A Decade Later...Earth Matters!

Ten years ago, 2007, I was regularly blogging about the dangers of global warming/climate change. In April of that year I wrote:

The future seems to me the most uncertain it has been since I was a young child in Hull, England during World War 2, when that city suffered horrendous bombing. The morrow, never mind the future, was uncertain for many at that time. When I first arrived in the USA at the end of 2004, global warming was looked on as something of a joke here. I despaired. I can see, now, the enormous difference Al Gore has single-handedly made, in a short time. When "An Inconvenient Truth" first arrived in cinemas in Oklahoma, it was shown only in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. We travelled to Oklahoma City, about 75 miles away, to see it. The number of people in the theatre could have been counted on two hands, but that sparse audience rose to their feet as one at the end of the film, applauded, and uplifted my hopes.

Back then, in the run up to the 2008 presidential election I was an avid supporter of Al Gore, "Run, Al...run!!" frequently appeared in my posts, or on my sidebar. I finished the 2007 post thus:

The American government is still dragging its feet, and appears to be lagging well behind public opinion, but in 2008 that government is guaranteed to change. I hope that its successor will be strong enough to do what's needed, however unpopular it makes them. We may not get to the stage of being uncertain about the morrow in the next few years, but those who come after will have that to face, if we don't insist that something is done by world governments soon.

Ten years on, nothing has changed, in fact the situation has grown worse. The Bush and Obama administrations did nothing, or next to nothing to address climate change; anything seemingly helpful proved to be lip service only. The current administration is openly opposed to addressing climate change. The horrendous storms, floods, fires and losses of Fall 2017 could prove to be the opening act of a new and far more dangerous stage in our journey to temperate climate destruction. People of the USA have not yet vociferously demanded action on this. They loudly demand action on race and gender issues, important in their own ways of course, yet without a habitable planet on which to live, what will those issues matter? Why have there been no huge marches, sit-ins, protests on behalf of planet Earth? Where are the the "Earth Matters" Warriors?

“If your house is on fire, you don't comfort yourself with the thought that houses have been catching fire for thousands of years. You don't sit idly back and think, "Oh well, that is the way of nature." You get going, immediately. And you don't spring into action because of an idealistic notion that houses deserve to be saved. You do it because if you don't, you won't have a place to live.”
― Bill Nye