An Invitation to Fall in Love with the Earth

“I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”

– Poet Robert Frost on his desired tombstone epitaph

A lover’s quarrel, we all have had at least one of these. We live with and on Planet Earth. We intimately affect its system every present moment. Humans rattle the planet a thousand times more critically than the animals and plants with whom we share the terra firma. Our effects often have long-term ramifications on all living creatures. We’re not sure of the long-term effects of all the changes we see and feel.

Every day now we face the full catastrophe of living, as Zorba the Greek quipped in the 1964 film based on Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel (1946).  Scientists worldwide warn of possible abrupt climate effects.  Are they “Chicken Littles,” exaggerating outcomes of burning fossil fuels these past one hundred years?  True, the earth has warmed one degree during the century.  Previously, the earth heated up one degree over one THOUSAND years—ten times faster than usual. Many researchers feel a moral responsibility to warn us, even though they cannot peg the exact time when catastrophes might occur.

We may not see the effects of climate change in our daily life. Or that of our children. We may only read or hear about strange weather patterns, superhurricanes, “unseasonal” rains and flooding, nonstop drought, hyperactive fires, devastating twisters in areas where no cyclone has ventured before.

My blog, DearEarth.org, intends to help you and other readers like yourself keep up with all the news and changes.  It will provide suggestions and alternatives to help you deal with the overexaggerations of the news media and put into perspective scientific promises.  It will list steps to enable you to feel some control of your climate world. Practical tips to give back carbon now, immediately. If we all pull together, things won’t seem so dire.

My travel-science blog. Before it melts.com/Wanderlust.center [which name?], promises on the spot recommendations for your next trip. It’s linked to DearEarth by how we express our affection for the planet and its peoples. It too offers up practical tips.  Always check the weather before you go.  Keep abreast of the latest monsoons and heatwaves. Travel insurance may be necessary for each trip. Take a sports top water bottle to refill when trekking on my next journey.

As a child, I watched “Beat the Clock” on a grainy black and white RCA.  In my favorite television show on humid summer Midwest evenings, couples completed simple stunts before the clock ran out to win money and prizes. Our prize: Reverse climate change and subtract carbon from the atmosphere. A sustainable planet for our children and grandchildren to inherit and pass forward. Working together, we can actually reverse some parts of climate change. Before the planet topples over an unknown tipping point, a joy rises in this challenge.

These blogs—DearEarth.org and Wanderlust.center—intend to help you keep up on climate change and travel science. You’ll have useful information about to lighten your footprint on the planet and how to keep on your toes as you journey through our time on earth.

Read more at Global Warming > The Human Contribution

This we know.
All things are connected
like the blood
which unites one family. . . .

Whatever befalls the earth,
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life;
he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself.

–Ted Perry (educator, scriptwriter), inspired by Chief Seattle