When I started my second job over the summer, I purchased a one liter disposable water bottle that I've been washing and reusing for the last 3 and half months. A week ago, I decided I really should get another.
My nephew picked it up from the coffee table last night, finished off what water was in it and then dropped it in the trash.
"No!" I literally yelled at him.
He blinked at me as if to ask WTF my problem was.
I explained to him that I keep those bottles when I'm finished with them so that I can reuse them later.
"Oh," he says and plucks it out of the trash can. "You'll have to wash it," he warns me.
Obviously.
We made our way to the kitchen and I started washing. He stood there for a few seconds watching me and then asked why I keep them.
I explained to him that when we throw them away, they go to a landfill and stay there for years and years and years.
"Oh," he says again. "That's not very good for the Earth."
"Right," I tell him.
He's learned quite a lot about the Earth over the years. I'm not a big environmentalist, but I do love this planet of ours and we try to teach the kids to help take care of it.
To me, it's plain illogical to believe that our actions or inactions will have no lasting consequences on the environment. We've seen those consequences far too often over the years for me to delude myself into thinking that quite a large portion of what we're currently experiencing is not our fault.
So teaching the kids environmental responsibility is pretty important. And my nephew, being the quick witted little soul that he is, picks it up pretty quickly.
"Why does Papa throw away all of his water bottles?" He asks as I scrub the recently rescued bottle.
"I don't know," I shrug. His papa does a lot of things that don't make sense to me. I don't even attempt to sort them out any more.
"Well, he really shouldn't," Kaia tells me in that matter of fact way of his. "I'm going to tell him that."
"Alright, you tell him." It always amuses me when he gets it into his head to tell people things. He's very serious about it and he's very persistent about it too. When he gets it into his head that something is right, he's like a terrier. It can get pretty hysterical.
I finished washing the bottle and refilled it with tap water and we returned to the living room. "Do you know what climate change is, Kai?" I asked him. It's not something we've covered with him just yet, but I figured why not? It's been on my mind a lot this last week.
He thinks about it a minute and then nods. "It's where the climate changes." He pauses. "What's a climate?"
And then I remember why I haven't gotten into that one with him just yet. Breaking it down for a five year old is hard work. Luckily, however, I have Google. Google is my friend. I look up climate change for kids and find the EPA Climate Change for Kids site. I browse it quickly. It may be a little too advanced for him.
I click on the next site in the list. Tiki the Penguin. I browse through. It's perfect. It even comes with little illustrations. I use the site to explain what a climate is. He seems to get it.
"A climate makes tornadoes?" His mouth drops open. We live in Arkansas. We know all about those little suckers. "That's not very nice of the climate."
He's preaching to the choir on that point. We browse over to the "Hotting Up" section and go through that.
"Well, why can't we use something other than the bad stuff?" He asks when we get to the part about oil and gas and coal.
Well now, isn't that a good question? The simple truth is, we could use stuff other than oil and gas and coal. But... we're too busy bickering over whether climate change is our fault or not to really bother. I break that down for him and he thinks about it for a few minutes.
"Mommy should just tell them to stop arguin'," he finally announces.
"Think that would work?" I ask.
"Yes," he tells me. "Losh doesn't like to do speech therapy but mommy tells him to stop arguin' and he does it even though he doesn't like it. And she makes me do stuff I don't want to do either. But it's good for me."
And that's when I realize I get as much out of these discussions as does he. In the long run, it doesn't really matter who is right and who is wrong in the climate change argument. Whether we're responsible or climate change is a natural phenomenon, making changes is not a bad thing. It's not going to greatly inconvenience us. In fact, the sources of energy we currently use are not limitless. At some point, we're going to have to make those changes anyway. So... why not stop arguing about climate change and start implementing those changes that will, one way or another, have to take place anyway?
I realize that quite a few out there will say that it's just not that simple. I have to disagree. Certainly, there are interesting points in the argument and there will, undoubtedly, be interesting and insightful information to come out of the argument. But in the long run, the argument just really does not matter. Spending the energy fighting about who is at fault when the changes will, at some point, become absolutely necessary anyway is just a waste.
The longer we spend trying to decide who is responsible, the more of those limited resources we use up. And the more of those resources we use up... the more necessary change become. Arguing about it won't change that fact. Nor will lobbying or pretending the problem doesn't exist.
Kaia has a good point. A really good point. Stop arguin' already. It won't change what has to happen. It merely delays the inevitable because whether you're on board or not... change, as my grandfather used to jokingly say, do be a'coming. It's simply a matter of when.
This blog written as part of: Blog Action Day 2009.
That's pretty much always been my stance. Regardless of whether global warming is real, or even if we're causing it, our current sources of fuel are limited. Sooner or later, we're going to have to make changes, even if it's for no other reason than we've run out of supplies.
That said, be careful about using the water bottles you get bottled water from. They have chemicals that can leech into the water that are harmful to you, especially if you're reusing them for three months. You'd probably actually be better off investing in a water bottle (or several) that's designed to be washed and reused (stainless steel ones are the best, IIRC, because even the reusable plastic ones break down after a while, too). This goes double for any that you may have left in the car (as the heat breaks down the bottle even faster). Besides, if you get ones that are designed to be reused, you contribute even less to landfills, because they'd last you years instead of even months.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge