A Grandfather on Climate Change: Boomer Warrior

As Climate Mamas and Papas, we all have different “a ha” moments that lead us to our current collective path of trying to do more to assure a livable future for our children and grandchildren. We want to share with you “one grandfather’s story” about how he has become “part of the solution!”

Join us for a short interview with Canadian Climate “GrandPapa” extraordinaire Rolly Montpellier, founder of Boomer Warrior. At ClimateMama, Rolly first came to our attention several years ago through his writing and on-line activism. We had the pleasure of meeting Rolly in person at a Climate Reality training in 2012.

In Rolly’s Voice, and his Words:

With retirement came a period of introspection, self-evaluation and questioning. What do I want to do with the rest of my life? What does it all mean? How much time do I have? How can I get involved? There is so much to do. Where do I start?

I wasn’t always this way. Like most people, any un-ease about society, the environment or the body politic was quickly tossed aside or squeezed out by an overly-busy lifestyle. I had a career to pursue, kids to put through school, a mortgage to pay and a retirement to save for. Deep down inside however, a small nagging voice kept reminding me that someday I would have to get back to the issues left unresolved.
And there would be no bigger issue, no more daunting challenge – the mother-ship issue of our times – than the degradation of our environment and climate change. I’m not sure precisely when I knew that we are destroying our planet. But I recognize exactly when I knew that I had to do something about it.

When my grandchildren were born, I knew. So what do you do once you know?

Like most, I was hanging on to hope. But ‘hope’ is failing us. It has been said that hope is the rope on which we hang, leaving us paralyzed. It just allows us to carry on what we’ve been doing for decades – deferring solutions to someone else sometime in the future. Hope simply passes the buck to our kids and grandkids.

I needed to seek the truth, however disconcerting, inconvenient or troubling it might be. The result of this soul-searching is BoomerWarrior.

BoomerWarrior is About:

1. Raising Awareness to the vast challenges we face
2. Coming to Our Senses
3. Creating a Sense of Urgency to galvanize people into positive activism
4. Improving Our Legacy – the type of world our children and grandchildren will inherit
5. Provoking change and Resisting the forces of denial, complacency, apathy and inaction

P.S. In addition to being the Founder and Managing Editor of BoomerWarrior.Org and a Climate Reality leader , Rolly is also a blogger and an activist. He has been a contributor to the Climate Change Guide, The Canadian, ClimateMama (wohoo!), World Daily, Georgian Bay News, The Elephant, CounterCurrents, GreenDivas, ME360, and 350Ottawa.