#climate truth

I fucking love Bill Nye. I grew up with the Science Guy, but his Netflix show (started in April 2017)  is more than nostalgia.

Today, I see Nye’s Netflix show criticized by the fact that he “isn’t a real scientist”, since his accolades are about the equivalent of a UFV (community college) BSc, and, while I get a bit pissy that his approach to GMOs is “It’s probably safe” versus actually blowing the whistle on Monsanto, and the fact that so much of our food supply is controlled by the mega-corp that created Agent Orange (highly suspicious), I love what he does.

Bill Nye is hardly the hero we asked for, but he’s the hero we need.

Nye is able to break through the elitist scientific jargon BS and the journalistic PC BS of “we must represent EVERYONE”, to get down to the real, actual truths. His ideas on gender and sexual identity and climate change are hard to swallow by some, but they are the realized truths of tens of thousands of human beings right now. Nye is able to break things down, and I honestly wish that he had more than 25 minutes to get INTO a subject, to sink his teeth into the meat (meet?) of it.

Yes, Bill Nye is a scientist, but he’s a scientist that EVERYONE can understand, and that’s where his actual skill lies. His excellence lies in making science accessible, a thing which is not some foreign language, learned in a 101 class, or a doctor’s office, or a work-place, but in a real place, where we understand some things, but we are trying to understand others. Nye thirsts for knowledge in a way we can only aspire to.

Evolution is hard (religiously), climate change is hard (politically), gender is hard (socially), cancer is even harder (medically), but we’re trying to understand this life, here and now, using science.

“Animal agriculture puts a heavy strain on many of the Earth’s finite land, water and energy resources. In order to accommodate the 70 billion animals raised annually for human consumption, a third of the planet’s ice-free land surface, as well as nearly sixteen percent of global freshwater, is devoted to growing livestock. Furthermore, a third of worldwide grain production is used to feed livestock. By 2050, consumption of meat and dairy products is expected to rise 76 and 64 percent respectively, which will increase the resource burden from the industry. Cattle are by far the biggest source of emissions from animal agriculture, with one recent study showing that in an average American diet, beef consumption creates 1,984 pounds of CO2e annually. Replacing beef with plants would reduce that figure 96 percent, bringing it down to just 73 pounds of CO2e.”

It’s no coincidence that today I decided to post this set, which was shot in Kiev near the National Museum "Chernobyl". The Ukrainian 1986 catastrophe in some ways affected most of Western civilization, but its consequences were mostly eliminated by now. Today, cataclysms caused by human environmental impact are global, and stopping this process will be much more difficult.

Climate change and growing number of catastrophes associated with rapid warming due to the greenhouse effect will affect absolutely everyone. Why am I talking about this now? Because every year I witness the evidence personally. I don’t live at the seaside or in the zone of seismic activity, where people got used to weather anomalies. My city is in a temperate climatic zone. Nevertheless, winter thunderstorms occured here for 3 years in a row and the time of seasons starting has significantly shifted. We have or spring and fall too warm, either completely new winter timeframe each year, and the hottest months instead of July are now August and September.

Today is March 19th and there’s more snow that we’ve seen in winter. 44 mm of downfall during a day with a monthly norm of 30 mm, and by meteorological standards it’s a natural disaster. In general, 17-18th of March is not the height of spring yet, and snow itself is not uncommon at this time. The main issue is not that it’s snowing hard in March, but that the weather suddenly rushes from one extreme to another. The sun was already shining brightly, birds returned from their travels and began to sing, somewhere even willows burst in bloom. When nature is ready to wake up and some plants are already beginning to come alive, severe frost strikes, as if we were brought to the middle of winter in one day. The temperature, which before the fall of snow a few days rose to the usual April's +9 degrees C, suddenly fell to -9 C.

This is a great stress for flora and fauna that began to prepare for warming.

For many years I was a vegetarian as well because in my country it was extremely hard to completely abandon animal products. After watching “Cowspiracy” and “What the health”, I realized: the situation is so critical that I I can’t postpone any more, and switched to veganism. The authors of the films say that one of the main causes of climate change and environmental pollution are livestock farms. Therefore, the mass production of milk and eggs is as big of a crime against the future as eating meat.

Also, in August 2017 mankind has exhausted the yearly amount of Earth's renewable resources and from summer’s end we live on the planet in debt. This year the point of no return will be even earlier. It's about those very resources, the huge amounts of which are spent on the maintenance of billions of farm animals. So, the transition to vegan or at least vegetarian lifestyle is no longer a matter of personal choice of nutrition. We have deprived ourselves of this choice. Today this is the only one right way.

We don’t need to invent anything and don’t have to kill each other for a ticket to Mars (I doubt that we’ll even have time to colonize it before mass extinction). We just need to start eating differently and stop sponsoring the main cause of the planet's destruction.

Why do I care? Because this is my future, and I live in it. It’s very strange to me that so few people think about their future and the future of their beloved children and further procreation. As massively as we have destroyed, exploited and drained  planet’s resources, we must massively and urgently fix everything by denying unnecessary and harmful foods.

The warning has been written. Every human who cares is like a healthy cell fighting against cancer. Even if all you can afford to do is care, do that. Care that changes need to be made. Caring always leads to actions, even if by accident, so don't think you need to be powerful to help save the environment. Just, care. Anything beyond that is even better. You can't lose if you at least care.