![]() The changes weren’t enough to prevent climate change, even if we could sustain that manner of lifestyle. We saw a lessening of pollution in many cities worldwide, which was visible from space. Many people stopped driving, stopped shopping, and stopped eating out. At the beginning of the pandemic, the world ground to a halt in many ways. Lynda: While caring for the earth has always been a priority for me, the combination of Hazel’s query and the pandemic made some things very clear. Left: Amish worker installing metal roof (light colored to reduce heat) prior to installing solar panels. I feel less guilty and powerless and much more solution-focused. Holding each other accountable and especially accountable to Hazel has made a huge difference in how I have dealt with this issue. We continue to look for ways to decrease our carbon footprint. We hired a local company to do an energy assessment on our home in Wisconsin and followed all of their recommendations, including insulating a crawl space and replacing light fixtures for improved insulation and decreased waste. We have planted eight vegetable raised garden beds. We have planted ten trees on our land since we purchased it years ago. We assist other people in our neighborhood in Florida to recycle. We attempt to purchase as little packaging as possible that would need to be recycled but recycle whatever we have. We have made strong attempts to reduce our own food waste. We compost all vegetables and fruit waste. ![]() We ride our bikes whenever possible but at least several times per week. We are researching electric vehicles for our next purchased car. We organize any outings to include errands so as to reduce driving. We sold our second car and only have one, a Prius. We are about to get a cool roof for our home in Florida. Rick and Mary: Since our worship group agreed to hold ourselves accountable for our efforts to combat climate change, my husband Rick and I have made several changes. ![]() Here are some of our realizations and our commitments: Soren removing snow with a “Yooper Scooper” (a UP-Upper Peninsula, Mich.-innovation that moves a lot of snow with no strain on the back). We shared the marvels of “Yooper Scoopers” (amazing manual snow scoops designed for the relentless winters of Upper Peninsula Michigan) and our angst around flying to see our far-flung families. We compared notes on keeping manual lawn mowers sharp, alternatives to lawns, blowing in insulation, programmable thermostats, and on-demand water heaters. We discussed electricity contracts for all-renewable energy, shared our experiences of energy audits and window replacement, and started learning more about air and geothermal heat pumps. We bought copies of Drawdown edited by Paul Hawken and browsed it for ideas of things we could do. We used carbon footprint calculators-some of us for the first time-and were in some cases aghast at the results. Over the coming weeks, we opened a shared document in which we posted our answers to Hazel’s query: what we had already done and what we were going to do. ![]() As it turned out, this made all the difference. Suddenly, we were accountable to and owed answers to a very specific person: a child we knew and loved. How dare we be satisfied with our efforts when our nation was nowhere near meeting the “1.5 to stay alive” standard (limiting global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius to prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change)? How dare we pat ourselves on the back for our (mostly modest) personal sacrifices when personal virtue would scarcely even begin to solve the problem? and suddenly the measures we had so far taken seemed, well, inadequate. Hazel was counting on us, and her future depended-quite literally-on us. It was so personal! It was a bit in our faces, and unapologetically so. ![]() She and another Friend had worked together to plan the week’s discussion topic: global warming and our response to it, and this was the query she put forward. That was the question 12-year-old Hazel posed to our worship group. “How can you show that you actively care about my generation’s future in a big enough way to change things?” ![]()
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