There are so many traps. There’s the booby trap and the sink trap. The velvet trap and the parent trap. The sand trap and the Trapp Family Singers trap. But the worst trap of all is the Can’t Do Anything Until You Do Everything trap.

That’s the trap with the biggest, baddest teeth. That’s the trap that immobilizes you before you take your first step. That’s the worst trap in the world.

Say, for example, you’re a skier or a snowboarder, and you’re getting a trifle concerned about the whole global warming thing. This has been a good snow year, but you remember last winter, and you can’t help but wonder — which is the new norm and which is the aberration?

So you decide to take a first step. Something small. Like change the light bulbs. Or carpool to the mountain. Or buy a gas miser instead of guzzler. Whatever. It’s your step.
You tell a ‘friend’ your plan. The ‘friend’ sets the Can’t Do Anything Until You Do Everything trap.

Goes like this:
“Change the bulbs, dude? That’s just pissing in the wind. You got, what, four bulbs, dude? Five? You think your puny little light bulbs are gonna have any effect on the whole planet?”
Or like this: “Carpool? That saves how much gas? Do you know how much more a 747 uses just taxiing down the runway? Like one-zillion times more. Fuggedaboudit!”

Or this: “Why not buy a Hogger III? I’m tellin’ you, until capitalism is overthrown, until indigenous peoples are no longer marginalized, until sexism and militarism are brought to their knees, it all means nothing. NOTHING!”

Here’s the truth. Our snow’s at real risk. Our planet’s at real risk. Your first step, when combined with my first step and his and her first steps may or may not be enough to turn the risk around.

Working together, can we save our snow? Dunno. Too early to tell. Or maybe too late.

But what we do know, and know for sure, is this: If you and I and she and he don’t take that step, if we let ourselves fall into the jaws of the Can’t Do Anything Until You Do Everything trap, we’re turning up the heat, not cooling our corner of the globe.

And if we let ourselves get talked out of taking that step and the next step and the next, we just may end up kissing our sweet snow good-bye.