What I love

Last year I wrote about effective presentation in a post entitled Many are the Ways, and one of the websites I included is called “What I Love”, www.whatilove.org, created by The Climate Reality Project.

The name of this website alone conjures up emotion and individuality. It is not surprising that the site presents a multitude of possible answers to the question “What can’t you live without?” and great variation. There are the expected basics of nature: forests, mountains, the ocean; there are cities, beverages, foodstuffs, sports, hobbies, animals, people and values, all portrayed with lively pictures.

Why did The Climate Reality Project create this website? The expected future effects of global warming on each category are presented, most of them very threatening. For example, one of the items in the natural category is water. Just water, not rivers or the ocean. To be sure water is a very basic necessity of life, but as something to love? Maybe if one is an avid swimmer or sailor, sure, but…wait a minute, how about the bracing shower in the morning, the cooling shower after exercise on a hot day, the cold glass of water when one is very thirsty. Ah yes, one can have feelings about water. If one doesn’t, reading about the expected water shortages of the future and the wars that will be fought over water rights awakens plenty of emotion.

The cities category includes New York. Do I love New York? I wouldn’t go that far, but there is the experience of walking up Fifth Avenue on a crisp fall day, taking the ferry to Staten Island and admiring the skyline, lunching in Chinatown or shopping for lekvar in the German-Hungarian section of the city. Again, reading about the expected sea level rise and imagining the East River overflowing into the streets of the east side brings feelings of both doom and increased appreciation of the unique aspects of this great city.

Everyone loves certain items in the food category: cherries, for instance, chocolate, or how about maple syrup? The mouth waters, and then one thinks of the dying bee population, without which there may very well be no more cherries, or one is more aware of the rising temps that threaten maple trees and cocoa beans.

Those of us who live in CH are well aware of global warming and its threat to the ski areas, where already 40% of the snow is artificially made. The days when I would drive up to Horgenberg to ski cross-country on the prepared track for 45 minutes at lunchtime and then return to my computer are long gone. No more prepared track, for there is too little snow for it to be worthwhile. Not into active sports? Photography and gardening more your style? You’ll see changes every year through the lens of your camera and you’ll spend more time fighting insect pests in your garden.

Perhaps you have a dog or cat or ride a horse? Horses, the site tells us, are especially susceptible to heat exhaustion and dehydration. More than 400,000 pets were displaced during hurricane Katrina, and few were reunited with their people. Dogs are especially vulnerable to heat strokes.

Now we come to what are the most important categories for us human beings: people and values. Family, partners, friends. What do these have to do with global warming? The site points out how many people will die during extreme heat waves and violent storms, and we have only to think back to hurricane Katrina to recognize the truth of this statement. Such threats to life and limb are accompanied by threats to faith and hope, freedom and equality, particularly in poor countries, for they are more threatened by environmental disaster.

Because this is a site about what people love, it includes helpful and fun info as well. The best places in the world for chocolate, for instance (Zurich is one, naturally!) or how to handle your hedges if you are into gardening. Horses breathe 4 times a minute when at rest, we are told, dogs have 3 eyelids, a cat’s brain is more similar to man’s than is that of a dog.

No matter what you love, global warming is going to impinge on it in some way. It seems to me that one has only to think of the children in one’s life: one’s own, or one’s grandchildren, nieces and nephews, godchildren or stepchildren to want them to grow up and grow old in an intact world. What you love as an individual connects you to all of humanity.