I had a meltdown over the Trump administration’s revoking the 2009 “endangerment finding” that says climate change is a danger to public health. Trump is grasping at straws, claiming this would save Americans trillions of dollars.
But research by organizations such as Nature Climate Change shows that climate risks, especially flooding, could wipe out almost $1.5 trillion in U.S. home values by 2055. My climate activism DNA was activated big time when Trump declared climate change a “scam.” Even his small actions, like promoting plastic straws over paper ones, got me going. Dumping that crap into creeks, landfills and oceans was poison to this Bermuda island girl.
I started writing articles about the environment years ago, focusing on the ocean and the plastic dumped in it. My Aunt Polly, then 93 years old, explained how such activism ran through our family. Polly and her husband Erwin Strasmich left their Bermuda home and bought a home near Erwin’s cousin Irving Stowe in Providence, Rhode Island. But soon, the Stowes moved on and created planet-saving history.
Concerned about our growing nuclear arsenal and wanting to protect their son from being recruited to fight in the Vietnam War, Irving and his wife Dorothy emigrated from America and ended up in Vancouver, Canada. That’s where they established Greenpeace. By the time I got to talk with Dorothy, she was 87 and Irving had passed away. But Dorothy’s stories remained priceless.
I was honored to hear how they funded Greenpeace in the early days. “We started fundraising by selling Greenpeace buttons for $2.00 on a street corner,” she said. Dorothy’s favorite memory was a Greenpeace Benefit Concert featuring Joni Mitchell, Phil Oaks and James Taylor. They raised $18,000 to charter a boat (the Esperanza) to sail in protest of a nearby U.S test site for atomic bombs.