*fingers crossed
Actually – I wrote that sentence with a little trepidation. Because I plan on taking some time off during the holidays and am preloading this blog. Any other year, I’d set it and forget it – but 2020 – it’s been a doozy – and it could happen that the 751st shoe might drop, and the ball won’t actually drop on 2020.
I am going to place my confidence in physics, assume we won’t enter a relativistic bending of space-time, and that time will continue to march forward. You will read this in 2021!
We are going to take some time in 2021 to reflect on what matters: food, water, and shelter.
Covid-19 has highlighted that there is an ever-growing disparity between those with and without access to adequate basics: clean water, healthy food, greenspaces, healthcare, and educational opportunities. Without those basics, people are more likely to have chronic health problems and less likely to have a financial cushion to ride-out economic downturns. Combined this means those without were, and are, more likely to die of Covid-19.
Focusing on these interconnected basics allows us to not only improve lives, but to improve the environment and the economy.
Throughout 2021 Science for Georgia will provide information about these basics, highlight partners who are working in all three of these areas, provide simple steps anyone can do to improve your life and the lives of your neighbors (and change the world at the same time), and empower people with tools and activities to advocate for change. Knowledge is power and even something as simple as reading to a kid 15 minutes a day can save the world.
So, as you step into a new year, resolved to do something to make a difference, think about how your actions effect your surroundings. The choices you make have an impact on people, places, and things (and all the nouns including animals, plants, oceans, soil, farms, economies). Think about a new year resolution you could make that is better for you, your community, and the environment such as: eating one meatless meal a week (saves water and reduces carbon footprint), carrying a water bottle to avoid using plastic ones (saves water, reduces carbon footprint, reduces waste, saves money, and helps you stay hydrated), offering to read to your neighbor’s kids once a week (save their parents’ sanity, improves health, literacy, and success).
We are all in this together. We can make 2021 amazing. We can make Science Matter Here.