TwoDegreesWarmer.com is a community website for discussion on and learning about how we can all best prevent and prepare for climate change.
The name of the website comes from our world’s collective effort to keep global warming under two degrees Celsius. At the same time, it is intended to be a warning shout that whether or not we meet that goal is up to all of us – and we need to be prepared to deal with the consequences of climate change.
Climate change is already here. However, we can all do our part to protect ourselves and our communities in the present and for the future.
Our Stories
Here is more on our stories. Why we care and what we want to do about our already present climate change.
Carly’s Story
If you are like me, then you have the type of brain that latches on to something “interesting” and then can’t let go. Moreover, you then want to talk about this “interesting” discovery/fact/idea to everyone you come into contact with. It will not matter if this something “interesting” is polite dinner conversation, or a good introduction to a new unsuspecting soul. I will want to talk about it. This is usually why I have to start another blog. Enough people in real life need me to vent about it in cyber life so they can get on with their lives.
In this case, I don’t understand why this is something we want to compartmentalize. Like many other people before me have announced – at this point, we cannot afford to not CONSTANTLY TALK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE.
Many people have said this, just not enough people. This is a problem for all of humanity. Climate change is not just “interesting” – it is all encompassing. In addition, it matters not if you take a dooms-day mentality or a Steven Pinker type optimism. Doing nothing is still making climate choices.
Crystal’s Story
I grew up in a home that didn’t believe in climate change and thought that environmentalists were a bunch of crazy tree huggers. People, specifically individual prosperity, mattered more. Those beliefs hung with me into adulthood. In college I was exposed to new ways of thinking about things, and I began to respect those who were concerned about the environment and things like global warming and mass extinctions. But at that point I was very concerned about human rights issues and felt that environmental concerns should be secondary to that.
My turning point began with a simple sign at work. The sustainability group hung signs around campus about how many cups a day you used over the course of your life if you chose to use the company’s disposable cups instead of bringing your own – it was over 11,000 non-biodegradable cups. In my case, it would be over 22,000 since I used a disposable coffee cup and a disposable drinking cup each day. I saw those signs every day for months and eventually they began to eat at me. One day it hit me hard – 22,000 cups in the landfill is a lot! And all because I was too lazy to wash out a water bottle. I decided to buy a reusable water bottle for my desk. The reusable coffee cup decision was easy – my company switched to a coffee that I hated; and I decided to just make coffee at home instead.
Those first steps ended up being life changing. Once I stopped with my daily disposable water and coffee cups, I began to notice just how much waste I was generating in my own life. And then I realized that if there are billions of other people on the planet doing the same thing, then that was A LOT of waste! As I became more aware of the issue of waste, I began to pay attention to the headlines around greenhouse gasses, climate change, and rising oceans. I read stories about endangered species and realized that many of these species had important roles in the overall ecosystem and we would all be affected by their extinction. I realized that protecting the environment is a human rights issue as climate change will affect the most vulnerable populations the worst. And perhaps most of all, I felt the weight of having brought children into the world – a world that we were not protecting.
The realizations led to getting more educated, taking steps to change my own behaviors, and eventually activism. I don’t have all the answers. This is a complex-problem decades in the making, and it will take the majority of the world working together to come up with solutions. These problems can seem so overwhelming and impossible that people get discouraged and just don’t do anything. But the world needs us. Future generations need us. And so Two Degrees Warmer was created to be a practical guide on steps anyone can take to live more sustainably as individuals and effectively advocate for the large-scale changes that are needed to protect our planet.
Climate Change Goals
In the spirit of being my standard “way too much,” I have began this project with Crystal with two goals. Our articles will typically fall into these two groups.
Activism
- Goal One: Fight human behaviors that contribute to the earth’s warming and destruction in the efforts to keep warming to below two degrees Celsius warmer than historical measurements.
Adaptation
- Goal Two: Prepare our generation and future generations for the changes we will have to deal with and adapt to as our earth warms.
Assumptions
Going into this project we have several assumptions we would like you to be aware of:
- First, that collective effort is powerful. One person abandoning single use plastics is great. However, millions of people doing the same is effective change. Moreover, thousands of people calling out corporations, lobbying governments and voting is how we can slow climate change.
- Second, that at the same time we are doing everything in our effort to help solve our climate crisis, we are also taking responsibility for preparing ourselves and our families for the future. Adaptation is not easy or cheap. We have to start building a strong, but flexible, foundation now.
- Third, these two assumptions are not mutually exclusive. Our individual goals are not contrary to our collective goals. For example, investing our money in companies we believe will be profitable in the changing future is also putting our money in a powerful place for collective change. In other words, investing in wind energy vs coal helps both our bottom lines and our earth’s climate future.