![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancingsingingThe other day, my daughter asked me if we could go to the arctic to help the polar bears. I asked her what we'd do when we got there, and she explained that the polar bears are drowning because the ice floes are melting and the bears get too tired swimming and drown. Her plan was to bring a big freezer and lots of cold water to the arctic to make a big ice cube for them to stand on. She explained that she knew it wouldn't solve the long term problem, but that it would help for now.
I asked her what else we might do to help the polar bears besides going to the arctic. She thought maybe we could tackle global warming. I told her we could help by sometimes walking to the store instead of driving and by using less electricity. She went around the house and turned off all the lights we weren't using and dimmed the light we were using. It was very sweet and cute and it made her feel a lot better.
But I still felt like crap. Because, damn, what /are/ we going to do about global warming? Seeing her sincerity and that purehearted belief that we could do something to make a significant difference to fix this seriously fucked-up thing made me confront my own cynicism and (dang, if I weren't so sleep-deprived I could think of the word I want. You know, the one that means how you get all resigned and fatalistic when you don't know how to make something better.)
I've been planning to buy a newer used Subaru, because the one I have is getting pretty old and also is too small to fit a baby car seat in comfortably and doesn't feel that safe. But after the global warming conversation, I started thinking maybe about getting a car that can run on biodiesel*. Or an electric car**. (I discussed it with my engineer spouse and he has a litany of reasons for why electric is better.) This has me now trying to convince myself that it wouldn't be horribly financially irresponsible to buy a new Tesla model S. OMG, that would be so freakin' awesome.
Anyway, back to my story. So I tearfully related the polar-bear-drowning info to Spouse, feeling like a total asshole for having ever driven a car in my life, and he was like, "Didn't you hear? That's totally not true and was fully misrepresented!" And I was all, "Conservative propaganda lies! I'm Googling it!" and anyway it looks like it really isn't true. I mean, polar bear habitat is being lost because of global warming and it's really not pretty what's happening in the arctic, but there are no polar bears pathetically swimming and swimming until they drown. And apparently the original report about it was done in a scientifically unethical way and was basically just some dude who saw four floating dead polar bears who had drowned because of a /storm/ who then speculated that there are more storms bc of global warming but really had no evidence of that.
So I feel all manipulated and also all mad that my *daughter* was all manipulated. I mean, we are both sincere people who care and want to do something about global warming anyway. No need to lie to us and manipulate us already!
So, seriously, do any of you know of anything real my daughter or I could actually do about g.w.? I mean, that's not token effort like in the "10 things kids can do to help the environment" kind of way?
*I know that it's still combustion and still releases carbon dioxide. But the corn plants used up that same co2 to grow, so it's not releasing sequestered co2. (Hey, I have a question. Why can't we just grow a lot of algae or something and then sequester it by like putting it in metal balls and burying it before it decomposes? That would totally take co2 out of the atmosphere, right?)
**I know that the electricity is generated in a co2-producing power plant. But I understand that the efficiency is much better, with a pollution equivalent of, like, 100 mpg. I would research this more before I bought the car.
I asked her what else we might do to help the polar bears besides going to the arctic. She thought maybe we could tackle global warming. I told her we could help by sometimes walking to the store instead of driving and by using less electricity. She went around the house and turned off all the lights we weren't using and dimmed the light we were using. It was very sweet and cute and it made her feel a lot better.
But I still felt like crap. Because, damn, what /are/ we going to do about global warming? Seeing her sincerity and that purehearted belief that we could do something to make a significant difference to fix this seriously fucked-up thing made me confront my own cynicism and (dang, if I weren't so sleep-deprived I could think of the word I want. You know, the one that means how you get all resigned and fatalistic when you don't know how to make something better.)
I've been planning to buy a newer used Subaru, because the one I have is getting pretty old and also is too small to fit a baby car seat in comfortably and doesn't feel that safe. But after the global warming conversation, I started thinking maybe about getting a car that can run on biodiesel*. Or an electric car**. (I discussed it with my engineer spouse and he has a litany of reasons for why electric is better.) This has me now trying to convince myself that it wouldn't be horribly financially irresponsible to buy a new Tesla model S. OMG, that would be so freakin' awesome.
Anyway, back to my story. So I tearfully related the polar-bear-drowning info to Spouse, feeling like a total asshole for having ever driven a car in my life, and he was like, "Didn't you hear? That's totally not true and was fully misrepresented!" And I was all, "Conservative propaganda lies! I'm Googling it!" and anyway it looks like it really isn't true. I mean, polar bear habitat is being lost because of global warming and it's really not pretty what's happening in the arctic, but there are no polar bears pathetically swimming and swimming until they drown. And apparently the original report about it was done in a scientifically unethical way and was basically just some dude who saw four floating dead polar bears who had drowned because of a /storm/ who then speculated that there are more storms bc of global warming but really had no evidence of that.
So I feel all manipulated and also all mad that my *daughter* was all manipulated. I mean, we are both sincere people who care and want to do something about global warming anyway. No need to lie to us and manipulate us already!
So, seriously, do any of you know of anything real my daughter or I could actually do about g.w.? I mean, that's not token effort like in the "10 things kids can do to help the environment" kind of way?
*I know that it's still combustion and still releases carbon dioxide. But the corn plants used up that same co2 to grow, so it's not releasing sequestered co2. (Hey, I have a question. Why can't we just grow a lot of algae or something and then sequester it by like putting it in metal balls and burying it before it decomposes? That would totally take co2 out of the atmosphere, right?)
**I know that the electricity is generated in a co2-producing power plant. But I understand that the efficiency is much better, with a pollution equivalent of, like, 100 mpg. I would research this more before I bought the car.
