Climate Change: Why We Care

The Landerholmstead’s main purpose is to provide self-sufficient, sustainable housing communities for people in need. Our dream is to design a site where crops and livestock are in abundance, where the soil is fertile, and the people who live on it have access to healthy, clean food and water.

climate-3But there’s one thing that can make it a lot harder for us to achieve these goals in the future: the imminent threat of climate change.

To say that climate change isn’t as bad as people make it out to be, or even that it’s a hoax, is a dangerous and irresponsible way of thinking. Our world is heating up each and every month and each heat record will break the one that precedes it. The arctic region just saw its second-lowest summer ice levels ever recorded. These things are happening right before our eyes.

Some more facts:

  • The world just passed its threshold for CO2 emissions – over 400 PPM – and it’s likely we’ll never see emissions below that in our lifetime.
  • Methane and ethane emissions by oil and gas have had a dramatic increase since fracking (hydraulic fracturing) became a popular way to obtain gas. These emissions negatively affect air quality and can destabilize the climate.
  • The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is actually allowing oil and gas companies to dump their fracking waste into the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Oil pipelines are leaking into our water.
  • Experts say the world only has 17 years to transition to renewable energy before we start to see devastating effects.

These are just some of the many consequences we have brought on by allowing oil and gas companies to continue their harmful practices. Climate change is a scary, real and persistent threat that we, and only we, can interrupt. While our presidential nominees either promote dangerous practices like fracking or even deny climate change altogether,climate-2 we have to take action at a local level. Vote into office people who care about our world and our environment; call your local politicians and voice your concerns about your environment and ask them to oppose fracking and other destructive operations; condemn the fossil fuel companies and demand a transition to clean, renewable energy; stand with our brothers and sisters fighting to stop dangerous pipelines, like those brave people protesting against the Dakota Access Pipeline; raise your voice when you hear someone say climate change isn’t a threat; even sign that Facebook petition you see people share.

If each and every one of us commits to a healthier, safer world, we can reverse climate change and save our planet for generations to come.

We depend on nature. We need nature to survive. The Landerholmstead cannot and will not thrive with a contaminated and damaged Mother Earth. We need not only to care about climate change; we need to act on it.

And we need to start now.


© THE LANDERHOLMSTEAD, 2016.

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