Climate Change Is Just Like Raising Baby Mice

Today’s post was supposed to be about how to build a great garden for free, which is what I was planning on doing today.

Instead, it is about a baby mouse, which is what I spent my afternoon doing.  Because that’s just how my life goes.  The garden will still be there.

Mice are near and dear to my heart.  In third grade, I found in the school library an amazingly thorough book on the care and feeding of mice.  In the breeding section was a beginning walk-through of Mendelian genetics and coat coloration, which fascinated me in spite of the fact that I barely understood a word of it.  What third grader can resist “heterozygous” and “alleles”?

I was in love.  I prepared a presentation for my parents about why I should be allowed to get a mouse; how I would care for it, how much it would cost and how I planned to pay for it.  They relented, Ned joined the family, and thus began many years of multi-colored mice and chicken scratch Punnetts squares.

So today, when I discovered a baby mouse writhing under a clod of dirt in the compost pile I had just demolished, I did not hesitate to nestle it in my sweatshirt and put it in the car.  I called my mom and asked her to Google whether baby mice need kitten/puppy formula or raw goat milk (the former, or human infant formula).  In the background, my grandfather said, “You can’t keep mumble mumble… diseases!”

Oh yeah.  Diseases.

It’s not that I didn’t know that wild mice have diseases, or that I forgot momentarily that this little creature could be carrying all sorts of ick that I don’t want in my house.  But I hadn’t thought about it, because this decision wasn’t about a mouse and disease.  Like so many things, this was a question of risk.

Baby Mice Are A Risk

You are at risk every day.  When you drive your car, you’re taking a risk.  (Accident -> dying)  Eating at a restaurant, risk. (E-coli -> dying)  Just getting out of bed is a risk. (Falling down -> maybe dying?)  But staying in bed is a risk too!  (Lack of exercise, obesity, dehydration, your skin growing into the fabric of your sheets -> dying!)  There is absolutely nothing you can do to escape the fundamental risks of being alive. (Except dying.)  So a big part of life is determining your personal relationship with risk.

In order to figure out where we stand with risk, we have to weigh and measure the potential reward and the potential cost of inaction.  I drive my car and, most days, I don’t even think about the fact that I am risking death.  Base jumping: not okay for me on the risk meter.  Skydiving: okay, but maybe not once I have kids.  Riding horses: okay.  Rollerblading: not okay – it’s not fun enough to be worth it!

It’s a very personal thing.  For my grandfather, bringing home a potentially diseased baby mouse is not below his risk threshold.  But I am young and healthy.  I have good healthcare.  And if I didn’t bring this mouse home, it was as good as dead.  I brought her home.

Which brings me to one of the most important risk scenarios facing us as a planet: climate change.

Climate Change = Diseased Mice?

If you haven’t seen it already, I beg you to take nine minutes and thirty-three seconds out of your busy life and watch this video.  There are white boards and smiley faces.  It’s good and funny.  And it is vitally important.

Climate change is also a matter of risk.  A matter of measuring the risk of action with the cost of inaction.  Is not taking action on climate change worth the risk?  What does your risk meter say?

For me…

Climate change?  Not okay.  Baby mouse?  Okay.