Friendly Friday: Climate Change

Lately, after having children, I’ve found myself wondering more and more often what kind of a world we’re leaving them. What kind of world am I leaving them?

Am I doing enough to protect the environment for my part and try to reverse climate change? Am I doing anything, really?

I get anxiety when I think of water running out, weather changes, and unusual natural disasters. Piles of plastic and animals choking on it. Kids swimming in algae-polluted water. People eating fish from polluted water. Earth quakes happening because of holes dug into the ground by companies. Forests torn down. Everyone traveling to hyped-up hotspots completely unnecessarily, all of those hundreds of thousands of airplanes polluting the air with kerosene.

What else can I do, besides the obvious: recycle, use less plastic, include less meat and dairy in my diet, use less energy to light and heat my apartment, travel less? In general, consume less. 

I don’t know. I guess the very least I can do is spread the word.

Yes, the word has already been spread. We’ve all heard of climate change. We all know it exists (well, except for one person, notoriously). We all know the little steps we, as individuals can take. Few of us go to extreme measures, like stopping to use shampoo or making our own soap, but many of us do little things like avoid collecting plastic bags every time we shop.

In the movies, there’s always a hero who saves the world. Who is the hero we’re waiting for? (Is it Greta?) We know we need bigger action, governments to get involved, the corporate world too.

“The curse of 10 degrees” was what I called a period of several years where the temperature was 10C all year round – we lost our seasons. That’s not how it’s supposed to be.

“Love nature” says the cup, ironically, since someone left it like this, stuffed in a wall when there was a trash can within arm’s reach. Please don’t litter, people!

Imagine this:

Maybe somewhere in the world there is a little kid exploring the internet. Through many twists and turns, the kid comes across your blog post on climate change. A sentence you wrote resonates, sticks.

Time passes, things happen. Twenty years later, all of the little things the kid has experienced have accumulated and built the grown-up he or she has become. Thousands of sentences that stuck, little fractions of ideas, thoughts, and concerns all act as the building stones of this person’s mindset. So many of them that it’s impossible to know which thought originated from which stepping stone.

Someone planted something in this person’s mind, quite unknowingly, and it grew.

Maybe this person goes on to become someone with power or accidentally lands an opportunity to make a difference. It’s a long shot but you never know. Everyone influences everyone else all the time.

Let’s make a positive ripple in time, in the internet, through our blogs.

So… this week, for the Friendly Friday Photo Challenge, I’d like to challenge you to post a photo (or several) with the theme Climate Change.

I hope you don’t find this topic too difficult or intimidating. It can be anything – your imagination is the only limit! (And I know you guys are a creative lot!)

If you feel you need to write something to accompany the picture, please do so, but you can also just let the visuals tell the story.

Tropical Nordics! Last summer we had incredible weather: sunny and warm for weeks and weeks! It was a real treat and I loved it! But… it’s not normal: summers here aren’t supposed to be that hot. Something’s up with the weather.

Smelly water with green algae swirls in it – I’m not tempted to swim in the polluted Baltic Sea, but many people here ignore the problem and swim happily like they did 30 years ago when it was still clean and cold.

Your photo could be of anything that you fear climate change might affect or has already affected – from no rain in Australia to an unusually hot summer in Finland, to freezing temperatures in the US.

It could be related to your children or grandchildren if you fear, like me, that their home planet might be disappearing from under their very feet.

It could be a simple photo of a flower in your garden or an orange in your kitchen: they are very much a part of nature and nature’s what all this is about.

It could be a photo of something you want to protect or some course of action you’ve already taken.

Yes!!! Lets plant more flowers!

Both figuratively and not! We can do it!

Give more than you take

Here’s how to join the Friendly Friday Photo Challenge:

• Leave your response in the comments section of this post
• Include a link to the prompt in your post!
• You’re more than welcome to add our logo – this is entirely optional though
• There’s no deadline for participating, it doesn’t have to be on Friday
• And finally, please check out some of the other participants’ posts to see how they’ve interpreted the same theme!

The photo challenge is hosted by The Snow Melts Somewhere and Something to Ponder About (next week).

Looking forward to your thoughts on climate change – in words or in pictures!

Have a friendly Friday!