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Natural Awakenings Dallas -Fort Worth Metroplex Edition

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Fall Respite

As we settle into fall, it feels different this year. We can finally see the pandemic part of the covid crisis in our rear-view mirror, although the virus may be with us always, like the flu. We can finally look forward to spending quality time outdoors without frying, as we appear to have escaped near-triple-digit-temperature days. I’m coming out of "hunker-down" mode, where I massage my schedule around early morning and late evening to avoid the heat. Life can blossom again. With a nod to my friends in South Florida, who as I write are hunkering down due to a late hurricane season, I hope that soon they can also look forward to what has traditionally been our best weather season, matched only by what appears to be our shortening springs.

It feels like the aftermath of some watershed event, a calm period when things have settled down and serious reflection is inescapable. All my reflections keep coming back to the same thing: climate change is real, its effects are upon us now, and there's nothing we can do except to mitigate their impact on us, build resilience, and make haste to prevent worsening effects and try to turn back some of the damage we're seeing now. While the recently signed Inflation Reduction Act contains funding to reduce greenhouse gases by 40 percent over the next eight years, we need to start now backing up what we are telling the pollsters, and walking our talk. That is, we need to start taking daily actions within our own lives to reduce our use of fossil fuels—gas, electricity and other things that expel carbon into our environment. Just as important, and maybe more time efficient, we need to push our government, institutions and businesses to walk the talk too. We should be demanding annual report cards from all of them on how they are reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, which are already threatening our climate and our lives and livelihoods.

This may seem like a big undertaking that's way beyond our individual spheres of impact—but it's not. I invite you to think back to your grandparents’ time, or their grandparents’ time. In those days we weren't consistently experiencing extreme weather simultaneously in almost every part of the country and the world; we weren't experiencing novel viruses and the onslaught of respiratory illnesses among our children and elders. Much research has shown that as countries become developed and populations become wealthier, their carbon footprints (emissions from fossil fuels) grow exponentially. Clearly we need to emulate those simpler times, when we lived nearer to the food we ate, and when we could walk most of the places we needed to go. Of course with today's technology, we can take transportation that does not use fossil fuels, and we can get a lot of our power from the sun, wind or water. We did all these things in the past, and life was fine. Now we can do them better and still experience the comfort, convenience and prosperity to which we have grown accustomed.

My guiding mantra for making and maintaining the lifestyle changes required to do my part is “God made and gave us all we need to survive and thrive; my job is to uncover it, be creative and be the good steward He created me to be.” Our instruction manual, the Bible, shows us that our creator gives us warning when we're not doing things right. We just have to be alert and tuned in, to listen and see. I believe we're seeing His warning now with climate change events.

In this month's issue, Sandra Yeyati shows us how to “green up” our homes—not just to lessen our impact on the climate, but also to make us healthier—in her article “Sustainable Sanctuaries.” Marlaina Donato offers a complementary article, “Inviting in the Wild,” in which she encourages us to bring Mother Nature into our homes so we can experience her more.

This month's issue is chock-full of insightful and actionable information on how to live a healthy life on a healthy planet—even how to get heathier dental work! As always, we hope you will find lots to inspire you.

Blessings until next month,