The heat of summer breaks into cool fall weather. By the time the holiday season rolls around, we are reminded that winter exists, even in the Mid-South. And we know that by spring, we’ll be ready again for warm weather. Such is the predictability of the seasons — the climate of Memphis.

Some years it’s hotter; some years cooler. This year it rained a lot; but we’ve had dry years in recent memory, too. In the end, it averages out. These patterns are central to our lives and livelihoods. Most of us are not farmers, but we rely on the food they produce. And the other living things — plants, animals, insects — that surround us also depend on these patterns.

It can be disconcerting to hear these patterns are changing. Maybe we've noticed the summers are a little hotter, and last longer. (A friend referred to this year’s September as “second August.”) The rain storms seem to come in greater concentrations. And we hear that the climate — the predictable patterns — and the resulting variations in weather are changing in other parts of the country, other parts of the world, as well. Though predictions of the future are uncertain, the story goes that the changes in these patterns will continue in ways that are likely to have big effects on our lives and those of our children.

We lay the responsibility for these long-term climactic shifts at the feet of fossil fuels. The petroleum gas we power our cars with; the natural gas that heats many of our homes and fuels our gas stoves; and the coal and natural gas that create our electricity are all central to the modern lifestyles we lead. The energy we get from fossil fuels has yielded all sorts of good for our society, ourselves, our families and our communities.

That fossil fuels are not an unmitigated good should not come as a surprise. We have heard that fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource — that is, they can’t be replaced — and that this was a long-term problem for our energy supply. But the risk to the climate of Memphis, and that of most places on Earth, from continued use of fossil fuels is a different sort of problem.

The burning of fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is critical to life as we know it — we breathe it out, plants breathe it in, and via the greenhouse effect, it acts as a blanket that warms our planet so that life can exist. But, just like too many blankets make us uncomfortably hot, too much carbon dioxide will do the same to our planet. Instead of making life easier, carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels will make life harder.

The challenging part of this equation is that, once we’ve driven our vehicle to the grocery store and added a little extra carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, it doesn’t come out again quickly. So, for our lives, and those of our children and grandchildren, it’s there to stay.

Herein lies the paradox: to preserve the lives we lead, the imperative becomes to somehow stop using the thing that appears to be critical to those very lives. That is what is required — a concerted effort to find a different way to run our cars, our homes and our economies in a way that doesn’t bring them crashing down around us. The change is necessary, and if we can’t decide soon to make that change, there is a very good chance that such change will be forced upon us — and probably not on terms we like. Doing nothing — business as usual — is a bad choice.

That’s the hard news. The good news is that, just like individuals and societies acted alone and together to harness fossil fuels to help society grow, individuals and societies can now act to make a change — to make different decisions in the interest of a better life down the road.

This may seem like a distant problem that has nothing to do with Memphis. The reality is that every gallon of gas that doesn’t get pumped into a car at your local Mapco station is one that isn’t going to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Every ounce of natural gas that doesn’t get burned at the local Allen power plant is one that won’t raise the Earth’s temperature. Every molecule of methane (it’s also a potent greenhouse gas) that doesn’t get emitted from the South Shelby landfill is one that won’t harm the Earth’s climate. And every choice you and I make to decrease our use of fossil fuels will, in the end, make a difference.

Cities are responsible for a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, but they also have plenty of leverage to make things better. This leverage runs the gamut from individuals and families, through businesses and organizations small and big, all the way to those in political and economic power at home, in Nashville, in Washington, D.C., and in cities across the globe.

The leadership that Memphians can choose to show takes many forms.

Bike lanes and bike share programs in Memphis have their advocates and detractors. Regardless of what you think about them, bikes are a great form of transportation, one that combines health and wellness benefits with a significantly smaller carbon footprint than a car or truck. A decade ago I made a choice to bike commute — made so much easier and safer by bike lanes — and have never looked back. It’s a small thing — one less car on the road — but suppose we all started to make these choices?

Archimania is a local architecture firm that recently built a new headquarters on Cooper Street. They designed their building to Net Zero energy standards — that is, eliminating use of fossil fuels and creating more energy than they use to reduce their carbon footprint. The carbon footprint relates to the greenhouse gases produced during the extraction, processing and transportation of the resources to build the structure, plus that of the energy used in running the building. Archimania has compensated for this by renovating an existing building, by intentional design that minimizes energy consumption, and by installing solar panels that produce electricity for the building.

They also voluntarily report the carbon footprint, energy savings and water conservation of all of their projects in an annual effort to provide accountability. What if all the businesses that built or operated buildings researched and reported how much energy and carbon they save every year? What if our local and state governments — our elected officials — changed our building codes to emphasize the need for this?

The Compost Fairy is a local provider of composting services to homes, businesses, places of worship and anyone else who produces food waste — which is all of us! Food waste in landfills turns out to be a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and all that is required to fix that is to move that waste from landfills into a properly managed compost bin. If you don’t want to, or can’t, start composting at home, or you own a business or community organization, why not give Compost Fairy a call? Why not ask the City Council to make composting a public service?

Memphis is deciding whether or not to continue drawing its power from facilities run by the Tennessee Valley Authority. TVA power comes mostly from fossil fuels, with a renewable (e.g., solar, wind and hydro) portfolio that is embarrassingly small. Recent studies commissioned by the Friends of the Earth have shown that significantly increasing the amount of renewable energy sources used by Memphians would actually save hundreds of millions of dollars. Renewables are becoming cheaper by the day. Memphis could even profitably produce its own wind and solar power locally!

Citizen’s Climate Lobby is a national organization dedicated to pursuing a nonpartisan “fee-and-dividend” plan to increase the cost of putting carbon in the atmosphere. The key is that the fee would be paid by all users of fossil fuels, while the dividend would be shared equally among all citizens — the government doesn’t keep any of it. A bill currently before the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R.763, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019) has 75 cosponsors, including Memphis’ very own Steve Cohen. Memphis also has a new C.C.L. chapter devoted to this issue. Have you called your congressman to thank him for prioritizing the health of our planet? Have you pushed your other state and federal representatives to do what they can to address climate change?

These are a few stories out of countless others, most of them untold, playing out in our community. Not to mention in all the other communities around the globe that are wrestling with this problem.

Reducing the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases like methane will take concerted efforts over our lifetimes, and ultimately coordination among all the residents of our planet. But that effort has to start somewhere, with someone. Why not you, citizen of Memphis, Tennessee, USA, planet Earth?