:: History may not repeat after all ::

Ed. Note: This special blog post is part of Blog Action Day with the subject being “climate change.” More than 5,000 bloggers from 126 countries have participated. Check out more entries at blogactionday.org.

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Her eyes were wide. The whites blending in with the snow outside.

The snow, piled up more than twice her height hides the giant pine tree across the street that used to shade her house from the sun.

It was just another winter day in Eden Prairie, Minn.

It is a winter day that now comes so few.

The climate has changed. And it will change everything we remember.

My wife, Jenny, would tell me stories all the time about her days as a kid when the white walls that would shield her house from the rest of the world. The white walls that she would wake up to, creating her very own castle.

There was always a smile that accompanied these stories. Always a laugh. Her eyes always going from beautiful to big.

The times when she and her little sister, Maria, and older brother, Phil, would run outside, digging a tunnel through the snow just to get to the school bus.

When on the weekends, they would build their own fort. Phil’s always the biggest. His snowballs always the hardest.

Phil was more big bully than big brother. Jenny never really liked him. But once, on a day of white walls and ill-built fortresses, a neighborhood kid was picking on her. And here came Phil to her defense, to her surprise.

He stood up for her. Of course, it was an if-anyone-picks-on-my-little-sister-it’s-going-to-be-me moment. But it was a moment that Jenny will never forget.

Yes, this post is about climate change.

I could bore you with numbers and with facts about climate change. I could tell you how it affects our food, businesses and politics. But what we hold so dear are those childhood moments that shape us. Moments that we’ll never forget.

Moments that we hope our children get to see.