We’ve all seen the graphs and dire warnings about climate change. This year will probably be the hottest on record.

Our planet has a deadly energy imbalance and, with petro-dictators in charge, the toxic blanket will continue to cook us. 

The 2024 global average surface temperature was 1.46 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average and upper ocean heat content was the highest on record. The glaciers are melting and sea levels are rising.

Biodiversity is crashing. World Wildlife Fund’s 2024 Living Planet Report shows an average of 73% decline in wildlife populations since 1970. Trees? We need them. They are the cheapest way to cool the land, purify water and provide refuge for species. The U.S. plan is to quadruple logging.

Quite recently our world was bursting with life: forests, rivers, lakes, mountains, creatures large and small, on the land, in the waters and in the air.

But there’s a thing called shifting baseline syndrome, where due to the lack of past experience, each new generation accepts the situation in which they were raised as being normal. We mistakenly think the degraded world we now live in is normal. It’s not. Scientific records confirm it.

What’s it going to take to actually stop ravaging the Earth beyond the point of no return? It’s going to take a whole new way of thinking about nature. Of respecting nature and our place in it.

Measure 20-373, the Lane County Watersheds Bill of Rights, opens the door for this critical paradigm shift. And we should pass it so we can save ourselves.

Betzi Hitz
Springfield