I have recently read an article by Brooke Jarvis ("Tim DeChristopher: Sacrifice for the Climate) about how it is "a blessing to risk it all to stop climate change-even if it means jail time". According to Jarvis, the reason why the climate is changing is because "...people aren't willing to take real action to slow the warming of our planet, because it is asking too much: too much inconvenience, too much to sacrifice, too much planning ahead". After she made that statement, her article starts talking about the activism that Tim DeChristopher has done because he thinks the opposite of Jarvis' statement. "We made to ask more of ourselves, and of each other," is the statement that Jarvis say that DeChristopher believes. She made the comment about risking everything to stop climate change, even risking going to jail, because that it actually what DeChristopher has done. Jarvis then fills in her readers about the events that he is now known for in December 2008 (which I am glad that she did, because I was not even aware of whom Tim DeChristopher was to begin with). Just about exactly three years ago, DeChristopher decided that he wanted to try and stop the Bush administration from selling gas and oil developmental leases at an auction. In order to stop this, he pretended like he was going to bid in the auction, and people actually thought that he was being sincere about it, so he played along. I honestly think that because he decided to bid on so many different parcels (he ended up bidding on a total of fourteen), he was removed from the auction by federal agents and taken into custody, He was sentenced to be in a federal jail for two years, and he is still in there as I am typing this. Jarvis then goes on to state that when he gets out of prison "he has every intention of continuing to push himself-and the climate movement-to make bigger demands and take bigger risks".
Honestly, I agree with everything that Jarvis talks about in her article, and everything that DeChristopher did (even if he did end up in prison for it). If no one sticks up against the government and does not stand up for what they believe in, what good is that going to do not just us humans, but our planet? So many environment issues are going on around us that are destroying Earth, destroying the planet that we live on. If no one is willing to stand up and protest for a change, then we are not going to even have a planet to live on.
I am going to end this blog with something that was in Jarvis' article. "DeChristopher believes that failing to respond to such a profound threat isn’t just dangerous for environmental reasons, but also for psychological ones: The result, as he’s seen, is too often anger, frustration, apathy, or despair. In contrast, DeChristopher says his decision to take big risks feels deeply right: It’s a relief to stop pretending that everything is fine. It feels healthier to turn fear and anxiety into action than to ignore them". This is a statement that I completely, one hundred percent agree with. We need to stop pretending that everything on this planet is fine. The environmental issues that are destroying our Earth is something that I am pretty sure that most of the population already knows about it. So why are we just sitting around and doing nothing about it, while we are having panic attacks about the climate change and global warming? These are issues that we all need to stop ignoring.
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