Hope, Activism, and Climate Change
2GreenEnergy supporter Cameron Atwood sent me this incredible, wide-ranging article by political activist Rebecca Solnit. Its theme is critically important to people trying to making sense of our modern world – and especially to those of us trying to change it for the better. Simply put: we all make a difference, and we honestly have no idea of the magnitude of the impact we’re making: it’s just too early to know. I urge you to treat yourself to this short, readable masterpiece.
When you think about it, the world is an unimaginably different place than it was just a few decades ago. In terms of the things I follow most closely, e.g., climate change, I note that in 2003 there was essentially no public recognition for the phenomenon itself, and certainly no swelling of mainstream consciousness that we had a duty to change our ways of energy generation and consumption accordingly. Yet only 10 years later, we have enormous numbers of people blocking the construction of tar sands pipelines, and taking all manner of other actions all over the globe. True, not all are risking arrest as they assert their convictions, but that’s really not what it takes anyway, as a few of the most active and visible people have enormous amounts of leverage.
Solnit writes: “Things change. And people sometimes have the power to make that happen, if and when they come together and act (and occasionally act alone, as did writers Rachel Carson and Harriet Beecher Stowe — or Mohammed Bouazizi, the young man whose suicide triggered the Arab Spring).”
And it’s not all about “activism;” we have many credible business people talking about Copenhagen’s becoming a carbon-neutral city by 2025, and we see the world’s biggest financial institutions: Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, etc., investing literally trillions of dollars into energy efficiency and clean energy solutions. That was completely unthinkable 10 years ago.
We tend to think of the future as an extension of the past, yet this is very rarely the case, and it’s especially unlikely in the 21st Century. Or, as George Will (hardly a progressive visionary) told me at last year’s reunion of our alma mater, “the future always looks like the past – until it looks like something completely different.”
In fact, the most striking aspect of Solnit’s work of art here is a kind of intellectual humility that defines good thinking today. Our position needs to be: we really don’t know how all this is going to turn out. Optimists think everything will be fine; pessimists don’t see a way out. Solnit concludes: “Will we get (there)? I don’t know. Neither do you.”
Hi Gents,
There is an authoritative 2002 report from the Global Scenario Group (gsg.org), “Great Transition – The Promisse and Lure of the Times Ahead”, which is worth reading throught it all indeed, and spread if afterwards.
Best,
Vicente Fachina
Today is all we have, so do it now. Good thinking Yes !
I’m with you all the way!
Craig
I had a sign in my office 30 years ago which reads: Do it now – Don’t wait for Utopia! But sometimes I feel, it is like pushing *–it* uphill.. But still the people today have to push it. “Will we get there?” – I believe the human race will prevail – perhaps after some life changing catastrophes….
If I was to suggest a follow up article, it would be this one:
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/page2/a_call_to_action_20130522/
Craig,
Thank you for sharing your insights. What I love most about this reading is we see the SOCIAL aspects playing a huge role in change if you consider the terms “It all starts with you, the individual”. If we choose to lessen our consumption and reuse, recycle, refuse, renew by continuing to make better choices in our health and so forth the planet will renew itself. Re-member ( the now and recall the past) we are not separate from the planet we are the planet and we are the organism. Once we connect to this as a viable option for a NEW WORLD there is no way one can ignore or even consider irresponsibility.
Our now-next phase of change is to use technology to understand and predict change in order to collaborate on NEW WORLD systems like social networks- open source education, crowd funding, volunteer workforce and public awareness on global concerns, albeit global partners being the road map towards social enterprise could very well be the prediction I and resolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_enterprise
PS– I am glad we met to speak on the social 1 or the 3 pillars in sustainability, in my mind it is where it all begins! Here is a fun video to think more about the subject: http://youtu.be/2O5iGg74xOk
Interesting ARTCLE on how the past seems to modify itself with new chameleon attitudes, new idioms, new political slang that always hide the ugly truth of our slanted ICON heads, hiding the fact that the past IS and WAS driven by the same nasty motives as today. As if we are stuck on hold, trapped in an epigenetic broken record, a stalled out mind-shift toward a THUG mentality [empowerment and inquisitional force] run by highly paid masked bandits:IE, the governments of the world who live for, by and processing and selling human being like commodities. Ever wonder why meaning [Black’s legal word for TRUE as empowered RIGHT] is reserved for hats, badges, stripe and robes… credentials only? What a scam we live by. Imagine you have no OFFICIAL meaning so you have to BY it. Once you buy it and are schooled on WHAT to make-think, you sell it to all who have no meaning at all. RIGHT? myriad. Hey… “we are JUST doing our job”. Right? What is this mundane systematic job community we all subscribe too, that can possibly destroys us? what does it involve, really? Do we see something sinister happening underneath it all?
We do not need GOODS, we ARE the goods. We need to change now. Stop agreeing, wake up. It’s no different than the failed HOLY Imperial Roman cult way back when, killing a Man of the cloth for speaking out in what he called: VARIENCE.. Do we get it? We are being played by master ICON puppeteers. We elaborate how efficient we want to be while the commercial bottom seems to be constantly sucked out from beneath us who are making an effort, but the quick-change tactics invested in what also seems to be an increasing world battle for the sale of goods is so heavily taxed that it is not unlike any civil war effort cutting of the supply lines.
We at http://www.seadive.us are working hard to improve marine propulsion and see rising costs, taxes and the government entanglements of have-to do’s, can’t do’s and if you do not do, you will not do…. legal syndromes that are all apart of the systemic disorder; as a matter of fact: excessive burdens placed on all new business. The old stand-by of saying… “the human race will survive”…. is cliche at most. Sure we will. Many suffer and die for what others can’t even envision, let alone imagine. The ugly truth Is that the political head is eating its begging tail. Government glut is always the burden that will bring this country, any country, to is knees. The dragging tail is as huge as the hungry head and the weight of the none productive beggars appendage is being feed by the little man, the busy worker bees who fly aimlessly back and forth to the hive mentality of the drone in a dizzy spin of burden.
Saying it loud and clear that we will NOT change what is being said by the avatars of the world who know the ICON game is flawed seriously, Excusing will-full ignorance of a duped human race with platitudes of its all for the: THE GOOD of THE PEOPLE, SAFE-FEAR syndromes, right think groups and of course the word…GREEN is the new trend toward imperialism. Wait till you see the new insidious laws that will be passed in the next fifty years. Zero freedom means SAFE fear control? RIGHT? Imperialism folks by any other name. Saying no doesn’t change it. Hard fact. WEE the people. The faster we go the less we see. Knowing is not understanding. So the question is what do we know that is just recycled garbage and taught propaganda?
Here’s the catch 22. No thinking, no doubt, no question, no change. Thought is doubt and if we can realize that and question what has for way to long bring us down, we can realize a living truth everyone will understand. Oh, by the way. The wake up call is going to be painful because the knowledge of that which now exists as a binary cause is about to change, We are dimensionally made to be human [living real] and dynamic beings, not all or nothing slaves to icon empowered right commercialism. We all need to wake up, like it or not. Be moved by what and how you are form the inside first….James