door recycles or not–we must (and maybe we can convince them to do it too!) It doesn’t matter that the effects of our own personal contributions and sacrifices are tiny, because when it comes to this kind of thing the AGGREGATE effect of lots of people making tiny contributions is absolutely huge.

I intend to begin a series of postings over the next several weeks that will focus exclusively on what *we* as individuals can do to make a difference in this emergency. I’m basing the list loosely off Time Magazine’s recent article on 51 things we can do about global warming, though their list also discusses things that are not in the power of individuals and I will ignore those (such as building environmentally friendly buildings, irrelevant to most of us unless you’re an architect).

Let’s face it–none of us is going to be the planet’s environmental Jesus Christ, and nobody can possibly be expected to do everything on this list. Each of us has different things we can and cannot tolerate, allowing us to pick and choose among the various things we can do. I personally don’t mind certain compact fluorescent light bulbs and I have replaced most of my incandescents, but I will not give up meat. Perhaps my friend can’t tolerate fluorescents, but may be able to recycle his clothes or do something else on the list. Same goes for anyone else reading this.

As we go through this list we’ll have a better idea of the things we can do and how those things can add up to huge benefits. The only thing that remains is for you to care enough to actually do something about global warming. Are you up to the challenge?

Tags: environment, global-warming