Hello, dear reader:
I want to tell you all about what I’m hoping to learn at COP25, but I would like to begin with an anecdote (it may be longer than you anticipate, but soon it won’t only be my anecdotes). I was 15 when I first experienced being allergic to the environment I was in, this due to the fact that I spent the beginning of pollen season in a different country with different pollen and it was just long enough for me to need environmental allergy medicine for the next three years (now it only takes a week at the beginning of pollen season for me to adjust to wherever I have moved to). My next allergy experience occurred at 20; I ate a strawberry while watching the solar eclipse in Nashville and my lips swelled. I spent the better part of that year sick, trying to figure out what was wrong; cutting gluten, dairy, and soy seemed to eliminate most symptoms. The past two falls, those of 21st and 22nd years have brought inconsistent, wild weather patterns, and with it come wild mood patterns. What does this have to do with climate change and policy, you might be asking?
Pollen season has become a wildly fluctuating entity, each year anecdotally we (or at least I) hear how it is the worst one yet. Farming practices have become increasingly more reliant on pesticides, and in the case of many larger productions in the US, have become reliant on genetically modified plants that can withstand the herbicides used to remove weeds (one only needs to be reminded of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and shudder when they see “no dumping, drains to river, ocean” realizing that we are poisoning our planet). Though as a scientist I should not make a hypothesis as to why I was so sick without being able to test it, maintaining an avoidance of foods that are commonly contaminated with pesticides has led to a largely full recovery that no medical professional can explain (to be fair, they couldn’t explain why I was sick either). And with more variable weather patterns come more symptoms of seasonal affective disorder (I note that this is from anecdotal evidence, as research is lacking on SAD).
What is concerning is that these extremes will only continue to spiral, each being affected by the other, and by the one link between the three: a variable and more intense seasonal pattern created by climate change. And this is what I want to spend my career addressing, through informative research and potentially transitioning into policy so science can be communicated effectively to those who do not have a scientific background. This is what COP25 is letting my dip my toes into. I have begun coordinating my schedule for Madrid, with a training in religious environmental movement making, a summit on global climate and health, and the opportunity to sit in on meetings establishing policy that dictates the future. (Though I shouldn’t get too fatalistic, and Rebecca Solnit, a favorite author of mine, writes hopefully about the climate crisis here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/14/climate-change-taking-action-rebecca-solnit). What is most exciting, though, is the opportunity I have to share my experiences and perspectives with people who do not have the chance to be in the room like I do. And the people I am traveling with have spent years to lifetimes learning how to do what I aspire to do, giving me valuable connections in climate activism while helping me refine communication in boldness and hope.
I leave a week from Thursday. I chat with one of my priests tomorrow about getting connected to the climate activism group at my church, and will have the opportunity to share my experience and learn from their perspective in turn after I am back. Pray for discernment, for clarity, and for refreshment; this season of self-employment has been exhausting, and I will stop running for three weeks in Maine before returning to Colorado to start graduate studies in atmospheric chemistry. Pray for the team I’m traveling with, and for the first contingent who will be in Madrid this coming Friday. I am so thankful and excited for this opportunity, and that you have decided to follow along.
Thank you,
Tori Arau