Let me begin by going back to late 2011, I had just graduated from university and moved back home. Most of my friends were not living at home and I was becoming really anti-social. My friend’s mom Christine took pity on me, and encouraged me to come to a meeting she was hosting for a budding chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby in our area. While the idea of leaving the house seemed exhausting, the promise of company and most importantly, free food, made accepting the invitation a no-brainer.

Truth time. I don’t remember much of the meeting. I sat and listened. I nodded my head and wore my concentration face while shoving soup and fresh baked bannock into my gluten-intolerant body. When the meeting ended and I was asked if I would be coming back to the next one, I thought, why not?

The next meeting happened about a month later, and I was expecting the same kind of spread and the ability to zone out and socialize. But this meeting wasn’t all bannock and butter, dammit. Christine, our group leader, had us sit in a circle and asked us to each give our name, and talk a bit about why we were there. I was honest; I was there for the food and company. People laughed, and Christine said that maybe I’d learn something here that would really get me passionate about. The meetings that followed changed my life… forever…

Fast forward to today. I am a mostly active member of Citizens’ Climate Lobby and a concerned citizen of the planet Earth. The changes I have witnessed in the Earth’s weather and temperament in just the past five years has been both disturbing and eye-opening, followed by a chaser of devastating. During all of the trainings and conferences on climate change that I have attended over the last few years, the speaker always stresses that we all have a “human response” to climate change. By that I mean, there is a very personal or emotional reason to take action. For many of my colleagues in the climate game, it’s their children and grandchildren. They want to leave a livable world for future generations to inhabit and to make sure that they have the same, if not better, opportunities in the world than they had.

Now, I don’t have children, much to the dismay of my father, but thinking about future generations does strike a very personal chord with me. The very real possibility of finding ourselves in a devastating future, makes me question not whether I want kids, but whether I should. I often have internal debates about which is the more responsible choice given the fact that we live in a world filled with inactive and disappointing politicians, intense and frequent “natural” disasters, Donald Drumpf, and Donald Drumpf’s hair.

So, at a loss for my reason to act on climate change, amid all the other CLEARLY OBVIOUS REASONS, I had to ponder this for a while. It came to me during a discussion at a conference where we were dissecting the carbon fee and dividend. One of the qualities of a revenue neutral carbon fee and dividend is that it protects the poorest people. Everyone would receive a monthly check from the government that would encourage them to conserve more energy and switch to more efficient energy methods. Now, I may not be the mother of a child, but I am the child of both a mother and a father, and it is my parents who are the source of my human response.Coming from a poverty-line-straddling family, and the idea that my parents would have the opportunity to benefit from a system that has them working for the planet and the government working for them, makes me worry less. I love my parents and want them to be safe and happy and live forever, just like the next kid.

So there’s that.

Climate change is one of those hot topics that has been around for ages, even NASA’s scientists have been on it since the 80s, that affects everyone in profoundly different ways. Everyone will find their own reason to take action or remain guiltily inactive. Globally, we have experienced record-breaking warm temperatures for over a year now. Much of the province of Ontario has been experiencing what most folks just call “weird weather” or just attribute it to El Niño, which has become more of a catchphrase than a word of warning. Northwestern Ontario is no stranger to unpredictable weather patterns, but in my 27 years I do not recall ever witnessing degrees in the pluses in February which is usually our coldest and most feared month.

The problem with downplaying this shift in weather, and rejoicing in the fact that this winter has felt like second spring, is because these are the results of all of the really horrible things happening within our global ecosystems. Anthropogenic climate change, a fancy scientific term for human-caused climate change, is actually altering our climate. Like, all of it. Most scientists say that there is a threshold of about 4 degrees Celsius of overall warming that the Earth can withstand and not completely alter our ways of life on our planet. Go over 4 degrees and it could mean catastrophe. Carbon dioxide trapped in our atmosphere is at an all time high at over 400 ppm (parts per million) — the recommendation is 350 ppm which is close to the preindustrial era.

In English? What we are experiencing is nothing short of a global emergency. Climate Change or Global Warming, may be the biggest challenge to humanity that the earth has ever seen. Debating whether it’s real or not has been, and continues to be, an epic time suck. The gap for action is closing quicker than scientists can draft reports and activists can schedule meetings with MPs. There is a lot to be fearful about when it comes to dealing with the threat of climate change. I’m not trying to scare you. I’m writing about this to try and make you, the reader, feel hopeful. Luckily, there are simple steps that anyone can take in order to help. Writing a letter to your local newspaper or even writing your Member of Parliament. Any real change will require compromise and it will require commitment, but I’d like to think the Earth is worth it.

Let me leave you with this thought. If your child or loved one came down with a fever, would you ignore it? Or would you do whatever you could to cool the fever and make them well again?