I signed up to take part in the Climate Change posting extravaganza that is Blog Action Day 2009.  There are some great things being said in many places around the blog-o-sphere today.   I think I’m going to try a different approach.

Everywhere you look, people are talking about climate change and how it has moved from “important side” to “sizeable entree” on the dinner plate of Things We Have Got To Get Right — And Soon.

The data is out there.  Just this morning, the CNN headlines gave their own boost to Blog Action Day with an article that predicts there will be no ice in the Arctic Ocean in the summers within 20 short years.  If someone told you that your fridge wasn’t going to work in the heat of the day, you’d do something about it, wouldn’t you?  You’d check that thermostat, replace what needed to be replaced, make other arrangements to preserve what needed to be preserved, and so forth.

Here’s where the analogy breaks down.  We can’t go to the local Sears and buy a new Earth.

Really take a moment and grok that, please.  To do that, let’s change up the analogy.  Think of the person you love the most — if all else fails, substitute yourself.  The doctor comes in after a recent set of tests and check-ups and says, “Listen, your labs just came back, and you can’t keep going like this without damaging your body to the point that organs are going to start failing systematically.  You need to stop these excesses and take some measures to get it under control, or you won’t make it.”

Still thinking of heading down to the local Sears?  Do they stock body parts alongside the Craftsman tools these days?

People really have heard doctors say this very thing.  It’s one of the few things that will kick an otherwise stoic and habit-ridden person in the arse and get them to move on the things they need to do.  These words of impending woe are precisely what is needed to cause a CLIMATE CHANGE within the individual, and then, as within, so without.

That’s what we need to save the Earth, too.  We need a massive CLIMATE OF CHANGE in the world’s citizens.  Until we each take to heart what the geological, biological and climate doctors are saying and we realize that we can’t just order up a new Earth with the latest upgrades, the whole battle for climate change is going to be moot.

Environmentalists are already doing everything they can.  It’s not enough, is it?  That means there needs to be more people acting as one, with one purpose.  Education needs to happen — because obviously, people don’t have the ability to understand what the Earth doctors are saying.  There’s no CLIMATE OF CHANGE within them.  They’re not willing to do what it takes.

We need a CLIMATE OF CHANGE within our governments to push Earth-supportive agendas through to the forefront.  If our leaders will allow their internal CLIMATE to CHANGE and set forth laws and supportive legislature and agendas, then that CLIMATE OF CHANGE will spread throughout the systems being managed and governed.

Climate change is the end result.  We cannot focus on the end result and wave green pom-poms and expect that we’ll get there.  We must focus on the processes that will create a CLIMATE OF CHANGE within the people who are causing the problem, within the systems that are exacerbating the problem, and within the governments that are ignoring the problem.

What we are ripples outward.  If you want climate change, then change your internal climate.  If you want the Earth to know balance and health, then live in health and balance and support the other systems and companies and organizations that do likewise.

You might think we’re fighting to save the Earth, but we’re not.  We’re fighting to save the conscientious soul of humanity.  The Earth and her rapidly declining state is kinda like a canary in the coalmine of human evolution.

Change yourself and who and what you support.  If you’re a legislator, change your agenda and help others do likewise.  When WE change, the Earth will change, too.

Maybe that’s not the prognosis you wanted to hear, but there it is.

Photo by AlicePopkorn (via Flickr).