About Me
On the many road trips my family took when I was little, I would spend a lot of time staring out the window thinking about the animals. I knew that squirrels and deer and raccoons lived in the trees and cornfields we passed, if only because occasionally we would see their flattened carcasses lying by the side of the road. Likening them to my pet cat and my massive collection of stuffed animals, I had endless reserves of sympathy for them. When I got a little older, I would gaze out the window thinking about all the gasoline we were burning. I thought about how the exhaust coming from our tailpipe, and the exhaust coming from all the other cars’ tailpipes, was making the trees near the highway sick. Something is wrong with this system, I thought.
I imagined highways with high fences on the sides and tunnels going underneath so the animals wouldn’t get hit when they crossed. I couldn’t figure out what to do with on- and off-ramps though. Unless we fenced in all city streets too, some animals would find their way onto the highway and then they’d be trapped. I imagined roads with moving magnets underneath and magnetic cars, that would work like trains but with independent cars and no set schedule. I couldn’t figure out how to power the magnets though.
I was fairly certain, at a very young age, that by the time I was old enough to have grandkids, it would all be over. I pictured myself at 80, telling stories around a campfire about the crazy wasteful world I grew up in, and then going to bed in a cave.
Fanciful solutions aside, turns out that I wasn’t so far off. According to George Monbiot, if wealthy nations don’t cut their carbon emissions by ninety percent by the year 2030, it will be basically all over, as “major ecosystems [will] begin collapsing.” I will be 47 years old.
-lisa b lombardo