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Climate Change

Climate change impacts us all. Here's how sustainable family habits can help us all fight it.

Shannon Brescher Shea

Shannon Brescher Shea and family at rally.

If you grew up in the late '80s or early '90s you probably remember all the talk of the ozone layer deteriorating. We traded our Aqua Net cans for the pump hair spray that often left our hair more damp and floppy, than the beautifully coifed waterfall bang teased to the heavens that we were actually going for. We yelled at our parents for not cutting up their plastic six-pack rings because of the sea turtles and their survival. Suddenly, news of the environment and earth's impending doom was constantly on the news and sneaked into our television shows on Nickelodeon and commercials on MTV. We heard about oil spills and animal extinction, and we were rightfully cautious and outraged.

Today, we still cut our plastic rings before discarding them and opt for the pump sprayer over the aerosol can. We didn’t know then that we were young activists, we only knew we wanted to be good stewards of the planet we inhabited and we were going to drag our parents along with us. The fight for climate change and maintaining a healthy Earth didn’t end in the '90s. It’s something people are now more intentional about and are working to raise their children in a way that helps to prolong the life of the planet we call home. That’s why I connected with climate activist Shannon Brescher Shea, author of Growing Sustainable Together: Practical resources for raising kind, engaged and resilient children.

I wanted to know what brought Shannon into climate activism, and how people can involve their children in making a lasting impact on the earth. Shannon was full of insights and ways parents can make small changes to their daily lives and ways they can get involved on a larger scale, joining a growing number of climate and sustainability activists.

Shannon said her activist origin story started in the summer of third grade where she learned about manatees and how they became endangered due to being hit by boats. This prompted her to talk with her class about adopting a manatee. “That was my first, very specific thing I remember falling in love with, and then also wanting to take action at the same time.” After adopting a manatee in third grade, Shannon fell in love with nature and animals, and as she got older, she says, “I came to understand the human impact and how humans and nature are not separate things. What humans do affects nature, but also it affects everybody else too.”

Shannon Brescher Shea at a rally.

Shannon Brescher Shea

Incorporating the passion she developed as a child into her own parenting and current climate activism is what prompted Shannon to write a parenting book on sustainability. When talking about the importance of incorporating the changes in her book with your own family, the climate activist says, “If we fully embrace these, yes, they can be big changes in our lives and sometimes changes that are kind of radical, but they can also lead to much better quality of life and have it help us have more fulfilled, healthy, and not just physically healthy, but emotionally and mentally healthy parts of life.”

Shannon talks about some children experiencing climate anxiety, which she describes as “this feeling that like climate change is happening and there's nothing I can do. And the adults are old school. And they betrayed us. They've handed us this future that we can't do anything about.” According to Shannon, there is something we can do about it and it’s something the whole family can be involved in. She says small changes can make a big difference, such as choosing to bike to school or using public transportation to get to work, which reduces your contribution to pollution and also encourages other people to consider following suit.

Kids at climate rally.

Shannon Brescher Shea

The important thing to remember, says Shannon, is to not stop at the small things. Composting is a great way to produce less waste, but getting involved in local cleanups of streams and advocating for bicycle lanes are tangible things you can do with your family that make a difference for the environment and the community as a whole. Involve children in climate activism, she says, and “just keep kind of expanding these conversations outward and outward, using very practical, concrete experiences that the kids are having, you can have that much more of an impact and help them think about how you have that ripple effect. Not to cause guilt or to shame, but to show how we're all connected and how things we do affect other people.”

Climate change continues to occur, and living a sustainable lifestyle can help combat some of the effects humans have on the climate. More and more young people are joining the fight against climate change and families like Shannon’s are helping to make a difference. If you’re unsure on where to start with living a sustainable lifestyle with your family, you can grab Shannon’s book, Growing Sustainable Together, for ideas on how to get started.

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Yes, arsonists started some of Australia's fires. No, it doesn't mean climate change is fake

Photo by Issy Bailey on Unsplash

With vast swaths of Australia up in flames, debates are raging over what has caused the unprecedentedly intense fire season. And along with those debates, a slew of disinformation is swirling around the internet, clouding people's understanding of what's happening in the land down under.

Recent headlines about people being arrested on arson charges have only added confusion to the chaos. So let's clear a few things up.

The New South Wales police department has stated that 183 people, including 40 juveniles, have been arrested on fire-related charges during the 2019/2020 bush fire season. The police department noted:

  • 24 people have been charged over alleged deliberately-lit bushfires
  • 53 people have had legal actions for allegedly failing to comply with a total fire ban, and
  • 47 people have had legal actions for allegedly discarding a lighted cigarette or match on land.
New South Wales has been hit hard by the fires, as has the state of Victoria. However, a Victoria spokeswoman told The Guardian, "There is currently no intelligence to indicate that the fires in East Gippsland and the North East have been caused by arson or any other suspicious behavior."
However, media outlets ran with '183 people arrested for arson!' (or the more exaggerated '200 arsonists arrested!)' headlines, which bots and trolls and people who don't actually read articles started sharing as fact. Climate change deniers began pointing to such headlines as proof that claims of climate change contributing to the out-of-control fire season are bunk. Conspiracy theorists started claiming that environmentalists and eco-terrorists are the ones starting the fires as a way to push the big, bag climate change agenda.

Oof, people. Let's look at what we know.

RELATED: Climate change is not a partisan issue. So, let's stop treating it like one.

Yes, some fires in Australia were started by arsonists. That's actually not unusual. More fires appear to have been started by people being negligent—also not unusual. Fires in remote areas are most likely to be caused by lightning. In fact, there are nine causes of fire ignition recognized by fire investigators—and no, climate change is not one of them. But that doesn't mean climate change isn't a contributing factor.

What some people seem to be missing is that no one is claiming that climate change itself is igniting fires. That doesn't even make logical sense. Where climate change plays a role is in setting the stage for fires to start and spread easily. Intensely dry, hot conditions—which are exacerbated by global warming—create a virtual tinderbox out of the landscape.

Stefan Rahmstorf, climatologist and lead author of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report, says the bushfires have been exacerbated by two factors that have "well-established" links to climate change: drought and record heat. Last summer was the hottest on record in Australia, and the country has also seen record-low rainfall this season.

"Due to enhanced evaporation in warmer temperatures, the vegetation and the soils dry out more quickly," Rahmstorf told Time. "So even if the rainfall didn't change, just the warming in itself would already cause a drying of vegetation and therefore increased fire risk."

RELATED: Want to see stronger climate change policies? Elect more women as lawmakers

People pointing to the arson headlines seem desperate to downplay the role climate change is playing in the bushfires, but scientists aren't having it.

"There are now disingenuous efforts to downplay the clear role of climate change in worsening the intensity and severity of the Australian fires, or to blame 'arson' as a way to distract from the growing threat of climate change," Peter Gleick, climate scientist and co-founder of Pacific Institute in California, told Time. "These efforts should be called out for what they are: gross climate denial."

So yeah. Fires start for many reasons, including arson and negligence. That's not debatable. But fires spread faster in certain conditions, and the fire conditions in Australia this season are linked to climate change. That's not debatable, either. Arson arrests aren't any kind of proof that climate change isn't real. Not even close.

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Want to see stronger climate change policies? Elect more women as lawmakers

Joakim Honkasalo/Unsplash, Yale Climate Connections/Twitter

Despite the denial of the misinformed and delayed actions of politicians, climate change is the story of our time. Every reputable scientific organization on the planet agrees. Every signatory to the historic Paris Accord, which is basically every single one of the world's countries, agrees. Even the U.S. government agrees, with official government climate change reports totally contradicting what the president says and tweets. If we fail to address the very real threats climate change poses to life on our planet, it will be to our peril.

So what do we do about the fact that he leaders of the world are failing to address climate change in a meaningful and effective manner? According to a study out of Australia's Curtin University, there is one promising solution—elect more women into office.

RELATED: Look at the photos and videos of thousands of youth demanding climate change action NOW.

The study, which examined the legislatures of 91 countries, found that the more women a country has in lawmaking positions, the more stringent the country's climate change policies are. Conducted by economics professors Astghik Mavisakalyan and Yashar Tarverdi, the study included many different factors, including GDP per capita, education statistics, and the political orientation of each country. According to the study authors, none of these factors could explain the link between greater female leadership and stronger climate policies.

In fact, their findings indicate that "this relationship is likely to be causal." In other words, it appears that placing women in positions of power may lead directly to stricter climate change legislation. And that relationship has real world impact as well. The study shows that "through its effect on the stringency of climate change policies, the representation of females in parliament results in lower carbon dioxide emissions."

We've seen how women of all ages are leading the charge when it comes to climate change. From the mighty teen Greta Thunberg to the mighty elder Jane Fonda, the health and future of our planet is in strong female hands. But to make a difference in the halls of government, where earth-saving regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuels takes place, we need more women in positions of direct lawmaking influence. It's not enough to have women raising their voices—we also need them taking seats in legislative bodies.

RELATED: Think women don't win elections? They do. And more of them should run.

Considering the fact that women are more directly impacted by the effects of climate change, perhaps the findings of this study are not surprising. Add in the fact that women statistically make better leaders than men, and it makes sense that female lawmakers would be more likely to lead the way on the world's most pressing challenge.

Naturally, battling climate change is not as simple as electing more women, and there is certainly debate to be had on how best to mitigate the climate crisis. But it's not debatable that immediate action is vital for the well-being of our planet and every living thing on it. It's now clear that women take fiercer action on climate change when they are elected, and it's been proven that women win elections when they run. So this seems like a no brainer.

Let's get more women on the ballot and elect more of them to office. The future of our planet might literally depend on it.

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The hole in the ozone layer is smaller than ever, NASA says

In some double-edged news for the planet, NASA has recently announced that the hole in the ozone layer has shrunk to its smallest size since it was detected in the mid-1980s. But there's a bit of a catch as to why it shrank in the first place, and yes it has to do with climate change.

Back in the days of glam rock and unlimited hairspray most people were totally oblivious to the damage they were doing to the atmosphere. Then in 1985 a group of buzz killers (a.k.a. scientists) released findings that showed the ozone levels in the atmosphere over the poles were depleting at an alarming rate.

And suddenly certain real estate moguls had to find another way to make the remnants of their hair bend in an unnatural direction, and proving that anyone can be a victim of their own ignorance.

The ozone layer is a part of the Earth's atmosphere made up of molecules called, wait for it, ozones! Which are basically triple strength oxygen - where the oxygen molecules we breath are made up of two oxygen atoms, the ozone layer molecules have three oxygen atoms.

And throughout Earth's history these brave tiny soldiers stood guard against the sun's radiation, specifically UV rays which are known to cause skin cancer. But when we found that they were being killed off, well, you can see how that could raise some obvious concerns. Please enjoy this nifty video from The National Geographic to learn more!

In the decades since the substances that caused the depletion were banned or prohibited (see: the Montreal Protocol) the ozone layer has shown signs of rebounding.

Recently NASA released a report that said the ozone hole was the smallest it has been since it was discovered, stretching to 3.9 million square miles. That may sound like a lot but it's actually half the usual size around this time of year which is around 8 million square miles.

This is all pretty good long-run news for the planet, but, and yes this the big "but," there's a caveat. "It's great news for ozone in the Southern Hemisphere," said Paul Newman, chief scientist for Earth Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "But it's important to recognize that what we're seeing this year is due to warmer stratospheric temperatures. It's not a sign that atmospheric ozone is suddenly on a fast track to recovery."


It's true, and shrinking of the ozone has actually happened in the past though not quite to this degree, but it was always due to strange weather patterns. And scientist are still investigating, however the main culprit for this seems to be rising global temperatures.

"It's a rare event that we're still trying to understand. If the warming hadn't happened, we'd likely be looking at a much more typical ozone hole." Said Susan Strahan, a researcher with the Universities Space Research Association.

Despite this however, scientists are optimistic that by 2070, at current rates the ozone layer can return to normal.

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