Whenever spots of sunlight struck the city, scores of Londoners flocked into those warm spheres like moths. If God put a people-zapper in the middle of those crowds, he could have gotten rid of many pests.

It was not a pleasant sensation, this feeling of being drained. I once dreamed of living in London for about two years; I only lasted half a year. Six months was more than enough gray in my life.

San Francisco, unfortunately, isn’t without its gray as well. There are parts of the city that exist in semi-perpetual fog. I almost expect the residents there to look like pod people with pale skin and black eyeballs.

When the fog creeps into the city, it does so like an opaque glacier. Everything in its path is drained of color and turned to gray. If you like Casablanca and other films before the blessing of Technicolor, you’ll probably like the San Francisco fog.

When I first moved to San Francisco, I was immediately drawn to the sunny side. I didn’t realize I was solar powered back then; I just knew I wanted to be where the colors were crisp and saturated.

Before you mistake me, I’m not the kind of person who abhors bad weather. I love thunderstorms. Watching a snowstorm while in a pair of warm pajamas is awesome. Even driving through a syrupy fog can be pretty cool.

Although I’m not looking forward to my next hurricane, I have fond childhood memories of building a fort out of the kitchen table and pillows while the taped-up windows rattled. There’s a strange romantic tension in seeing bolts of lightning bounce between the earth and the sky. Maybe it’s because similar bolts of lightning can bounce between lovers.

Nor am I a sun worshipper. Admittedly I’ve gone to the beach to get a tan before, but I don’t obsess over achieving the bronze of a French fry or hash browns. There’s no temperature gauge in my butt to tell me how much I should cook.

The contrast of sun and gray was sharpest in London. Like other Londoners, I followed the sun spots. When I returned to San Francisco, it all made sense. Being in the sun was energizing, exhilarating, exciting, and any other positive e-word your thesaurus can give you.

I can totally empathize with plants that lean toward the sun now. If you stuck my feet in mud, I’d probably lean toward the sun too. Please don’t plant my feet in the mud though; I give you my word that I’ll lean toward the sun.

Maybe this means I have chlorophyll in my blood? Or maybe there are tiny solar panel crystals on my skin? Who knows. It would be cool to be part plant and part cyborg though. I could shoot laser beams from my eyes and release, um, pollen-sperm during the spring. Okay, maybe not.

Another strong indicator of my solar-powered nature is the car I drive: a convertible. While the alternator charges the batteries, the sun charges me. It’s a delight to drive, especially under clear blue skies. Even on a warm cloudless night, it’s fun; you can see straight into the Heavens.

A buddy of mine lives in Denver, a city that’s 98% sunny all year round. What a glorious statistic. It’s like Bizarro London. Hawaii is similarly bright and cheery too. And it’s not just because of the scantily clad hula dancers. In between random spring showers are showers of warm sunlight.

While in those cities, I soaked up as much energy as I could. They kept my solar-powered batteries charged for a good long time.

That’s what it’s like to be solar-powered. The energizing ability of the sun and the sluggifying ability of the gray. Who knew that people could be so much like plants or cyborgs?

©2010 Mike Lee.org. All Rights Reserved.

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Hi. I am a little boy living in a small town in America. One day, I will grow up and be an adult just like you.

I am writing to ask you something very important to me. Please don’t kill our planet.

My parents tell me how fun it is to be an adult. My Mom said there are great big waterfalls in the woods near our house. My Mom said there are hiking trails that go up and up and up. They sound like a lot of fun. I can’t wait to hike on them.

My Dad said there are beautiful animals all over the world. My Dad said there are kangaroos in Australia and pandas in China. I saw pictures of them on the TV. I would like to see them one day and pet them and feed them.

I don’t know if I can because our planet is dying. I learned in school that our planet is getting polluted by factories, cars, airplanes, garbage, and pesticides. All of those things are killing our planet. One day, our planet will be a big stinky ball.

I don’t want to live on a big stinky ball. Every time a garbage truck comes by our house, it smells so stinky. If our planet smelled like that, I would hurl like Chris did in the cafeteria at school yesterday. It was yucky.

I have a little sister too. She can’t walk yet. I get sad when I think about the planet she is going to have. I am sad already that I can’t swim at the beach anymore. My Dad says the water is too polluted now. My Dad says I would get sick if I swam in that water.

So I am writing for my little sister too. She will never get a chance to swim at that beach like I did. She loves playing in the water. I know because I got her a rubber duckie for her birthday and it is her favorite toy.

I learned in school that our president did not want to sign a treaty to help the planet. I learned all about bills and treaties and laws. I think a treaty that helps our planet is good for all of us. I don’t know why our president did not want to do it. My teacher tried to tell us why, but I did not get what she said.

Maybe it is because I am just a kid and don’t understand these things. I hope when I grow up, I will understand too. I bet you understand because you are an adult. That’s why I can’t wait to be an adult, so I can be big and smart like you.

I still wish you adults would stop polluting our planet though. I really like living here. My Mom and I recycle all of our glass and cans and paper. My Dad set up a compost heap in the backyard too. My Dad said we all have to do our part to save our planet.

I think if more adults recycled, we could help our planet. My teacher said some adults already do that, but not everyone. My teacher said there are many that still pollute and are killing our planet. I hope you are not one of those adults.

My little sister crawled next to me. I told her to wave at all the adults. Maybe if all of you saw my little sister, you would not want to pollute anymore. My parents said when my sister and I grow up, we will have to take care of the planet. I think that will be very hard to do if the planet is already dying.

I can’t wait to see the great big waterfalls in the woods near our house. I can’t wait to see kangaroos in Australia and pandas in China. I want to take my little sister to see them too, with her rubber duckie that I got her. I hope we can see them before they all become too polluted, like the beach, because then we will never get to see them.

Please don’t kill our planet. I don’t want our planet to be a big stinky ball. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Little boy

©2010 Mike Lee.org. All Rights Reserved.

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Call me a pessimist, but I don’t see much hope in our world’s corporations and governments. I don’t believe they’ll take enough significant action in time to make a difference. It would take a complete societal overhaul to save us now.

Everyone’s heard of global warming by now. Did you know there’s another phenomenon at work too? Global dimming, it’s called. Both are symptoms of a rapidly deteriorating world.

Scientists theorize that life began to thrive on this planet as microscopic plants released their byproducts—oxygen—into the atmosphere. Before that, the atmosphere was a harsh mixture of solar radiation and other gases, including carbon dioxide.

It’s this carbon dioxide that the microscopic plants consumed. Over millions of years, their byproduct, lucky for us, created the atmosphere we have today. This made the surface of the planet suitable for animal life.

These early plants helped us out again when, over the ages, they fell to the Earth, decayed & fossilized, and became what we call coal, oil, and fossil fuels today. But when humankind discovered that burning these resources could release enormous amounts of energy, we began to reverse all that these early plants accomplished.

For the burning of these resources released enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. Over the years, this carbon dioxide and other pollutants filled the atmosphere with a wide range of consequences, some most probably deadly.

Unfortunately, we’ve all been too short-sighted to see them.

The scientists who first caught onto global warming created scenarios that showed drastic climate changes and the potential destruction of human society in the far future. Perhaps in several generations or more.

The gases produced by our industrial societies are creating a Greenhouse Effect that will drastically warm the atmosphere, melt the polar ice caps, dry the forests, and thereby destroy an environment suitable for human life. But this would happen hundreds of years from now, they thought.

Then scientists caught onto global dimming. Pollutants in the air have actually been shielding us from the sun’s rays and fooling us into thinking that global warming wasn’t happening that fast. Temperatures weren’t rising as fast as they thought, so some concluded that drastic climate changes would happen much later.

Eventually, the scientists realized the full extent of the environmental destruction. They’ve realized that global dimming has lulled us into a false hope. The situation, apparently, is much more dire.

The latest projection, according to a BBC documentary, is that in 2035, the Earth’s atmosphere will have raised enough to begin melting the polar ice caps. As the world’s oceans rise, thousands of cities will become submerged.

2035 isn’t all that far away. That’s still in my lifetime. That scares the shit out of me, to be perfectly honest.

And looking at the track record of these scientists’ projections, they’re usually too conservative. Each time they get new data, they discover that they’ve been way off; the situation is always happening faster than they assumed.

Now I try and do my own part in helping. I recycle. I minimize my driving. I purchase environmentally-friendly products. But is that really enough? Even if the entire city of San Francisco was environmentally-friendly, would that be enough?

It’s been said that as soon as China’s entire population becomes industrialized, that will mean the end of the Earth. Just imagine that entire landmass creating unfathomable amounts of extra pollution.

I’m as supportive as any other Chinese American in wanting to see China grow into a prosperous nation. But humankind overall just isn’t smart enough yet to realize the consequences of economic growth. The incentive of economic power is too strong a temptation to think about the long-term effects of our actions.

So collectively, we’re responsible for our planet. I’m as much a member of the human race as you are. Pleading ignorance or inaction isn’t going to save you.

What does that mean for us then? What can we do? I’m stricken by a sense of helplessness at this situation. I can write letters to my Congressman (although they’ve already demonstrated that they won’t listen, as evident in the U.S.’s treatment of the Kyoto Protocol). I can join an environmental agency. I can keep on recycling.

But this problem is so much larger than that; it’s a global problem, and the solution needs to be global as well. The Kyoto Protocol was a good first try, but obviously it wasn’t globally effective.

Part of me looks at this and wonders: perhaps humankind deserves this. If we, as a race, are too ignorant and short-sighted to see what we’re doing, then perhaps we don’t deserve this life we’ve been given.

Or perhaps this cycle, the cycle of “carbon dioxide to oxygen back to carbon dioxide” into the atmosphere is a check-and-balance feature of the environment. A defense mechanism of the Earth, so to speak.

Such theories aren’t new, of course. People have been theorizing about diseases and natural disasters as “Earth’s defense mechanisms” for years now. In light of what’s happening, I can’t help but wonder about them now too.

It’s frightening to think of what we’re leaving to our children’s children. Oftentimes, we think that we’re inheriting the Earth from our parents. There’s an old Native American saying that goes: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

At the end of the day, I tend to be a hopeful person by nature though. I can’t accept that there’s absolutely no hope. I don’t have an answer yet, but I know that there are at least a thousand others who are trying to solve this solution too.

In my opinion, there are generally two ways to change the world: through policy and through education. How exactly to use those to change the world, I don’t know yet. But I’m sure as Hell going to think about it. Not for my own sake, but for my children’s children sake.

What do you think will happen to the Earth?

©2010 Mike Lee.org. All Rights Reserved.

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