Sometimes I wake up and think I can change the world
This morning I woke up and heard something that made me think that I could do something so big, so audacious, so over the top it is truly delulu. I’m not sure I can use that word because I’m a Gen-X-er.
As I was getting out of bed I heard a bird singing outside.
Now while that isn’t unusual to hear on the 2nd day of March if I were living in California, or Texas, I never expected to hear it in Green Bay.
Before we moved here I steeled myself for the legendary midwest winters. I was ready to shovel snow, make sure I had enough food and consumables for a week or 2, and of course expected them to last well into April and even May.
Birds aren’t supposed to sing this early in the season. It’s too warm outside (which is lovely) too soon. That will create problems I can’t even fathom – but we will soon discover.
The sound got me thinking that, simply put, I could be the person who gets the world to notice and accept and even reverse climate change.
Crazy, I know.
But the thought was real, and clear.
It got me to thinking that we don’t vote anymore in elections, but with our money. And that it goes beyond simply changing our buying habits.
I began to wonder what the largest things are that contribute to Climate Change, and a quick google search gave me the answer:
- Power plants
- Agriculture
- Vehicles and transport (Esp Airplanes)
- Landfills
- Offshore drilling
- Fracking
- Deforestation
- Overfishing
- Melting Permafrost
- Consumerisim
How does one change the world when the topics are as large and established as these? How can one person reduce the number of power plants and the CO2 emmissions they produce?
The secret, is, and has always been in Education.
I’m not just talking about starting with pre-schoolers and kindergartners. Yes, they are the ones who will feel the effects of the previous generations, the most. No, Im talking about hitting all generations at the same time – through every media outlet imaginable – TV, Social, Radio, and beyond – onto the roads with billboards, in airports with posters, even sunday morning at your sermon in Church.
The message needs to be loud, and clear and everywhere all the time at once.
As Mentioned, how does one affect change when so many of the topics above seem untouchable, or unreachable? It takes a little bit of creativity, and what I call guerilla marketing.
It is necessary to use unconventional techniques to affect change on this level. Not unethical, or illegal things, but campaigns that are unorthodox.
For instance, let’s start with the Number 1 thing on the list – Power plants –
There are 217 Coal fired power plants in the USA. The largest is the Duke Energy’s Roxboro Steam Electric Plant in Semora, North Carolina which is managed ironically by Lynn J. Good. If you read her bio on the comapny’s website she seems like a forward thinking person who appears to want to invest in a clean future, but I am of the impression that she only does it for financial gain. For herself, for the shareholders, and the company.
It appears she has 2 or 3 kids- but very little is immediately available on-line – I’m sure she has done that to protect them and for good reason, it’s so people like me can’t easly search or write about them. But her decisions affect her kids, and her grandkids, and everyone else in the world.
Now, I’m not singleing out Ms. Good. What I am doing is showing that generationally our parents and grandparents made decisions that helped them gain financial freedoms, but literally destroyed our world in the process. And it continues to happen daily. And nobody seems to care.
Finally, before I hit the publish button on this article, my paranoia kicks in – I know that the moment I do, someone, soemwhere at Duke energy will get an alert about a new article about their boss, and will read this.
Maybe that person will realize what is happening in the world – and that’s how change can begin.
