I Secretly Love Global Warming

 In recent weeks I have been thinking a lot about why we as a society are so reluctant to seriously fight to eliminate carbon emissions. I am an environmental voter. I look for and vote for candidates that take environmental science seriously, who appear to understand climate change, and understand that the only real solution is to dramatically cut emissions of green house gasses, and that our carbon economy. As an individual I purchased well insulated housing, use energy efficient heat pump, keep my thermostat at 67 degrees (60 at night) in the winter and wear extra layers. We bought Priuses more than ten years ago, and before that sought out the most fuel efficient cars possible. I recycle, reduce, reuse. Never replace items (including electronics) until they completely give out. As both and individual and a citizen, I try to be environmentally conscious about all my decisions.

But...you knew there was a but coming! But, I love having 60 degree weather the first week in January. I love that our winters here in eastern Kentucky are overall so much warmer and milder than they were twenty-five years ago. Yes, I absolutely know all the reasons why this is problematic. I understand how extremely mild weather in January, creates problems for plant life cycles, and how plant cycles can get out of sync with animal life cycles of hibernation, migration, mating and new generations. But I love it. My nearly 72 year old, arthritic joints love it.

I also know that we are not only getting warmer winters, we are getting hotter summers (which I don't like quite so much). Moreover, we are getting much frequent weather extremes, including the horrific flooding event that devastated eastern Kentucky in July 2022. I know all this. I know that the long term problems are going to be even worse. That the underpinnings of modern agriculture and modern society are threatened by climate change. Yet I still love these mild winters, I find myself cheering when I see that the NOAA three month climate predictions show high chance of warmer than usual weather this Jan/Feb/March. It also shows higher chance of precipitation, but as long as it's not snow...

All this suggests to me that the crusade against climate change has a significant problem, because I can hardly be the only person who intellectually grasps the problems of climate change, yet still on a personal day to day business enjoy its fruits especially in winter time. Which means that there are many of us, regardless of well we understand the problems created by climate change, might balk about making real  sacrifices in the comfort and convenience afforded by a fossil fuel economy that are really needed in order to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

New Things

    I started writing journals when I was 12. I had read The Diary of Anne Frank and decided like her to create an imaginary friend that I wrote to regularly. My friend was named Margie. Like Anne I wrote a lot about my feelings. Unlike Anne I did not do a very good job of describing what was actually going on in my real life. No one reading those "Margie letters" today would learn much about what life was like in suburban California in the early 1960's. 

    The "Margie letters" were written on binder paper, making it easy for me to write the letters during class periods when I was bored. I stored them all in a large three ring binder. I started in 1963, and continued that practice through my sophomore year in college. I still have the binder with all the letters packed away in a box somewhere.  They may have been cathartic to write, but they hold little content of interest to me as I aged.

    At the end of the summer of 1971 just before my junior year, I made a change. I purchased a hardbound record book, 12" x 8.5" format, and began writing a different kind of journal.  There was still a lot of internal emotional reflection, but I began to write much more about  the world around me, observations of the world, people, events, and activities. Writing in a bound journal seemed to me a much more serious undertaking than my "Margie letters" had been. It suggested permanence and the possibility that others somewhere in the future might read what I had written. 

    That December (1971) in my first bound journal I began what became an annual tradition that lasted for the next two decades: my firsts or new things list. Each December I would think back over the year and write down everything that I had done for the first time, every new experience I had encountered. In my twenties, thirties and even early forties, my lists of new things were quite lengthy. I traveled quite a bit in the U.S. visiting far flung friends and relatives, attending scholarly conferences, doing research. I moved from one state to another, from my parents home in California, to college in Ohio, a summer job in Connecticut, graduate school in Kentucky, professorships in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky. I worked a variety of jobs, went to graduate school, started a career, got denied tenure and started career jobs. I married, divorced and married again. 

    Then at some point in my fifties, I stopped doing this recording of new things. Part of it was because there weren't as many new things. As we age, we generally have fewer novel experiences, things we've never experienced before. Moreover, the new things I began to experience in my fifties and sixties were generally not fun things: hysterectomy, cataracts and surgery, developing rheumatoid arthritis, and type 2 diabetes. I got out of the habit not only of my annual new things list, but of journaling in general. 

    This year, however, was an eye opener. A very big "new thing" happened, not just to me but to all the people around me: a great flood that devastated vast stretches of eastern Kentucky. While this is not a "good" new thing, it is important, significant, and affected us in profound ways, even those of us who lost little or nothing directly in the flood. It has made me want to pay closer attention again, journaling again, even my year end chronicle of new things. 

    

What is old?

 I keep waiting to feel old. 

I'm not talking about my physical body. That's been aching and creaking, and dysfunctional since my early 50's. Between osteo-arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, bursitis, type two diabetes, asthma and obesity my health has been rocky for some time. 

But my spirit, my being doesn't feel old. I thought maybe when I reached 65 and got on Medicare I'd feel old. Nope. Or when I retired a few years after that, but no. Nor do I expect turning 70 in less than two weeks will make me feel old either. 

I spent most of my life working with young people, college students (most, but not all, younger than myself). I always felt more akin to the students than the "grownups" I saw around me. Took me some time to realize that many of those "grownups" really were not, any more than I was. There were some faculty, almost always men, who seem to have completely lost touch with what it was like to be 19 or 20 and in college. Who were always grumbling about "what's wrong with kids these days." So maybe some people do feel old, and lose touch with their young selves. 

But I think that maybe I'm never going to feel old, never really going to feel like a "grownup," and never really going to know for sure what I'm going to be when I grow up.