Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
Happy Halloween! We, in North America, have taken the celebration of ghosts, goblins and monsters to an extreme and on October 31st we ring in this festive and spooky holiday in a myriad of ways. It is an opportunity for fun and fantasy and an opportunity to “be in the moment” and enjoy!
This post contains some highlights from several of our past ClimateMama halloween posts, from our current thinking on climate action, and from some of our “scary” ghosts and goblin stories. Quite frankly these stories aren’t going to go away. So, after some important in the moment time with your kids, please do join us and help us share. Our kids health, future and now is in our hands and Halloween is as good a time as any to remind us all that we must make climate solutions a part of our lives – every day. In the USA, with the mid-term elections on November 6th, it is also a critical time to remind our friends, neighbors, family and grown up children that voting does matter, now more then ever.
What continues to really scare to me, and what remains largely ignored by policy makers, the mainstream media, and many of my friends, are climate science facts shared by the international scientific climate community through their International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Until recently, these “spooky and terrifying REAL life stories” are news one day and forgotten the next. They should be compelling motivators to move us forward to act on climate now, through both big and small ways. The most recent report, “Global Warming at 1.5 Degrees”, was released in early October and it did get more mainstream media coverage then earlier reports. It tells us that we will surpass a 1.5 C degree rise in temperature from pre-industrial times within twelve years, a temperature point, and a critical indicator that will put our planet at risk of runaway climate chaos and ourselves, our children and our species at mortal risk. Twelve years flies by.
I have shared in earlier posts how the IPCC, through hundreds of peer reviewed scientific reports that have been reviewed by hundreds of scientists around the world, confirm that:
The world’s climate continues to warm at an unprecedented rate, and that, with more than 95% certainty, scientists are confirming that humans are the primary cause of this warming.
The rate of sea level rise is also accelerating at unprecedented rates and we need to move beyond historical rates to reflect the current changes.
The arctic sea ice continues to melt rapidly and our oceans are rapidly acidifying, as they absorb much of the excess heat and atmospheric C02.
None of this is good, and I have to wonder how many more “nails in the coffin” we need to be presented with before we start not only adapting to the changes we are all experiencing, but actually doing something to stop them.
Following this scary story, let me share a personal, family Halloween story too.
I watched the “Terminator” movie series with my son a few years ago, in a “movie marathon” of sorts when we were both home sick. “Timely” in a way, as we get ready for Halloween, given that all the movies in the series focus on scary creatures.
The movies are filled with a lot of murder, monster and mayhem. I figured though, not much more gruesome than some of the electronic games my son plays with his friends, much to my pacifist chagrin. I choose to watch the whole series with my son, as a kind of ghoulish bonding experience, and was reminded that there is a message threading it’s way through the series – subtly and some times not so subtly the movie points out: humankind’s responsibility to care for and to rescue our world and us, for future generations – made even more relevant by the recent IPCC report.
In watching the Terminator movies, I felt that we Climate Mamas and Papas are a bit like the character of Sarah Connor who was the mother of John, the “savior” of the human race. There is overwhelming evidence available to anyone who wants to see it – we humans are destroying our planet. Like Sarah, we know that the “monsters” are lurking. In our case we know that we are changing our ecosystems and heating up our world through our thoughtless emissions of greenhouse gases and our wasteful consumerism. We too often close our eyes and pretend we can’t see.
Not to put a crimp on Halloween, as in most cases our celebrations are harmless. Or are they? There is a line that runs through the Terminator movies, “No fate but what we make.”How in North America, did we turn a harvest festival and the occasion to tell a few good ghost stories, into a mass consumerism event? We in America “do things up big”, Halloween being no exception. The holiday has turned into a marketer’s dream. We buy cards for friends, we buy new costumes for our children, and we purchase as many “crazy, scary and festive” decorations as we can, rivaled only by how we decorate for the winter holidays.
In the northeast US, if you “don’t” decorate for Halloween, you are almost considered a “scrooge”. We haven’t even talked about the candy and other goodies we give out (in single use containers no less – so no one can accuse us of “tampering” with the goodies). Which side of the looking glass are we looking thru, have we made our fate?
Lets flip the picture and look to the positive and come up with ways to heal our world one small step at a time.
1. Recycle your and your kid’s costumes, exchanging them with friends for a “new costume” for next year or think about giving the costume to a school or a camp or a used clothing store. Just because the Halloween magazines start coming in August, doesn’t mean you have to succumb to your kid’s demands to get a new costume each year. I fell under that spell for all too long!!
2. Save those great decorations and reusing them.
By Tim Jewett [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
4. Think about the candy you buy, where does it come from, packaging, etc. Grist did an interesting article recently on “candy you can feel good about,” read it and discuss this with the kids in your life. There is always, “more to the story” that we normally consider!
Ghosts and goblins are lurking all year around, not just on Halloween. As you celebrate this holiday, engage your children and your grandchildren and consider more sustainable ways to celebrate all our holidays. Also, remember to say “Boo” back, to anyone who questions the reality of climate change! Show your kids you are superheroes and stand up for truth and justice.
Yours truly,
Climate Mama
(Content in this post about the terminator series is “recycled” in part from earlier CM Posts – Enjoy!)
