Committing to meaningful climate action can be easier if we choose to give most of our attention to thoughts and information that reflect courage, hope and progress. From this choice we build “stubborn optimism”, which can keep us moving forward with solutions even in the face of setbacks. In contrast, listening to thoughts of fear and hopelessness saps our strength and sabotages action. Which will you choose?
The day I drove to Easton, Md. to discuss climate change with the staff of The Delmarva Farmer, it was raining so hard I couldn’t see the car ahead of me on the Bay Bridge.
It’s easy to write off a torrential rain like that as just another case of bad weather.
Climate change is real. Despite widespread confusion across the US population, 99% of scientists now agree that human-caused climate change is a reality. Scientifically speaking, there is just no doubt.
This week, I read a fascinating article in The Guardian, and it made a big impact on me. It showed a version of the graph below, which is a fairly standard picture of the temperatures observed between 1884-2015 and the projected future temperatures under different emissions scenarios.
February 2017 was the second warmest in history—as warm as the average March in our region. Grass greened up, it felt like spring, and many plants started to break dormancy. Everything was great until things went back into the deep freeze from March 20-22, when many locations in Maryland had night temperatures between 23-28 degrees for 1-3 nights.
The Climate Corner 