Breathe it in

Things we take for granted in 2023:

Wifi. Yes, we want it fast and everywhere and, lord help us if there’s an outage. Most people today (me included) are dependent on an Internet connection to work, watch TV, listen to podcasts, pay our bills, and even update this blog!

Electricity. We get pretty ornery when the power goes off because of bad weather and trees taking out lines. A blink is just an annoyance and means having to reset all our devices, but an outage of more than 24 hours can be a major inconvenience when we’re without heat or water.

Clean air. We need air to stay alive but, similar to the first two items, we rarely think about air (or water) unless its availability or quality is threatened.

The Upper Peninsula has some of the cleanest, freshest air in the world due to a lack of polluting industries and being surrounded by the cool breezes of Lake Superior. Many people say our U.P. air provides relief for allergy and asthma sufferers.

An astounding statistic: 91 percent of the world’s population breathe in polluted air every day. 91 percent. According to the World Health Organization, air pollution is responsible for nearly 7 million deaths around the globe each year.

For those who live in urban areas, this pollution is not surprising primarily due to the number of cars on the roads and energy use and production, especially the burning of fossil fuels. Sadly, climate change will make it harder in the future to meet pollution standards. It’s a vicious cycle. Because air pollution, in the form of carbon dioxide and methane, raises the earth’s temperature, it actually exacerbates climate change.

Breathe it in, Yoopers. We are blessed.