The Only Way Out Is To Jump In

Honing in on the one truth that shuts us down more than all others, and what we need to combat it.

Okay, as evidenced by my semi-random sample of 9th graders, we all already know Climate Change is real, complex, and tangled up in so many things as to be completely overwhelming. It is probably fair for me to assume that most Climate Change “believers” have asked themselves “what would it take to solve this problem,” or "what can I do to solve this problem,” and quickly seen how intractable it is. And this is where people usually sign off (let's call this the "resignation problem"). But instead, this is where you need to sign on. Everyone who gets it and cares needs to be on board, doing what they can.

“Your job, anyone who hears this, for the rest of your life, is to make the impossible, possible, in order to avert the unthinkable.”

>David Roberts 2012

Think lots of little actions adding up to net big effects. Like a tiny founder colony of single-celled Saccharomyces yeast in a 5 gallon carboy of pear and apple juice converting all those sugars into alcohol. Perry! Yum!

But how do we get there? What’s standing in our way?

To Review:

The problem is not that we don’t know what is happening. Our very climate is changing due to how the relative concentration of gases in our atmosphere are changing. It is not that we don’t know why it is happening: our way of life is built on a history of—and present practices that include—pervasive use of fossil fuels, and net-carbon-emitting land-use practices. It is not that we don’t know what we need to do to alleviate the problem: reduce greenhouse gas consumption and emission as quickly and as completely as possible.

But “we” aren’t responding appropriately. Our collective response could be characterized as anemic. Ineffective. Underwhelming. That would be a good follow-up question for those 9th graders: “Our collective response to Climate Change has been…(pick your adjective).”

Why aren’t we responding in our own best interest? In humanity’s best interests? Why aren’t we responding as if our future security and happiness—and maybe even lives—depend on it?

Yes, it is enough to make you feel like no one is doing anything.

There are a several answers to these questions, most of which are simultaneously true, and we will spend more time examining each of them in future posts. But briefly, one part of the answer is because it is hard to truly take in the seriousness of Climate Change in order to respond appropriately. This is especially true when nearly all the other people in our day-to-day lives are similarly stymied. Another part of the answer is the futility-come-avoidance-come-resignation phenomenon I mentioned at the top. The truth is, it is easier to hide your head rather than genuinely try to change your life to right the many wrongs going on; that’s true no matter what the big issue is. How comfortable are most of us walking past a homeless person? But short of being able to fix it, our lives must, and do, go on. Honestly, these two issues are a huge part of what this blog is about recognizing and challenging.

But let’s say with a little pep talk, we could get more people on board to change our behaviors to help us get past some of these more…um, psychological (?), sociological (?), motivational (?)…problems.

Another reason we aren’t responding appropriately is because “we,” none of us, are free to act alone. Many solutions can only be implemented if “we” undertake them “together,” as families, communities, businesses, governments. We are tied to each other in an intricate web of connections that none of us even fully understands, let alone controls. And we don’t have buy-in from all the parties we are tethered to make the changes we need to make. Some people will not or cannot make the changes the world needs to make because their lives are built too directly on the foundations of our existing ways of life. This is the coal worker. Some people will not or cannot make the changes the world needs because certain choices aren’t available, like reusable packaging on fast food, or sustainably grown food in any but specialty venues. Sometimes, the “right” choices are technically available, but not economically available, being effectively unaffordable to the vast majority of people, like access to solar power, geothermal, or newer electric cars. Other “people,” like whole businesses, can’t make the changes they need to make because it may put them at a disadvantage relative to their competitors, so an entire industry needs to be managed as the world transitions. This is true for the economies of whole countries; the playing field needs to be made as level as possible. We will all fight to be on the winning side of whatever equation is laid out as the world changes.

There are a lot of entanglements and interdependencies and vulnerabilities. Even with the most co-committed group of determined, world-changing responders at the helm, change would be challenging. Not impossible per se, but challenging. We can hope the threat of catastrophe might at least be useful in motivating us to find and accept reasonable compromises.

But even these completely legitimate reasons for our lack-luster response to the Climate Change challenge don’t yet touch on the most insidious reason. Our biggest problem right now is that we have powerful people who are actively denying the reality of the problem, and funding multi-million dollar strategies to confuse and distract people from the consensus science has reached. Further, these people are working hard, at all levels they can influence, from individual belief systems, to the laws of local up to federal government, to prevent the changes we need to make from ever being made. It is pretty transparent that most of these people seem to be the ones whose livelihoods and/or fortunes depend in one way or another on the continued use of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, these include (and demonstrably so) some of the most powerful people in our country, and in the world, including way too many politicians.

It really is just like the movies. You couldn’t dream up a better global-power-hungry bad-guys movie. It is greater good against self-serving “evil,” (1) and the evil clearly has the upper hand. The jury can remain out as to the extent to which the bad guys understand what they are doing, and whether they have a conscience or not. My guess is some do, and some don’t.

At any rate, this reality is what many of us recognize as the greatest obstacle to finding our way to a more appropriate response to Climate Change. We can all change our individual ways, and this is essential, and it is also a great place to start (here is an inspiring article that outlines the true importance of our small individual actions, I plan a full post on that when we get to the Story of Us). However, such efforts can never be enough (here’s one article detailing why). We can also work together to tweak existing systems to improve our efficiency, making it easier or more affordable for all of us to lower our carbon footprints. But even great success at those things will not be enough for the kind of sea change we need; that might have worked 40 years ago, but it is way too late for that now. Such “normal” political toiling will not overcome the influence of the bad guys who are actively working against our efforts.

Without serious, heroic intervention, the bad guys are definitely going to win.

(Though to be sure, it is a tragic sort of win we are talking about.)

So let’s put this as clearly as possible:

We are having the scope of our response to Climate Change—which threatens minimally our quality of life in the near term, and potentially civilization itself in the long term—confined, and our choices limited, by these guys (and gals) whose interests conflict with those of the rest of humanity. Our desired response to Climate Change is being suppressed!

This is just seriously, seriously wrong.

This is why we need a movement. This is what movements are. When the systems in place are no longer working in the way they were intended, an “intervention” is needed. I imagine a rebellion or a civil war would be one mechanism for intervention. A great sustainability-motivated movement would likely be a less violent and destructive. Honestly, we don’t even have time to waste fighting.

Movements are about liberating the oppressed and suppressed by getting everybody on board. “Everybody” being the good, honest, hard-working, just-want-the-best-for-my-loved-ones-and-sure-why-not-for-everyone people, the masses who are all the people we know and love, and are all the people they know and love. All these admittedly-imperfect-but-at-their-core-good people and their occasionally ‘ornery Uncle. These are the nice people walking around us everyday who surprise us with their occasional kind or thoughtful acts. There are a lot of us. Even among the people who voted for a different president than we did.

I think it is about finding our shared interests as human beings, and putting them together and imposing them over those with conflicting interests who appear to have more control. It is using the numbers game to our advantage. We, the good guys, definitely have the numbers. Especially if we could see past our idealogical differences. But we have to create a push behind our numbers, a direction in which we want to move. Right now we are all like little individual atoms running every which way to no net effect.

We need to all push on the same thing, in the same direction, and then we can have incredible power. For me, it helps to know that there is a precedent: through processes, like that through which sweet apple cider can be transformed into hard, the composition of our atmosphere was originally created, and is still largely determined, by untold legions of single, often microscopic, individual organisms. The breathing forests and oceans have individual living creatures, like you and me, at their foundations. Together individuals can have great impact. It is through this truth that I see hope.

Footnote 1: As a relatively non-religious person, I am a bit ambivalent about the idea of “evil,” but it is a handy term to sum up people’s “bad stuff.” In my mind the evil or bad stuff is all those behaviors that add up to gratuitous self-serving at the immorally high expense of others. ↩︎