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Original Artwork by Peg McIntosh
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On Thursday I donned my referee shirt, following marching orders from Bill McKibben, and joined a group of around sixty people in “blowing the whistle” on Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown. Brown recently co-sponsored a bill to push through the Keystone XL pipeline project, a loaded issue in Washington these days as it is being used as a linchpin political determinant of future climate change stances (or lack thereof) by both environmentalists and oil-backed corporate interests. As is often the case with this sort of thing, corporate interests exert their power through financial backing of our politicians and environmentalists express their power by screaming on the streets. I joined the screamers.
The joke at home that morning was about how, should I get arrested, there was enough food in the house for three days and maybe, in prison, I would find enough peace and quiet to finally write my manifesto. But not surprisingly, there was little police presence at our tiny protest. In fact the only push back we got from the police was when we were told to clear off the red-painted line of the Freedom Trail. I think the irony of that request eluded the officer. We did clear off the trail deciding as a group that we certainly did not want to get in the way of anyone meandering along the path of freedom on that sunny, crisp, snowless February afternoon. We began our march from the Park Street T station to Scott Brown’s office chanting various slogans including my favorite, “There is no power like the power of the people and the power of the people won’t stop,” though it was, of course, entirely obvious that we needed way more people.
The title of this post is borrowed from Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Network, whose humble beginnings started in Totnes, Devon, England when a group of people decided they no longer had the patience or the will to wait for large, systemic environmental initiatives to come from their government. Hopkins’ full quote is, “How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march?” Based on successes in Totnes and a growing interest in the Transition movement, Hopkins published The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience in 2008. A couple of weeks ago and, rather remarkably only four years after the book’s publication, I was invited to a pre-release viewing of the Transition Network’s second documentary titled “In Transition 2.0.” The documentary tells a moving story about communities in the US, Spain, England, Italy, New Zealand, Japan, Portugal and India adopting and building localized initiatives to prepare communities to meet coming challenges as we transition away from fossil fuels.
Of course, to have any real interest in any of this you’ll have to have taken on board the facts about global warming and the looming inevitability of the end to fossil fuel supplies. Taking on these facts can be difficult not only because of their devastating implications but also because in the US there is a concerted, wide-spread distribution of false information to the contrary. For an interesting historical perspective on this sort of spreading of false information, you might want to check out the third chapter of Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest, titled “The Rights of Business.” He offers a clear picture of age-old practices to obscure public health and safety issues in the pursuit of profit.
The only thing new about our present situation is the vast, Globalness of it – the unfathomable reality that the future of the entire planet (and all the life it hosts) is at stake. When I find myself in the grip of despair about the whole thing, I remember these words from Hawken, “If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a heart. What I see are ordinary and some not-so-ordinary individuals willing to confront despair, power and incalculable odds in an attempt to restore some semblance of grace, justice and beauty to this world.”
I put myself in the category of the ordinary and while grace, the restoration of justice, and beauty are surely noble goals I champion, what motivates me to attend talks and rallies and movie showings is my need to be with others who are aware of this stuff. I really can’t stand being alone with it anymore. And I have to agree with Hawken about the people I’ve met who, like me, have experienced the urge to gather and talk and “do something” -- how beautiful they all are.
