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| 1000 melting men in Berlin to recognize global warming |
Of a great need
We are all holding hands
And climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen,
The terrain around here
Is
Far too
Dangerous
For
That.
It’s been a
rough summer for climate change deniers.
Well, for all of us really. July 2012 was officially declared the
hottest month in US
history. By early August, nearly 90% of US land
supporting corn and soybean crops was declared “affected by severe drought.” By mid-August, 6,888,342 acres of US land were
burned up in fires while still more fires raged. Other August reports declared
that Greenland and the Arctic have melted more quickly than “anyone’s wildest
imaginings” and went on with projections about what a warming earth means:
larger, harsher storms; drought; rising sea levels; and an endless warming
feedback loop leading, ultimately, to larger, harsher storms; further drought
and, well, you get the idea.
Most of these statistics come from
350.org, though you can pick them up elsewhere, and even the September 2012
issue of National Geographic has bravely gone where most print media dares not
go asking on the cover, “What’s Up with the Weather?” As many environmentalists
have been saying repeatedly, “This is what climate change looks like.” Even a leading
physicist and climate change skeptic, Professor Richard Muller of the Berkeley
Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project, recently reneged on earlier
statements claiming instead that, “Our results show that the average
temperature of the Earth’s land has risen 2.5F over the past 250 years,
including an increase of 1.5 degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover it appears likely that essentially
all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.”
Still, it’s unlikely that you need
to hear from me, or other environmentalists, or even Professor Muller in order
to have some sense or personal experience of a changing planet. In fact, you
may well be wishing I would stop talking about it as the whole thing is just
too painful for polite conversation. If
you’ve stuck with me this far, perhaps it’s only because you’re wondering what
hope has got to do with any of it.
If you peer through the pages of
history, I think you’ll find that nearly every social movement has a reluctant
leader. Could be the salary, the
benefits or the overall prospects of job security -- you decide. It surely also
has something to do with courage, faith and, well, yes, hope. For the environmental movement in the US, and
even globally, I think many would name that reluctant leader as Bill McKibben,
who has been suffering the truth about global warming since he wrote The End of Nature in 1989. That’s over 20 years of (mostly quiet)
concern that led up to his current passionate efforts to get the word out. I’ll admit I admire the guy. He is intelligent, quick-witted, and quietly
direct about his assertions about the future of the planet, and he’s remarkably
humble.
This past July, McKibben sent out
an email to his growing network of supporters and organizers titled, “I think I
screwed up.” He was referencing a
protest project being planned for Washington,
DC where an ice sculpture, not
unlike the one depicted in the photo above, was going to be placed in front of
Capitol Hill. Unlike the rather elegant
melting figures above, however, McKibben was planning a big hunk of ice in the
form of the word “HOAX.” “The idea was
simple,” he wrote. “If this epic heat wave
gripping the nation has one silver lining, it’s that it is reminding people
that global warming is very, very real.”
But McKibben was advised not do it, especially from some people in
nearby West Virginia, because “The sight of ice melting while they sweltered
would be too hard to take; their region, they pointed out, is as hard hit as any
in the country by the heat wave, and it would make people feel like their
plight wasn’t being taken seriously.”
Therein lays the paradox for
McKibben and anyone feeling the need to break through the culture of silence
and shout out “Yop!” The alternative to shouting out feels like some sort of
quiet insanity, like living in a parallel universe where one carries out one’s
daily responsibilities obeying the laws of silence while a voice screams in the
back of the mind, “This can’t go on!” Sounds
crazy, I know, but who among isn’t a bit crazy on occasion? This crazy thing is, afterall, a state based
pretty much entirely on how much trauma life has dealt us and how well we’ve managed
it. On the other hand, speaking out, besides opening a Pandora’s Box of fears,
can feel to people like you’re rubbing their faces in some pretty horrific
musings about the insecurities of their future and you end up feeling somehow
responsible for their resulting unhappiness. While McKibbon’s ice sculpture could easily
be construed as some sort of angry frustrated tirade (and there are certainly
components of that involved) this, and other protest actions are, in fact, acts
of desperate hope rising up from an internal insistence that doing nothing is
intolerable, that saying nothing is intolerable.
I had a similar heart-wrenching experience to
McKibben’s “Hoax” sculpture with a relative of mine who lives in Colorado Springs. I have come to realize that telling even the
smallest parts of other people’s stories in order to make my point is a bit presumptuous
and intrusive, but I’m going to tell it anyway in hopes that should the telling
cause her any unintended stress or harm, I will be forgiven. This relative watched
the smoke and flames from the massive fires that took more than 15,000 acres of
land in Colorado Springs
this summer from her living room window.
They became a backdrop to her days. She documented the experience by posting
images of the encroaching fire on Facebook.
One day, she threw out a statement about how the inability to curtail
the fires was a result of certain actions imposed by environmentalists. Not surprisingly, I took the bait and
responded with what were likely perceived as some pretty condescending
statements.
Thankfully, we were able to resolve
our differences fairly quickly as it became clear to me that she was defending
and attempting to gain control over both her life and her sanity in the midst
of some pretty trying circumstances. And
I only needed to peel back one or two layers before I realized that, in some
sense, I was doing the same. Because sometimes I’m afraid of that word
“environmentalist.” Firmly embedded in my subconscious is a billboard put out
by the Heartland Institute showing Unabomber Ted Kacsynski with the words, “I
still believe in Global Warming. Do you?” And locked away in other brain cells
are images of environmental protesters across this fair country being hauled
off to jail. So, yes, I was most definitely on the defensive attempting to protect
perceptions of my own sanity. But in
this scenario, the only real act of insanity is in clinging steadfastly to
political stances in the midst of an inferno. At such times, surely, all bets
are off and our only recourse is to throw our lots in together in the hope of
saving ourselves.
There it is again. Hope.
That other insistent and sometimes intolerable voice from within.
“Whenever I hear the word ‘hope’
these days, I reach for my whiskey bottle,” says Paul Kingsnorth, who, like
Professor Muller, recently pulled a complete turnabout on all previous stances
he held around issues of climate change.
Unlike Muller, Kingsnorth accepted predictions about climate change
years ago and spent decades working to change public policy to address these predictions.
He recently declared that he had forsaken all further efforts by
environmentalists as it was all too little, too late, and, as far as he was
concerned, motivated by the all wrong reasons.
“[Hope] seems to me to be such a futile thing,” Kingsnorth says. “What does it mean? What are we hoping for?
And why are we reduced to something so desperate? Surely we only hope when we
are powerless?”
Well, yes. And, no.
I’m pretty sure that the incessant chatter of hope is pretty much a
constant muttering indecipherable from all the rest of the busy background
thoughts that keep us company. Honestly,
how would we get anything done without it? Why bother brushing your teeth or attempting
to save for your children’s college education if not out of some sort of hope? The
problem with the whiskey solution is that it kills off every other emotion. So,
joy, sorrow, pride, respect are all poured out with the backwash, which can
lead to a lot of ugly and uncomfortable days but is entirely ineffective at
killing off hope.
Still, Kingsnorth’s question, “what
are we hoping for?” does need to be addressed.
It is actually a really good question.
For those of us who keep throwing out facts and figures about a
frightening climate change reality, the question is: what motivates this
behavior? What ARE we hoping for? Considering all the possible responses to
that question it’s difficult to resist sidestepping the complications, to choose
instead to cut corners, so to speak, and answer the question with one simple word
-- salvation.
Please don’t panic. I am not about
to turn into some crazy preacher spewing messages of hell and damnation and
promising salvation should you make a donation to my cause. Stripped of all the religious connotations,
salvation simply means “the act of saving or protecting from harm, risk, loss,
or destruction.” As far as I’m
concerned, that pretty much sums it up. While
not a solution, it offers up a possible relief from suffering not by avoiding
it but by acting upon it.
It’s odd, but these days the dandelion
has become a popular metaphor for hope.
Images of the once-hated weed poking its yellow sunshine through cracks
in the pavement are being passed around more frequently than the beloved peace
dove. Something about the strength and persistence of that edible plant growing
where nothing is supposed to grow is speaking to us. Yet not so long ago, I’m
pretty sure my husband and I purchased a gadget specifically designed to pull
those plants up by the roots, preferably long before they had turned to seed. As
a child, though, I remember loving those fantastic white globes of seed where
one quick breath could fill the air with countless floating parachutes. For
some reason, that image reminds me of a quote from Kahlil Gibran. “Your
children are not your children,” he says. “They are the sons and daughters of
life’s longing for itself.”
Maybe for environmentalists filling
the silence with information about climate change is like those parachutes. They
are an expression of life’s longing for itself. And the whisperers are motivated
by the notion that sending out little parachutes of truth will cause a change
to grow up through the impenetrable black where nothing seemed able to grow
before. These whisperings are not
motivated by cruelty or some sort of pinstriped courage, but rather by that
deep-seated instinct to protect ourselves from harm, risk, loss or destruction
spurred on by that damned ubiquitous hope.
