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Climate Impact Day has unfolded around the world, and to me it has been an incredibly humbling, humanizing and reconnecting experience. The idea that one picture can “speak a thousand words” is so very true. Looking at the Connect the Dots website, seeing people, all over the world, stand up and say: “Look how climate change is impacting my home, my town, my park and my family,” is overwhelming.
Margaret Mead’s words: “Never doubt that a small group of determined individuals can change the world, in fact that is the only thing that ever has,” take on new meaning for me, and gives me hope.
I am hopeful that together, we can open peoples eyes, minds and hearts, and that real people with real concerns will be heard and seen. That together we CAN and WILL stand up to the money, politics and special interests that are trying to keep us addicted to fossil fuels; the burning and mining of which are changing our climate in ways which are neither compatible nor sustainable for the future of the human race.
On my “Connect the Dots” journey I met so many wonderful, incredible and inspiring individuals. We talked, laughed and shared stories of family, life and love of our planet, as we hiked together to the proposed site of a natural gas pipeline. This proposed pipeline could carry 
“fracked gas” from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, through New Jersey to where – we aren’t sure. These pipeline companies will only say they have “markets” for this gas, which may in fact be overseas. The inability to clearly state where this gas will go, defeats the idea the gas companies are trying to “sell us” through TV, radio and internet ads, that this gas, is somehow “patriotic,” and will provide energy security; something we are expected to accept, regardless of the huge environmental costs it will extract on our own country, our own people and on people around the world. I am hopeful that through our raised voices and shared concerns, the real costs of fossil fuels will be realized and that renewable energy sources will become the obvious and chosen path for energy security in the USA, a path that is already becoming a super highway in other parts of the world.
Check out some of the amazing photos on the Connect the Dots website.
I feel HOPEFUL and POWERFUL, what about you?
Yours,
Climate Mama
