“Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my long lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
But I know it’s nobody’s fault . . .
“Yes and some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
And I know it’s my own damn fault.”
A song so famous, it even has its own website. Yet, for years, I had not heard Jimmy Buffet’s epiphany—that he owns his self-medicating-with-margaritas mess.
We have a mess to own, too, and it has to do with Hurricane Dorian battering the Bahamas and heading for the Carolinas. Climate change means Dorian and other tropical storms, fueled by warming ocean waters, are becoming more intense and more frequent. Along with empathizing with the suffering, we need to think about our contribution to these disasters. “People are busy taking cover now, but ultimately we must act more broadly and more proactively for the long term,” former NASA science editor Laura Tenebaum wrote Sept. 1 in Forbes.
By we, I mean those of us who are financially comfortable enough to have choices. How about our transportation choices? My family can choose whether to drive or to fly for long trips. Although, as much as we love our cars, at times a person cannot drive—climate activist Greta Thunberg avoided the high carbon cost of flying and hitched a ride across the Atlantic Ocean on a stripped-down racing yacht. She and the team sailed from Plymouth, England, to New York City in 15 days.
That’s a lot of time! For a typical trip from Minnesota to visit my family and friends in the Pacific Northwest, arriving within a few hours or spending days on the road is the choice. Even the Empire Builder takes a couple of days—although, unlike in a car, passengers can walk around the train as they watch the beauty of the High Plains give way to the Rocky Mountains and the rolling fields of Eastern Washington carry them to the Cascade Range.
This morning, I choose to ride my bicycle to meet my friend Fran for a 
birding walk. We’re meeting not far from my home; it’s not raining; the temperature is about perfect—the choice is easy.
Some choices for the future of our planet, our island home, are easy. Turning off lights should be, although it seems that this easy step can be hard to remember, judging by the number of times I turn off lights I find on in unoccupied rooms. I’m not the only one: Harold at church, an older person with a good measure of wisdom, remarks about folks wasting money as he walks around flipping switches off in empty rooms. We don’t all have a Harold (or an Allison) following after us. Please consider this easy step to save energy, save money, save the planet: When you’re done, turn off the lights.
Many of the choices we can conceive, as we person up for the planet, are less easy. Consider cooling and heating our homes, our offices, our churches, our city buildings: there’s this feedback loop (“The air conditioning trap,” The Guardian, Aug. 29, 2019). “[W]armer temperatures lead to more air conditioning; more air conditioning leads to warmer temperatures. The problem posed by air conditioning resembles, in miniature, the problem we face in tackling the climate crisis. The solutions that we reach for most easily only bind us closer to the original problem.” Living in a cold (albeit warming) climate, I’m aware that we use a lot of carbon-heavy energy to heat our indoor spaces, too.
So, please, when you are the last person to leave the room, turn off the lights. And, while seeing the news about hurricanes, before pouring more margaritas, think about your everyday choices that could lead to a better future of the planet, even if they are a bit more challenging.
Allison Campbell Jensen 
