Blog Action Day 2009: Blogging for Climate Change

Human impact on the environment - particularly the catastrophic changes our behavior is wreaking on climate systems worldwide - has been an issue of increasing concern throughout my lifetime.

I remember the advent of AOL, Facebook and the commercially available hybrid car, but I don't remember a time when the ramifications of global warming weren't discussed as something the human race needs to confront immediately.

The Kyoto Protocol, first adopted in December 1997 in an attempt to combat global warming beyond the borders of individual countries, is one of the first issues that sparked my interest in international affairs, which eventually became my major in college. This document has been around for roughly half my life. As of 2009, despite its assorted problems, it has been signed and ratified by 183 countries, with another half-dozen who have not yet decided whether or not to sign. The only country that has no intention of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol? The United States. The largest emitter of fossil fuel-generated carbon dioxide per capita? The United States.

Committing to move away from the internal combustion engine-powered consumer culture that has been both the root and the expression of our country's wealth for decades isn't easy. We're lazy, we like things to stay the same and we certainly don't want to give up our luxuries when there's no immediate benefit. But we have to do it, and we have to start now.

In my lifetime, which isn't even the blink of an eye in the earth's history, climate change has progressed from one of those issues society worries about for future generations to something that is happening now and picking up speed seasonally. The increase in tsunamis, hurricanes and droughts, the shift in weather patterns, the fluctuating temperature extremes and rapidly disappearing polar ice caps - these are all documented and scientifically linked to our world's changing climate, which is linked to our abuse of its resources. But perhaps the most frightening thing about climate change is that we no longer need charts and graphs and projections to see that it's happening:

Growing up in the L.A. area, we joked that it was the smog that made for such spectacular sunsets. Flying into LAX in the last five years has become a painful experience. The city is so obscured by smog that the skyline has been all but erased by pollution - even downtown's tallest buildings are difficult to see.

When my parents lived in South Florida 25 years ago, it was a given that January and February would be comfortable enough to turn off the air-conditioning. During my brother's last winter in the same city in 2008, he and his family were only able to turn it off for a week.

During the 18 years I lived in Southern California, any wildfires that started were controlled fairly quickly and never came anywhere near the beach communities that line the coast - even during the seven-year drought the state experienced while I was in elementary school. In the last few years, wildfires have raged out of control throughout the region, decimating communities that have never been considered at risk before.

That the climate is now changing so rapidly that its shifts are visible to the casual observer makes an irrefutable case for the fact that it has moved from a worrisome "potential" problem into a very real danger zone. The U.S. government, led by California's new emission standards, is finally beginning to take action but right now it's too little, too slowly.

The potential for a massive shift in cultural perception is there: in President Obama's plans for green jobs, in the movement toward reusable water bottles and grocery bags, composting and recycling efforts, higher-efficiency lightbulbs and appliances and in the fact that this is one issue where - at least in my generation - party lines are beginning to disintegrate. But this isn't something we can put off until "tomorrow" any longer.

We have the intellectual capital to make the shift to not just a climate-conscious but a climate-protecting society. We have the added urgency of the world's current financial difficulties - some of which could be alleviated by the boost an expanded green industry would give the global and national economies. We have absolutely no reason not to begin this shift right now. Don't you think?

This post was written as part of Change.org's Blog Action Day 2009. There are more than 9,400 blogs participating worldwide right now - to add yours, click here. Blog Action Day 2009 is also taking place on Twitter, using hashtag #BAD09.