Cassandras of the World, Unite and Be Heard!

I was never much interested in Greek mythology and didn't study it in school. In fact, I knew nothing about Cassandra until people starting calling me by that name. Suddenly Cassandra became a theme in my writings about climate change.

Today I want to say that it feels like the Cassandras of the world are starting to be heard — and believed. Which means, of course, that the deniers and Big Money and Big Oil are becoming more and more desperate and underhanded. But it also means that the Cassandras of the world aren't as lonely.

My husband stumbled upon this prescient ABBA song yesterday (video below). It's from 1982 and was the B-side (only oldsters will understand that reference!) to their song The Day Before You Came. "Pity, Cassandra, that no one believed you ... Some of us wanted but none of us would listen to words of warning."

To be clear, I'm not saying that I have Cassandra's gift (or curse) of prescience or clairvoyance. I merely make and take the time to keep up to date on the climate change science and then look around the world to see what's already happening. And I understand that what's befalling others will soon enough befall us. Then I make and take the time to write and teach about what I've learned. That's when I get called Cassandra.

Alas, there are more and more of us, and our collective voice is getting louder and louder. (It also helps that people are witnessing economic signs that the market is moving to renewable energy, even if our governments aren't switching fossil fuel subsidies over yet, which is deplorable and unforgivable.)

Enjoy this blast from the past, even if the message is a sad one. And hey, invite a Cassandra out for a tea or coffee this week!

Cassandra

(written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus; sung by Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog)

Down in the street they're all singing and shouting
Staying alive though the city is dead
Hiding their shame behind hollow laughter
While you are crying alone on your bed

Pity, Cassandra, that no one believed you
But then again you were lost from the start
Now we must suffer and sell our secrets
Bargain, playing smart, aching in our hearts

Sorry, Cassandra, I misunderstood
Now the last day is dawning
Some of us wanted but none of us would
Listen to words of warning
But on the darkest of nights
Nobody knew how to fight
And we were caught in our sleep

Sorry, Cassandra, I didn't believe
You really had the power
I only saw it as dreams you would weave
Until the final hour

So in the morning your ship will be sailing
Now that your father and sister are gone
There is no reason for you to linger
You're grieving deeply but still moving on
You know the future is casting a shadow
No one else sees it, but you know your fate
Packing your bags, being slow and thorough
Knowing, though you're late, that ship is sure to wait

Sorry, Cassandra, I misunderstood 
Now the last day is dawning
Some of us wanted but none of us would
Listen to words of warning
But on the darkest of nights
Nobody knew how to fight
And we were caught in our sleep
Sorry, Cassandra, I didn't believe you really had the power
I only saw it as dreams you would weave
Until the final hour

I watched her ship leaving harbor at sunrise,
Sails almost slack in the cool morning rain
She stood on deck, just a tiny figure
Rigid and restrained, blue eyes filled with pain

Sorry, Cassandra, I misunderstood
Now the last day is dawning
Some of us wanted but none of us would
Listen to words of warning
But on the darkest of nights
Nobody knew how to fight
And we were caught in our sleep
Sorry, Cassandra, I didn't believe you really had the power
I only saw it as dreams you would weave
Until the final hour
(I'm sorry, Cassandra)

Earth Day Emergency ... and More

I'm writing this on Earth Day 2017. It's also the 26th anniversary of the day my hubby and I fell in love — at an Earth Day sunrise ceremony — and our fourth wedding anniversary (yes, it was a sunrise ceremony). So it's always a special day for us. I hope it was a lovely Earth Day for you, too, wherever you celebrate it. 



Here's a small collection of thoughts and poetry for Earth Day.

The Rainbow Warriors
by Nicola Beechsquirrel

Come, all who ever loved our Earth
Who lived in peace amongst her creatures
Gentle, loving, caring folk
With healing hands, and wisdom in your souls.
Come, incarnate once more
Come to Earth in her greatest need.
Help us rid her of her burdens
Cleanse her of all poisons
Close up the deep sores on her sacred body
And cover it once more in soft green.
Walk amongst us again
That we may relearn ancient skills
And long-forgotten wisdom
And tread lightly upon our Mother Earth
Taking from her only what we need
Living her ways in love and joy
Treating her creatures as equals.
Teach us how to reach those who exploit her
How to open their souls to the beauty of Life
That they may destroy no longer.
Come to us, Rainbow Warriors
Share with us your wisdom
For we have great need of it.


Climate change impacts have now been documented across every ecosystem on Earth, despite an average warming of only ~1°C so far. (Scheffers et al, 2016, in "The broad footprint of climate change from genes to biomes to people")

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. 
— Marie Curie

 Information is everything.
— Pamela Anderson


     To understand that humanity is on a collision course with the laws of Nature is to be stuck in what I call Cassandra's Dilemma. You can see the most likely outcome of current trends. You can warn people about what is happening and underscore the need for a change in course. Some people can understand you, and a few may even believe you and try to take action — but the vast majority cannot, or will not, respond. Later, if catastrophe occurs, they may even blame you, as if your prediction set in motion the process that resulted in disaster (self-fulfilling prophets are the most reviled). If, however, the World manages to avoid the potential catastrophe, thanks in part to the work of those who were motivated to action by your warning, many will point to that escape from danger as evidence of your incompetence as a prophet.
     The role of Cassandra, issuing unpopular warnings of avoidable danger, is a no-win situation. Failure to convey the message effectively results in catastrophe. Success in being understood — which leads to action to avoid that catastrophe — means ultimately being proven 'wrong.' 
     Being willing to be 'wrong' is, by itself, not enough. Your timing and your tone must be perfect. You must be 'wrong' at the right moment, because once proven 'wrong' — and the World will use every possible means to label you mistaken, as soon as possible — your credibility will be destroyed, so that thereafter your effect on the World will be minimal. Moreover, your means of communication are severely limited: if your warnings are too shrill, you will be ridiculed; too sober, and you will be ignored.
     Even the best-case scenario — predicting disaster at precisely the right moment, in the most strategically balanced tone of voice — does not guarantee a successful outcome: a failed prediction of disaster. Warnings are notoriously ineffective. People may believe you and still do nothing.
     The worst and most painful outcome for any Cassandra is to be proven right. 
— Alan AtKisson, in Believing Cassandra: How to Be an Optimist in a Pessimist's World

Earth Day Emergency

by George Elliott Clarke

Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada

Earth Day should be Thanksgiving, not Mother

Earth’s Good Friday, when Extinction’s spectre—

Those ghosts of the Endangered or those Dead 

Creatures haunt us—souls polluted by lead,

Mercury, arsenic, acids, and seeds

“Frankensteined” genetically. Live meat bleeds

As it conveyor-belts from plains to plates—

Shrink-wrapped, sporting “Best Before”-stamp, stale dates—

While dolphins and whales, having gulped down our

Plastic garbage and water bottles, lour,

Thrash, and beach themselves, their bellies starving,

And tides turn as red as blood spilled, carving

And serving mad cows or sick swine, all ill

From ingesting strange flesh and/or feces,

Contracted in ponds, scum-green with algaes.

Earth Day should be Eden Revival Day,

Not a “Mayday! Mayday!” Emergency,

When the Apocalypse sounds factual—

Angels strike, and precious seem wine and oil,

And the seas belch up blood, and all fish die,

And sun scorches like fire, so wetlands dry,

And locusts chew roots, leaves, fruits, and Famine 

Eats every human down to skeleton,

And skies shine with poison Radiation 

Or go dark with choking smog. No nation

Is immune from terra firma that shakes!

One must ask: Does fracking trigger earthquakes?

Ebola, SARS, Swine Flu, Bird Flu,

And other pestilential plagues renew,

Plus West Nile Virus, and other disease—

Infections without treatment, deaths sans cease.

Lethal’s now the baffling kiss of sunlight—

Intricately broken down is skin, white

With pus, putrid with boils, palpably raw,

While tornadoes whirl and swirl, clout and claw,

Oceans go soapy as a laundromat,

Foaming; skyscrapers totter; homes go splat;

A tsunami of trash washes away

Hospitals, leaving unsanitary

Cadavers. Each toxic anatomy—

In obscene inundation—heaps awry.

Oil spills, clear-cut forests, firestorms, sink-holes

Swallowing suburbs whole, are routine tolls

Now, for “Progress.” Condemned seas and damned winds,

Waste lands, Rust Belts, vast contaminations,

Thorns and rubbish, smashed glass, cracked ceramics,

Charred remains, scorched-earth, war-zone Economics,

Bomb-blast disasters ever more drastic,

Atomic threats, arms races elastic,

Ever expanding, is just a short list

Of unpalatable residues unjust,

The catastrophes now making us sick—

Unsustainable—and uneconomic.

Is Capital the acceptable

Villain, or are our choices culpable?

If Mother Earth now faces assassins,

Who are the culprits if not we humans?

This Earth Day demands deliberate turns

Back to Nature: Balance: What each child learns.

Another Dark Night of the Soul

Am I just too sensitive? One little rejection has tossed me into a tailspin ... one little rejection that represents a collective denial within my profession of the climate change emergency. 

Once again, a climate change workshop proposal that I submitted to a major environmental education conference has been turned down. Once again, they chose the happy-happy submissions about climate change instead. 

I have written before about the need for teachers, given their vast influence in the world, to step up, summon some courage, and face the climate change emergency as the heroes they must become. But it's really hard to spread that message when even environmental educators only want to hear the good-news stories and the what-can-I-do-with-my-students-on-Monday? ideas. There seems to be no interest in hearing the truth, feeling the pain of it, then delving deep and discussing some rich questions.

So, do I give up trying ... keep trying but with a new sense of resignation about my chosen profession's chosen denial ... or disguise the intent of my proposed workshops in the hopes that one day, I'll have one accepted? 

Luckily for my saddened spirit, I came across the following quote just before bedtime. It helped me realize that I'm part of my own problem, and that I'm going to have to step it up and quit taking it personally (actually, I didn't take the rejection personally; I felt it on behalf of the millions of schoolchildren around the world whose teachers aren't taking the climate change threat to their future seriously).

Happy summer to my colleagues, and may each of you take just a couple of hours during your time off to investigate the greatest crime ever against the children -- of all species -- and how you could respond.

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence ... when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox.... There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
- Barry Lopez, in Arctic Dreams

When Lack of Hope Meets Self-Doubt...

… the result is not pretty. The result is how I'm feeling these days, just a week before I head to San Francisco, by train, to be trained along with 999 other people by Al Gore and his Climate Reality Project.

If you're a regular reader, then you know what I think of hope. It's not an action verb, but a lot of people hold onto it as though doing so is actually doing something to mitigate the climate change emergency. With so many hopesters in the world still, I don't hold out much hope anymore that we're 
going to turn this juggernaut around in time.

And we're still not seeing any action on the part of governments or the big banks and fossil fuel industries. I guess they're going to squeeze every last drop of oil, lump of coal and molecule of gas out of the ground before they admit there might be a problem with their "profit over planet" mantra.

But at least I used to feel okay about the few modest things that I do. This blog, my website on transformative sustainability education for teachers, workshops for educators and community members.

Now, just as I'm about to be trained to give even more presentations to even more people, I'm losing my way: my sense of direction and my nerve. I'm thinking, "What's the point? We're hooped anyway. What can I possibly do now that will have the slightest fraction of an impact?"

In other words, depression is setting in. And it's not pretty. It's not enough to have a partner who is also a climate change activist. Our activities are so different, it's like we're living in different worlds. Most of our friends and all of our relatives either "admire" us (and take no action) or think we're nuts for all the work we do (and take no action), which creates a crazy-making loneliness and lack of connection. What if I get to San Francisco and discover that I really am crazy, and that even Al Gore and the other "goracles" don't understand how incredibly deep and acute and rapid our changes and cuts and transformations must be?

A dear friend and life coach recently helped me see that my joy in living has been eroding away. Sure, I still delight in the tiny bird outside my window, a luscious sunset, or a yummy meal that I've thrown together in the kitchen. But I used to spout the aphorism "Happiness is not a destination but a way of travel." Now, both our destination and our way of getting there make me miserable.

I want to recapture the joy and light in my life, even while carrying on the hard, desperate work of telling the world what no one wants to hear. (Can you say Cassandra?) And so, I'll sign off with my signature of old. It's who I used to be, and who I want to be again. If we're going down, I want to go down ablaze (and I don't mean literally), not all grey and downcast. Not dancing on the graves of tomorrow's children, mind you, but helping today's children celebrate the life they still have in them.

Sunshine,
Julie

Why Feeling Bad Could Save the Future

Today, we're giving compassion a holiday.

As I am insulted in my local community paper (for asking people to think about our children's right to a climate-safe future), and as the few friends that we have left admit that they feel uncomfortable when my husband and I (mainly I) talk with emotion about what we're doing to the future, I'm realizing that feeling bad could be what saves the future.

People know (don't they?) that the climate change denial machine was literally born out of and modelled on the tobacco industry's conspiracy to deny the dangers of smoking their cigarettes, including using some of the same bought-and-paid-for scientists.

But I sense that it's the internet that has allowed a real nastiness to creep into public affairs and public comment on them. When I feel bad, I want it to be for the children, not because of personal attacks against me. (When I am outraged by those who don't care about the kids, I don't use their names in my writings ... though I'm starting to wonder if that's more from cowardice on my part.)

I find myself longing for the anonymity of a large city where I could do my activist work with like-minded and like-hearted people and not be the target of ad hominen attacks. (They really know how to hurt a gal: "Julie Johnson" — see that? They didn't put the "t" in my name when they were slagging me! Grrr. But truly, what does it say about their credibility when they can't even spell my name correctly?)

In that particular letter to the editor, the writer said that my concern is "shrill hysteria" and that my departure will be welcomed by many. The letter didn't make much sense to me (he was responding to a terribly edited version of a carefully constructed letter of mine, so who knows what he actually read), but the writer raised two valid points:

1. It's not about me, and my departure (whatever he meant) doesn't matter. I don't give a damn about my life or my future anymore ... what I am working for, calling for, is acknowledgement from governments and others in power that we are threatening the lives and futures of all the world's children.

It seems that comfortable people in my society can't imagine the world without themselves in it, so they're not willing to picture the carbon-constrained and climate-changed future of food shortages and famines, floods and droughts, heat waves and other extreme weather events. I wish they could take themselves out of that picture and focus on the kids. Or even just look around the world to see what's happening elsewhere already.

2. I AM hysterical! I am feeling absolutely, completely 100% hysterical (without the exaggerated aspect), and I am becoming shriller and shriller because nobody is bloody well listening! It's become quite obvious that I cannot get people out of a burning movie theatre if they're too comfortable to leave, but I won't stop yelling "Fire!" and I sure as hell am going to keep trying to pull the children out.

Well meaning friends keep giving me advice: don't get so emotional (we're talking about the future of all the children, of all species ... the potential end of life on Earth, and you don't want me to get emotional?), don't be so negative (you can check out my opinion of positive thinking in the face of global climate calamity here), be sure to offer solutions (let's get the kids out of the burning theatre before we sit down to discuss fire safety rules, shall we?).

It's not like, as one friend used to say, I'm a Cassandra (who, in Greek mythology, was gifted with the ability to hear the future but cursed so that no one would ever believe her predictions; "her combination of deep understanding and powerlessness exemplify the ironic condition of mankind," according to Wikipedia). I'm not so much predicting the future as seeing what's already happening and understanding the nature of climate feedbacks and knowing that we're heading towards a point of no return.

What really hit home recently (I've written about this before, but only just really "got it" yesterday) is why no one wants to hear and heed the warnings. Post World War II generations (my mother's, mine, my niece's) in EuroAmerican countries are soooooo comfortable that they live in a cocoon of entitlement, ease and luxury (compared with past generations of human beings). Added to that is the New Age "surround yourself with positive people" mantra. What we've ended up with is a big chunk of the globe who (literally, physically) recoil at hearing the sad and scary news about the climate change mess we've cooked up.

Now here's what makes it even worse. These people (and it's most of us) choose to avoid FEELING BAD today rather than choosing to avoid a climate hell for their children or grandchildren in the (nearer than we think) future. Am I articulating that well? People are refusing to FEEL BAD. They would rather condemn their children to future food shortages and famines than have to FEEL BAD today hearing and thinking about it.

To me, that is inexcusable. So, for 2012, here's to a year where people allow their hearts to feel the pain and their eyes to cry the tears and their minds to think about what we're doing to the children ... and then may they have the courage to speak up and do something about it. Even if it's just writing a letter to their elected representatives, because that's how we change political will.

Happy new year, folks. May we all feel this year, even if it's bad. Cuz feeling bad is better than not feeling.

Where are we going, and why am I in a handbasket? — A Guest Post

I love that saying on a bumper sticker! A "virtual friend," Norma Lundberg, wrote the other day to say that her father used to use that expression ("We're all going to hell in a handbasket"), and would then add, "One of these days, people will get off their hind legs and then we'll see." (We're not off our hind legs yet, unfortunately.)

Today, I would like to hand over this space to my online friend, Norma, who is wise and artistic and eloquent: a Renaissance Woman, storyteller, quilter, polyglot, lover of the arts and culture and a mentor in considering how these traditions can help us do the right thing today for future generations — if we choose to.

Cassandra ... had the power to predict the future, and none of us has that. Climate change science people are getting very good at predicting trends derived from all the data accumulating, but you don't have to be a scientist to have lived long enough to note some significant changes over time that indicate sufficient deterioration leading to high risk of collapse. Just think: it was only in the past year that Toronto city council [in Ontario, Canada] decreed that it would now not be illegal to hang clothes to dry in one's backyard.

In fact, you don't have to be a futurologist at all to see, from our privileged and only partly informed position in the well-to-do northern countries, that the disaster has ALREADY struck, is already ongoing, in the poorer countries to the south after decades, centuries of ongoing pillaging, plundering, and rapacious greed from the north, demolishing cultures, social systems, natural resources, local governments and so much more, leaving in their wake drought, disease, famine, warfare, and dictatorships practising fear and torture. Too many years of treating the planet and all its creatures as disposable.

[...]

You wrote that "it's good to have resources for starting to learn what this new world could look like," [but people] don't listen to the music, look at the work by people making art engaged with the land and the weather, don't read poetry, don't read much of anything it seems, don't read philosophy, don't speak or read other languages, don't gather for coffee and actually TALK about politics....

[...]

Yes, call people stupid and incapable and feed them sanctioned pablum, don't for whatever god's sake be passionate, partisan, informed.... Listen to Shostakovich, read about his work, his times, the history, and see if you're not a little bit stirred by the music. It doesn't need subtitles. It just needs to be listened to, and poetry needs to be read, and art has to be looked at. It's all part of having eyes, ears, senses, and of finding out what we think of what we see, hear, sense. We don't have to be told what to like, but we do have to think, and experience, and wonder, and question. Isn't that what education is about? Isn't that what being part of the world means?

My appreciation, Norma. Anything earnest and honest is a joy to read these days (given the "pablum" we're mostly fed). I should point out that Norma's heartfelt "rant" was in response to my rant in response to an educational listserve's discussion of the role of education in transforming the world in order to safeguard the future for our students.

*****

Many thanks to artist Camille Rose Garcia and Jonathan Levine Gallery for the image, Going to Hell in a Handbasket, a 2005 painting in acrylic and glitter on panel. I'm not an artist, nor am I an art critic, but this painting speaks to me of the innocence of those whose future we will turn into hell if we don't change course.

44 Days to Copenhagen - FIRE!

It used to be, when there was a fire, someone shouted "Fire!" (And people listened. And took action. Immediately. Grab your kid and run kind of immediately.)

Nowadays, there's fire but instead of shouting to save people's lives, everyone seems to think they have to figure out what to say and how to say it. Greenpeace held a slogan contest recently — save the world in six words max. A Canadian environmental group just commissioned a study to find out the best "frame" to use to shout "Fire!" Someone on a listserve is wondering about the "science" in a new denier movie.

A friend told me by email today, "Teach, don't shout." The irony is, I WASN'T EVEN SHOUTING! And besides, once the fire is blazing is not the time to do fire safety education. (She also calls me a Cassandra — of Trojan Horse fame. Cassandra did not come to a good end, even though she was right all along, which I find kind of disturbing.)

It broke my spirit. I'm played out and it's not even October 24 yet (International Day of Climate Action). I am so glad that I decided on a lament and a learn-in tomorrow, rather than a celebration. What are people celebrating? That we haven't completely ruined the future yet?

I guess ignorance truly is bliss. There are days that I curse this knowing. Though in the case of global climate change, Goethe is right:

"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action."