Climate Change and Me

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Pic: From personal archive.

The tragedy of climate change is that natural resources are dug from the ground and trees massacred to make things, trinkets that will make things easier, convenient, faster and relaxing for us. It’s called lifestyle.

Lifestyle has one definition: the individual. A lifestyle is bought with money, or with a promise to pay (credit cards). A lifestyle belongs to just one individual. A lifestyle provides the individual with company (his own), acceptance by his peers, laughter, warmth, food and love.

Your basement and second hand stores have many items that were supposed to provide all this, but they ran out of time. So you bought a better television set, coffee maker, carving knife and a laptop instead of that elephant desk top computer.

These items were produced in factories, smoke belching out of chimneys into the air. Air is very flexible, absorbs everything. We burn the food. No problem. We open the window and the air takes care of the stale burnt air.

Air felt the pain, but we never noticed. Now we were masks, which means it is stale. Plants, trees and animals also rely on the same air. Therefore, the circle that was nature now has smallpox.

Everything that needed to be manufactured has been manufactured. What is accelerating climate change is manufacturing things for the individual and individual alone. We used to blame TV. Not anymore. Digital toys are more lethal.

We pollute the air, leave gaping holes when gold is exhausted and pollute rivers for the insatiable individual.

This is another ‘written podcast’ by Nonqaba wa Msimang. 

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