One of my favorite features on Sparkey is the autostart. For those readers who haven’t seen our Youtube channel Unplugged Urban, we have three cars: my car Sparkey - a 2015 Chevy Spark EV, Danielle’s car Sparkette - also a 2015 Chevy Spark EV (yes we both have the same car ..even the same color), and Annie’s car Brett - an emotionally unstable 2000 VW Beetle.

There is nothing better than hitting the auto-start on a freezing cold morning. Everything is toasty warm for my ride to work. With the exception of cooling Sparky down on a hot summer afternoon, I hadn’t used auto-start since the spring. As fall is setting in here in the Northwest, mornings are cold and dark. This morning while making my coffee I thought to myself “Ah yes auto-start! Now Sparkey will be nice and cozy while I drive to work sipping my hot coffee”. Just about the time my coffee finished brewing I heard someone yelling out on our street “You’re killing the planet with your BLEEPING car you BLEEPING BLEEP!!!” I had totally forgotten about the angry environmentalist bike commuter.

The road in front of our house is part of a popular biking trail many cyclists use for commuting to and from work. Last winter this bike commuter saw Sparkey in auto-start mode (running without a driver inside) and took it upon himself to make sure that I understood what a terrible person I was. Almost every morning when he passed by my house and saw Sparkey’s lights on, he would scream some sort of obscene environmental message. I imagine that he was so enraged that he didn’t notice Sparkey’s charge cable or the lack of a tailpipe or any exhaust for that matter. I doubt that he knew 100% of Sparkey’s power comes from a combination of solar hydroelectric and wind power. Likewise, I doubt that he knew the majority of my house’s power and 100% of my garage’s power comes from solar. The irony is that of all the houses on our street he could single out to proclaim his message of climate responsibility, he picked mine - the one house that has the smallest carbon footprint.

Albeit a poor way to communicate climate awareness, I do understand this cyclist’s perspective. For most of my career, I worked as an engineer - applying scientific principles solving problems. I believe that solving climate change is very doable. All of the technology required to reduce and reverse climate change is already developed. The issue is not the means to change, it’s the will to change.

On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy announced to a joint session of Congress the plan to go to the moon. At that time we did not have much of the technology needed to get us there. So why was the space program successful? We had the will to get there. Every American understood that there are no winners in a nuclear war. Kennedy’s plan to focus our efforts towards competing with Russia in the space race was as much about avoiding a nuclear holocaust as it was about developing our long-range missile capability.

If climate change has the potential of killing and displacing as many people as nuclear war and the technology exists to stop and reverse it, why are so many Americans against or indifferent to doing so? Some may say that there is not enough evidence to prove that the climate is changing while others claim that humans are not causing the change. I believe that the issue is a lack of a Herioshemia. We have yet to see how bad life on planet earth could be in the wake of global warming.

The reason that Americans got behind Kennedy’s ambitious goal, was that they had all seen the hell of Herioshemia. One second the city was there and the next it was gone. Anyone unfortunate enough to have survived the blast bore a painful and bleak existence. No matter the volume of saber-rattling during the cold war, neither Americans nor Russians for that matter wanted to see the bomb drop.

So what are the answers? Is climate change real? Is it a result of humans? If so, is the best way to communicate the need for change screaming obscenities while biking to work at the crack of dawn?

Here is my attempt at answering those questions.

Is climate change real? That one is fairly easy to answer with a resounding “Yes!”. Every applicable branch of science (Astronomy, Ecology, Chemistry, Biology, Geology, and Physics) has extensively studied all aspects of our climate history and all came to the same conclusions: The planet is warming at an unprecedented rate and the effects will make much of the earth uninhabitable. Some scientists have even gone so far as to suggest the potential of a runaway climate similar to that of Venus a now-dead planet.

Is climate change a result of humans? The vast majority of scientists believe that it is. It’s difficult to ultimately be certain and to what degree. In a proper scientific study, there should be a control - a sample of the experiment that experiences “normal” or unaltered circumstances. In the case of global warming, the only way to have a control would be to have two identical planet earths with identical history prior to the industrial revolution. At which point one would experience human pollution and one would not. You could then determine the amount of climate change since the start of the industrial revolution each earth had experienced. There is no doubt that humans have contributed to global warming the question is how much.

Regardless of how much climate change we and our ancestors are responsible for and how much would have happened without human influence, it doesn't change our responsibility to care for the only currently habitable planet in our solar system and likely our galaxy.

Scientist Bill Nye put it well in a November 2018 USA TODAY interview:

"This whole idea of terraforming Mars, as respectful as I can be, are you guys high?" …. "We can't even take care of this planet where we live, and we're perfectly suited for it, let alone another planet."

The bottom line is that regardless of how much we are responsible for the recent climate change, we have the responsibility to do something about it.

And finally, Is the best way to communicate the need for change screaming obscenities while biking to work at the crack of dawn? Uhhh…. No ...Definitely no on that one. I think that this is perhaps the crux of the problem. It seems as though people fall into one of three categories when it comes to the issue of climate change: Complete denial - It’s a hoax conjured up by the liberals to keep business and industry from succeeding. Indifference - It might be a problem I just don’t know how bad, besides what can I do about it. Or the screaming activist - “I’ve got to yell at everyone contributing to climate change while riding my emission-free bike to work!“

Extremism has become our standard of political discourse. Regardless of the validity of your message - yelling obscenities at someone will never change their mind and I’m not just referring to the angry cyclist. Our politicians do the exact same thing - pointing fingers, trolling the Twittersphere, making excuses, or dismissing the problem altogether. Meanwhile, our president has thrown nearly every environmental control out the window for the sake of providing jobs for the middle-class worker and stimulating growth for the economy. This is a narrow-sighted quick fix, all for the sake of reelection. It’s not bad enough that coal has the worst emissions of any commonly used energy source, it kills the middle-class workers mining it. #blacklung=greateconomy? Why not provide coal miners work mining silica to make solar panels. Why not create factory jobs for the middle class by providing incentives for companies to manufacture solar panels and homeowners to put those panels on their roofs?

The unfortunate truth is that our parties are so heavily lobbied and polarized that it is nearly impossible to vote in the right direction. What is the right vote to cast when you can’t get on board with ether candidate? Fortunately for Americans, we live in a capitalist society - the most powerful vote we can cast does not reside in the voting booth, it’s in our shopping cart. Imagine the effect if every American’s next car purchase was electric. Our president could lift every oil drilling and gas mileage restriction on the books and it would have zero impact on the climate. Why would big oil drill if no one is buying? Why would car manufactures make combustion engines when everyone is purchasing electric? There would be a huge demand for home and public charging stations. Electric vehicles and charging station manufacturing again middle-class factory jobs that can also grow our economy. What would happen if everyone put solar panels on their roofs? I agree that the problem is daunting and complicated but so was going to the moon. If every American made the decision to make small changes we would see a huge impact.

I’m proud to be an American. I’m proud of our history of free markets and innovation. I fear that we are becoming lackadaisical taking for granted the freedom to make a better choice, not just settling for what is given to us. I say we once again shoot for the moon - set our sites on a carbon-neutral existence. Ultimately it is not up to the leaders we elect it is our choice the consumer. Vote with your dollars make a statement about what you value. It doesn't have to be a big step. Maybe you just replace some of the older light bulbs in your house with energy-efficient ones. Maybe you start a vegetable garden in your back yard or on your porch. The first step doesn't have to be immense or complicated it just needs to be taken. Kinda like going to the moon. The day after Kennedy made his challenge to the American people, we didn’t launch a rocket with astronauts bound for the moon. We took small consistent steps towards the goal. Gaining more knowledge at every step - finding greater inspiration to move on to the next.

If you are looking for that first step, I recommend checking out Unplugged Urban. A free online resource with weekly videos full of great suggestions for that first, second or even tenth or one hundred and tenth step.

ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN - ONE BIG IMPACT ON EARTH'S CLIMATE