I feel guilty for being lucky.

While our current administration continues to proclaim that global warming is nothing but a hoax or just weather, and ignores our planet’s rising sea levels, melting glaciers, changes in animal and plant behavior, and extreme weather events, I feel lucky. But guilty at the same time I’m feeling lucky.

Why should I feel lucky amid the devastating effects of climate change? Because at age 65, I probably won’t be around when our planet finally collapses due to inaction by our federal government and governments around the world. I also feel lucky that I don’t have any direct offspring that will inherit this mess and the impact it will have on future generations, but I feel guilty that that future generations will have to deal with it.

Despite my opening paragraph, I’m not directly pointing the finger at our current administration and its inaction as the reason for climate change. Still, DJT has reversed any forward progress that we made during the last 20 or so critical years.

Why did saving the planet become a political issue? Was it because An Inconvenient Truth was written and narrated by Al Gore, a Democrat? Why did it become more important to label congressional bills aimed at saving the planet as ‘job killers’ instead of working toward becoming a leader in saving Earth? Is the right too blind to see there are jobs in clean energy and renewable resources? If liberals are to be branded as job killers, then conservatives should be tagged as species or planet killers. Why are tree huggers often viewed as crackpots, but a recent head of the EPA was once a lobbyist for the coal industry? What crackpot thought that was a good idea?

Why is fracking and deep-water oil drilling a better investment than putting those same dollars to work funding renewable energy? Why is funding Space Force a better use of our taxes than finding ways to save the planet? How is spending billions of dollars on a border wall going to keep Americans more secure than a clean and safe environment? What if Exxon, Shell, Chevron, and BP had put some of their estimated $3 trillion in profits over the past three decades into clean technologies instead of searching for shale oil at the same time they were mopping up oil spills?

Are those corporations afraid of the optics of BP branded solar panels, or lithium-ion batteries made by Exxon? Maybe the logo on today’s sleek electric cars could have been a cross-section of a Shell instead of Tesla’s cross-section of an electric motor. Wouldn’t it make sense to have electric charging stations next to the water and air pumps at Chevron stations?

I’m certainly not suggesting you become an enlightened, leaf-eating, Dharma-searching, Mother Earth-type, or ‘Like’ and forward every post, tweet and message from Greta Thunberg. But that doesn’t mean you give up and let the next generation deal with it, either.

I know it’s not easy getting our aging butts up off the sofa, but consider the alternatives for your family, your children, their children, your friends, or your planet, if you don’t. But get your ass up off the sofa and do something positive for the environment regardless of what side of the political fence you stand on.

Perhaps if we all do, we can all feel lucky, without the guilt.

If you truly want to Make America Great Again, then vote as if your planet was depending on you to save it. It just might be!