skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Okay, I'm just going to come right out and admit this. I've been holding it in for too long.
I recently watched the final episode in the second season of Grace and Frankie* on Netflix (and no, I don't want a lecture about how much energy it takes to stream stuff, cuz watching an occasional bit of plot seems to be my only guilty pleasure these days), and at the end, I felt ... well, I couldn't put my finger on it right away. Not sad that the season was over (I'm more mature than that, cough ... Downton Abbey fans ... cough ;-), not let down (the finale rocked!), but ... oh, what was I feeling?
Envy. That was it. I was feeling envious. Resentful that Grace and Frankie (yes, fictional characters, but who represent so many millions of real people) could sit on the beach and talk about their future plans -- that didn't include working on climate change! Uh huh, I was begrudging them their (made-up) carefree lives.
That's because on my bad days, I feel like a climate change chump. There's so much to do when you know climate change is an emergency -- and when it seems like hardly anyone else is working on solutions. It makes me feel like I can't go dancing on Thursday nights, pick up a new hobby, or take a vacation anywhere far away. All those things would make me feel guilty.
But then -- and this is where chumphood comes in -- I realize that, like Grace and Frankie, hardly anyone else makes their life decisions based on climate change or climate change activism. Barely anyone else feels guilty about going dancing on Thursday nights, picking up a new hobby, or travelling wherever they want to go. If they want to, they do. If they don't want to, they don't.
I'm not asking for sympathy, or even empathy. Let's face it, I'm making these choices of my own free will. And I'm not trying to guilt trip anyone for the choices they're making. (Okay, a few oil company execs should take on some guilt.)
What I am proposing is this: If everyone did a little bit, no one would have to "do it all." If everyone reading this post wrote one letter per day week month to your elected officials (go ahead! create some political will!), reminding them that your descendants would like it very much if the politicians got off their fat %$# and did something about the climate crisis, maybe I could go dancing next Thursday. Or maybe take up drumming.
Whaddya think? Wanna take on a smidge of the work? Wanna offset your guilty pleasures? Wanna give this climate change chump a break? Pretty please?
*If you're in the second half-century of your life, there's a chance you'll adore this show!
I read someone's response to an online discussion about extinction, and it really miffed me. This person (someone I know and had respect for until now) seemed to be saying that old folks (like me ... I'm in the second half of my life) don't have the right to tell the rest of the world (aka the younger generations) that we're on a collision course with extinction due to potentially catastrophic climate disruption.
He intimated that because we're "old," we don't picture ourselves in the heaps of dead, rotting bodies and therefore we shouldn't talk about the possibility of human extinction. His assumption made me mad. I don't try to educate about the truth of the climate change emergency for my own sake. I do it for the sake of all the children, so that they'll have the opportunity to grow old in a climate-safe world. So whether the climate change $#@! hits the fan in my part of the world while I'm still alive or not isn't relevant. Whether it's going to kill me isn't germane to our work.
The issue is that there's an urgent truth that needs to get out there, that needs to be understood by anyone with any power and influence. So chastising "old folks" who are trying to sound the alarm even though they might not still be alive when the worst impacts happen is a form of denial, no? Denial of younger people's right to know the truth about their own future. (And we're not talking about telling the little children. That would be cruel, since they have little to no power to effect change. But there are lots of "young folks" between 15 and 50 who should know the urgent truth and might be able to do something about it.)
Tangent that this led me down:
For the first time, I've started to wonder if I'm a chump, a sucker, an ecoweenie (as I was once called ;-). Why should I be spending all this time, crying all these tears, feeling all this sadness for the children when so few other people are doing it? I mean, why don't I just go into denial instead of spending hours every week making sure I'm up to date on the science — so that I can share my understanding of the emergency with the 7 other people in the world who also care.
And why should I live in a cold house all winter to lower my carbon footprint when that selfish %$#@! I wrote about a while ago doesn't give a crap about today's children or future generations? (By the way, turns out he's read one book on climate change written by a denier, which of course makes him an expert. And he couldn't even spell my name right when he slagged me in his blog ... he kinda lost any last shred of credibility when I saw that.)
Alas, despite the cold, the slagging, the tears and sadness, the time and the trouble, I can't turn my back on the kids. If that makes me a chump, I'm going to wear it proudly. Besides, "climate change chump" kind of has a ring to it!
p.s. Keep (or start) writing to your elected officials. They need to know how many of us understand the threats of the climate change emergency, and how many of us are willing to make sacrifices today for the sake of the future. WE CAN HAVE SOME INFLUENCE. WE CAN CREATE POLITICAL WILL. WE CAN EFFECT CHANGE.
