What it really comes down to is, do you or do you not believe that we are in a state of climate emergency?
Not everybody believes that we are. I’m not out here trying to change their minds; that would be like trying to push Niagara Falls back up with a teaspoon.
Rather, I am focused on helping the people who share my opinion that we are in a state of climate emergency. (Or biosperic collapse, or whatever you prefer to call it for shorthand.) I’m focused on helping us get motivated to act in accordance with the level of emergency that we believe is happening.
If we who call ourselves environmentalists believe that there is an emergency, but we keep on with business as usual — jetsetting all over the planet, taking “vacations” to “escape,” when we need to be deepening our bioregional loyalty and nurturing the kind of places we want to live in all the time, that we don’t have to “escape” from; not putting up any fight against the car lifestyle at all; grocery shopping at Big Bulk or Megalo Mart instead of biting the bullet and paying more at the local organic store or open-air farmer’s market for the longterm good of helping to build the resilient & humane food-supply chains; not even trying to open the windows instead of using air conditioning or heat all the time; hoarding houses; habitually accepting plastic bags at the grocery store; keeping our money on Wall Street instead of bringing it local; letting the men we live with say no when we push for native & edible landscaping because “he likes his lawn” (methinks we need to help the Grass Gestapo find a better hobby); thinking it’s OK for us to have big suburban yards but then NIMBYing out all the efforts to develop apartments and townhouses nearby “because traffic” …
— Well, if we keep doing all that, what’s the general public supposed to think? Could they not be excused for doubting that there is actually an emergency going on?
If those of us who assert we’re in a state of planetary emergency are not doing a thing to change our lifestyles. If the so-called environmentalists are leading a lifestyle that is indistinguishable from a “Drill Baby Drill,” Rush Limbaugh with the chainsaw recordings lifestyle.
So that’s what it comes down to. Do you or do you not believe that we are in a state of planetary emergency? Call it climate, call it biospheric, call it whatever — we know what we mean.
And if we believe it, how are we acting on it, right here right now? What changes are we making? What sacrifices?
Sometimes what seems to be a sacrifice has so many hidden benefits that it ends up not feeling like a sacrifice at all. Like just now when I did my grocery shopping and got to visit with so many good local people and partake of a beautiful sunny day unmitigated by a car window, and get a bunch of exercise in the process!! And talk about various possible local business ideas that are incubating together in a bunch of our minds!
How about you, can you think of some change you’ve made that was a sacrifice at first but ended up having so many beneficial side effects that you forgot about the sacrifice part?