Do you think that global warming is too far away from your personal life?  No, it may not.  While I was doing research on global warming today, I came across Shoshana Zuboff story on how global warming turned her peaceful life upside down.  Here is Shoshana’s story.  It may change how you think about global warming and how you conduct your daily activities.

Fifteen years earlier my husband and I gave up fame and fortune to raise our son and daughter on a Maine farm. We wanted them to grow up with the respectful down-to-earth values of our small Maine town. We hoped they would shape deeply lived authentic lives surrounded by natural beauty and bound to the rhythms of the seasons. Our life was a celebration of long Huck Finn summers and cozy snowy winters. We created an 18th century household filled with books, music, and memories in which we all worked and played. It was our sanctuary — the safest, happiest place on earth. Later our children taught us to be green. We installed windmills and solar panels, recycled and composted, and became more mindful of our footprint. Still, we felt safe from the worst ravages of global warming in our bucolic corner of the “first” world here in New England. The real catastrophes were “out there” in sub-Saharan Africa, Bangladesh, the Andes or tiny Pacific islands. Then global warming crashed our party in paradise.

That night I thrilled to the thunderstorm raging outside. Then a bolt of lightning crashed through the kitchen window, mowed me down like a freight train hurtling through my chest and triggered a blast so loud I thought the sound barrier had been breached somewhere between the crockery and the curtains. When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the floor. Then came smoke. Fifteen minutes later we were out in the storm, watching in disbelief as our beloved home vanished in a towering wall of flame.

I am not a climate change scientist, but I have come to understand that I am a climate change victim. Our daughter took the lead investigating destructive lightning in Maine. She found that the NASA Goddard Institute estimates a 5-6% change in global lightning frequencies for every 1 degree Celsius global warming. The Earth has already warmed .8 degrees Celsius since 1802 and is expected to warm another 1.1-6.4 degrees by the end of the century. Maine’s temperatures rose 1.9 degrees Celsius in the last century and another 2.24 degree rise is projected by 2104. I learned from our insurance company that while the typical thunderstorm produces around 100 lightning strikes, there were 217 strikes around our house that night. I was shocked to discover that when it comes to increased lightning frequency and destructiveness, a NASA study concluded that eastern areas of North America like Maine are especially vulnerable. Scientists confirm a 10% increase in the incidence of extreme weather events in our region since 1949.

Was the lightning bolt in our kitchen caused by global warming? The facts are too compelling to ignore. It seems that global warming turned my family into refugees in our own lives, stripped of everything that once carried our memories and meaning. Since then I’ve learned some lessons that may help others reckon with the realities of climate change and the terrifying prospect that our future will be different from our past.
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Climate change is not a blip but an epochal shift, yet we seem unable to do much more than close the doors to rooms bound for extinction. Are we in a countdown to a hell time of irreversible loss or to a renaissance of invention and adaptation? It depends on how we learn to pivot. Every level of the system — from each person to the governments of the world — can learn to understand and confront the error of predictability. Naming it and identifying its consequences is a start. Then let’s learn how to teach our children, our leaders and ourselves what it means to live without terror in the knowledge that our planet is spinning on a new course.

Shoshana’s story is very compelling.  To save our planet and save our children from the natural disasters such as drought, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc caused by global warming, each one of us need to be conscious about the effects of global warming and take actions to stop global warming.

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