Citizens Climate lobby Roscommon/Crawford Chapter

Roscommon/Crawford Chapter                              Some Good News About Climate for a Change In this blog we can report good news on the climate front: Our air quality is getting better, bit by bit, and the United States is helping by reducing C02 emissions, although not nearly enough to avoid the problems of climate change. The shelter-at-home requirement and the fear surrounding the corona virus has provoked a major positive effect in cleaning our atmosphere. Data is not yet available on the amount of C02 and other greenhouse gases that are being released in the midst of the crisis, but anecdotal evidence is pointing toward major improvements as air quality has improved markedly. The evidence is visual; residents in many places can see the results as hazy, smoky skies have become nearly clear in places where low visibility had become common. In Punjab, India residents have been euph...

Roscommon/Crawford Chapter Twenty Things for Climate Change (or How you can Reduce Your Carbon Footprint) It is easy to blame our government for not acting as it should to fix climate change. Most of us average Joe’s and Josephine’s can't demand energy companies stop drilling oil and polluting our air, but there are things each of us can do to reduce the carbon pollution that we generate in our daily life. Before beginning, it is helpful to know your carbon footprint; the average amount of carbon that your household emits on a yearly basis by the decisions YOU make about your lifestyle and energy consumption. Here is a web page that can help you calculate your carbon footprint:            https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx Your goal should be getting to 1.8 tons of carbon emissions per year before 2050, the number that everyone in the world must reach to meet world standards agreed upon in 2015. You should also know that the average ...

Roscommon/Crawford Chapter Farming and Climate Change Today's news is all about the corona virus, so it is easy to let climate change concerns slip to the back burner of our collective consciousness. One of the immediate effects of the virus is how quickly it provoked food shortages and yielded bare shelves at grocery stores. Everyone hopes these shortages are temporary; that once the virus disappears the world food supply will return to normal. Given the lack of progress in combating climate change, that is unlikely. The fact is "climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity, and agriculture feels its effects in profound ways," according to a leading supplier to the international agricultural industry. As you know from reading our Climate Change Blogs, effects of climate change include drought, severe heat, flooding, storm and fire danger depending upon where you live. All these things hurt agriculture. Still think climate change w...

Roscommon/Crawford Chapter The Face of Change Just in case you didn’t know, the cherubic, girl-child face looking out at you above is 17-year-old Greta Thunberg, the most famous teen-ager in the world, known simply as Greta, the face of climate change among the world’s young people. She has some 17 million followers who watch her posts on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. She addresses diplomats, politicians and business tycoons and they all know her name. She has been applauded by former president Barack Obama, Pope Francis, French president Emmanuel Macron, Al Gore, Prince Charles and the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres to name only a few. She was Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2019, and has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Among the world’s leaders she stands unequalled as the spokesperson best known for climate change activism. Greta came upon her fame by her ability to lecture the world’s leaders, speaking simply and forthrig...

Roscommon/Crawford Chapter Many of us who live in Roscommon and Crawford Counties have an affinity for our wild places and wildlife as we pursue hunting, fishing and myriad other outdoor activities that our area offers. Sadly, climate change promises changes that will degrade our environment. The first to feel the impact of these changes will be wildlife that inhabit ours and other northern areas. Most wild animals are negatively affected by our warming climate. One of the few critters that benefits from warmer weather are ticks as their populations have exploded: Ticks love warm, humid weather, just the thing that climate change is bringing to many forests in the north that were formerly too cold for their tastes. Some of the species of ticks that are on the increase are disease-carrying, including those that carry Lyme disease. Populations of ticks are  projected to increase nearly twofold in the U.S. and up to fivefold in Canada as warmer, humid weather bec...

My First Climate Change Blog Rocommon/Crawford Chapter of Ccl leaders decided at a recent meeting to give our crack editorial team a brief respite from their blogging work by asking another member of our group to prepare a blog. Here is the first effort from Wylie, a relatively new member. Hello. My name is Wylie and this is my first blog. Whoee! I am a little new at this so I’ll start at the beginning. I attended my first Chapter meeting recently because of my buddy Earl. He had attended one meeting before me and he urged me to come to the next meeting with him. I asked him why. “Its because they give you free pizza just for attending,” he said with a big grin. That was good enough for me so Earl and I attended the next meeting at the Gahagan Center in Roscommon. The meeting was interesting. Our leaders talked about a whole bunch of stuff I didn’t know, mostly about problems being brought on by pollution of our atmosphere. I didn’t say much as I was mostly waiti...

Roscommon/Crawford Chapter And the answer is … Wait a minute! Wait a minute, what is the question? As the popular game show Jeopardy! teaches, the appropriate answer depends upon the precise phrasing of the question. Before hearing the question, you should know it is probably the most important question of our time. By the way, this blog also yields the answer we promised to provide in our last blog. Here is the question: What shall we do about climate change? What shall we do to save ours and the next generation of humans, animals, and plants from the ravages of floods, fires, and increasing temperatures that wreak havoc with our planet? The answer is … we must reduce man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. We must stop wanton polluting of the thing we need most for life to continue as we know it, and as our parents and theirs knew it in their lifetimes. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions sounds easy, but how can we reduce u...