Guest Post: "A Short Rant about LOVE, and the CLIMATE"

When I read Antonia Paquin's "short rant" this morning, I asked her right away if I could post it here for you. Antonia is a young friend nearby who gives her life's energy to ensuring a future for us all. Much love to you, Antonia, with thanks for sharing this with my readers!

Antonia Paquin, in Victoria (with thanks to Creatively United)

A Short Rant about LOVE, and the CLIMATE

Sometimes I find myself disconnecting from the word "climate," because it seems obscure and somewhat nebulous unless you're a scientist who studies this stuff.

I've found the following to be helpful in bringing "climate" into my immediate experience:

• Notice the breath you just took ... now the one you are about to take. You are taking climate into your body.
• Look outside, look around you, really LOOK, noticing the trees, the sky, the soil. You are looking at the climate.
• Feel your heartbeat ... touch your fingers to your wrist, or neck to feel your pulse, or just feel your body moving ever-so-slightly by your heart beating. You are a living creature, interacting with your surroundings. We are also climate.

Remember the Earth is extremely resilient. She knows how to heal herself. Humans are also resilient. We can adapt to change. Though the world feels grim right now, especially with this messy [Canadian federal] election, we are inevitably forced to call into question the major systemic failings that have led us to where we are, which is a good thing!

We are being collectively called to question the ideologies, and the political and economic systems that led us into this mess, the colonial way: "Dominate people, dominate land, YOU SHALL HAVE NO HEART."

This is the movement to end all movements.

We are now being called to decolonize the crap out of ourselves and remember who the hell we are as humans.

Could it be that humans aren't somehow above the natural world?

Could it be that we don't have the right to pillage and rape the Earth?

Could it be that humans are actually inextricably ~connected~ to the Earth?? WOW! You don't say?

David Suzuki, our beloved national man of science, is preaching this message loud and clear. Time to wake up and smell the soil, friends!

Here's how we "fix the climate":

• Tune into what Indigenous land defenders and water protectors have been saying for hundreds of years. Support these movements with your money, time, energy. Uplift voices of black and indigenous folks, people of colour.
• Breathe deep, ground yourself in gentleness and self-compassion so that you feel safe. Then take time to call into question your own belief systems, assumptions, attitudes. We can all do this together.
• Have "adventure conversations" with others. Bring up things like climate, the human condition, hope, guilt, fear, grief, love.
• Vulnerability is powerful. Connect deeply with your fellow humans, know that they probably have similar fears and doubts that you have, and when we share ... it can be so healing.
• Cry and cry and cry, then laugh. It's okay to feel like a mess. [This is my favourite line! JJ]
• Spend time in nature, FOREST BATHING, to remember that Earth is magical and resilient. Every single cell in your body is made of the Earth. The trees and rocks and rivers are your kin. 
• In so many ways you are also magical and resilient. Often our minds forget this, but somehow our hearts can never fully forget this. 

Okay, my rant is over. 

Thank you. I love you. 

*****

And our thanks and love to YOU, Antonia, for these wonderful calls to reconnect ourselves with our first mother.

Why We Shouldn't Be Afraid of Fear Right Now

A friend and fellow activist said that, after reading last week's blog post to her partner, they "were wishing there was a more empowering word to use than fear. Being afraid is supposed to be a temporary response to an immediate danger. And fear can be paralyzing." They were wishing that "people were aware, alert, and responsible -- so much so they they took personal and political action out of awareness... not just out of fear."

That got me thinking. I talk about fear because most of us don't seem to be feeling or talking about it yet. It seems there's a fear lag as well as an ocean heat lag. Climate scientists who have been working on climate change research for decades are finally just waking up to their fear for the fate of the biosphere -- and their children and grandchildren. The public is mostly still just checking their cell phones, watching videos and trying to make a buck.

If enough people were afraid, we'd be noticing it, wouldn't we? As a society, I mean, or as a species, no? In cafés and other public places? Wouldn't there be a groundswell of "Hey, this climate change thing is starting to look and feel very real and real scary. I thought they said it was a hoax." Wouldn't everyone be talking about it? 

But no, the deniers are still out in full force, still rousing the wrong kind of fear in people (in EuroAmerican countries at least) that the "alarmists" are trying to, I don't know, take money out of rich people's pockets or something. (Remember, deniers usually don't make any sense. And it's not alarmist to raise the alarm about something that's alarming.) And the general public still sees it as sometime in the future, or somewhere else in the world, or simply something they can keep ignoring until someone knocks on their door and tells them to listen up.

We animals have three responses to fear: fight, flight or freeze. Freezing would be great if it meant staying home and not burning fossil fuels. Flight would be okay, too, if one did it on foot or bicycle. However, when it comes to climate change, the preferred response is to fight ... to have our hackles raised and our fists up, ready to protect our loved ones. 

Yet no, as the United States reels from another mass shooting -- its worst since the massacre of hundreds of Lakota children, women and men at Wounded Knee in 1890 -- and as fracking continues to expand (is not fracking the epitome of stupid?), we're just not getting the numbers of people we need putting up the good fight for the sake of their children and the next seven generations. 

So no, with apologies to those who think hope is what's important these days, I say no, we don't yet deserve hope yet. We haven't done anywhere near enough to deserve hope. We first need to be scared %$#@less on behalf of our children. And then we need to turn our fear to fight, and our fight to action!

Or else, as Prince Ea says in his spoken word essay, Dear Generations: Sorry, "Whatever you're fighting for -- racism or poverty, feminism, gay rights, or any type of equality -- it won't matter in the least, because if we don't all work together to save the environment, we will be equally extinct." And that, ladies and gentlemen, is freaking scary.

"Selfish &%$#@!" Theme Week: Tuesday

My husband suggested that I choose a different name for my theme week. Something like "Climate Change Wimps Week." As in, what's driving the denialists and their denialist campaign is their fear; they are afraid to face what we're doing to the atmosphere and hence the biosphere. 

I actually like the sound of "climate change wussies" but I'm going to stick with "selfish %$#@!" anyway. 
However, the idea must have been rolling around in my head last night, because I woke up with this thought:

People who are working to slow global warming and to mitigate the climate change emergency are people who know that any "costs" involved in doing this will be miniscule compared to what it will cost if we don't stave off climate catastrophe. We've looked at Pascal's Wager, and we've made our decision. (See the video below.)

Our fear is grounded in deep care and concern for our children and their future. But where is the fear of climate change wussies grounded? I'm afraid it might now simply be a deep-seated fear of being wrong.

As I stated earlier this week, I would LOVE it if we climate change activists were wrong. The BEST NEWS IN THE WORLD would be finding out that the denialists were right. I would gladly trade my years of learning all this stuff, writing about all this stuff, crying about all this stuff for the news that it was all unnecessary.

Tragically, risk assessment won't let me give up. (Nor will my love for life.)

Risk = Probability x Magnitude.

Probability? It's already happening. Northern British Columbia's forests are orange, not green. Hells bells, even the cedars in my front yard are dying! University of British Columbia professor, Lori Daniels, says the death rate of cedars corresponds with the rise in average temperatures in the past few decades [pdf], and the ensuing longer dry periods and drought stress.

Scientists have been loathe to blame climate change for any one specific weather event — until now. According to a new computational approach, there's an 80% chance that climate change was responsible for the Russian heat wave of July 2010, which killed 700 people* and was unprecedented since record keeping began in the 19th century. "While the influence of climate trends on weather is recognized as 'loading the dice,' making extreme events more likely, individual events are still described in general terms of fitting patterns."

And magnitude? Oh my gosh. This is where I get really upset. I can see denialists not looking out the window, not following the news, not giving a damn about the more vulnerable populations in the world who are already suffering from climate change-related disasters. But I cannot fathom them being unable or unwilling to look to their own (grand)children's future. Why do they not want the best for them? And by "best" I mean food and water security. Why are they willing to gamble with their (grand)children's future for the sake of giving up some creature comforts today?

Our generation (at least in EuroAmerican cultures) has had it the best of any generation in human history. Hands down, no argument. And that has turned us selfish and lazy — but do we truly not give a damn about the future? Are we just lacking in imagination, and can only picture more of the same for them (which belies complete ecological illiteracy, sorry)?

Or are most of us afraid? Afraid of the monster our culture has created. Afraid to admit to it, to face up to it. And afraid of the consequences of not facing up to it, but afraid to admit they've been wrong?

Alas, maybe I'm overstating my case. Perhaps they're all just selfish %$#@!, and this has nothing to do with fear.

Time for some soul searching on the part of climate change denialists. Some heavy-duty, what-do-I-truly-value soul searching. Some "what do I want my legacy to be" soul searching. Some "my parents don't control me anymore so why am I still afraid of being wrong" soul searching. Some "do I believe in heaven or karma" soul searching. Some Pascal's Wager soul searching.

And if, after all that soul searching, the denialists still want to deny, may they please do it over a beer at the pub, instead of in forums where they're going to look selfish and mean-spirited. Cuz don't forget, we're trying to safeguard the future for your (grand)kids, too.

p.s. Here's one flaw I see in Greg Craven's version of Pascal's Wager. Costs. How come building new coal-fired plants and digging new oil wells (and cleaning up after them) and putting in new highways is never considered "costs" — but doing stuff to protect the children's health and future is "costs." That just doesn't make sense.

* The heat wave in Russia in 2010 didn't kill 700 -- I really don't know where I got that number from. It's estimated to have killed 55,000!

Compassion for the Deniers, Skeptics, Ignorers and Delayers

Finally, there's a reason to feel compassion for those who deny the climate change emergency, ignore it, or simply don't seem to give a damn about those already (and soon to be) impacted.

They fear their own mortality. They are afraid of death. And that fear drives them to hold fast to anxiety-buffering worldviews or "immortality projects" that sometimes act as barriers to sustainable practices.

This is an idea that I've been aware of for a while now (see Janis L. Dickinson's The People Paradox: Self-Esteem Striving, Immortality Ideologies, and Human Response to Climate Change). A series of studies by psychologists Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon and Jeff Greenberg "found clear evidence that evoking people's fear of death made them more defensive of their world view, more hostile to foreigners, more willing to lash out violently at people of different political or religious beliefs and more drawn to charismatic leaders." (See also this discussion of fear and the environmental movement.)

Ernest Becker once said, "To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything." The Ernest Becker Foundation (EBF) "seeks to illuminate how the unconscious denial of death and mortality profoundly influences human behavior, giving rise to acts of hate and violence as well as noble, altruistic striving." Indeed, the EBF has a conference coming up entitled Understanding the Violence of Climate Change (Seattle, October 21-23, 2011), which will "explore the close correlation of the denial of climate change to the denial of death."

Here's the question, then. If those who deny, question or ignore the climate change emergency are afraid of death, do those who are fighting to safeguard the future of life on Earth face their own mortality with acceptance or courage? Are climate activists those who have made peace with the idea of dying?

Let me tell you a story. One Sunday, almost 20 years ago, I woke up and told my husband we needed to take a drive. (This is something we never did, and something I never did as a child — my father was a travelling salesman, so taking a Sunday drive was something we just didn't do.)

Because I was so sure I had to do this, my husband joined me to see what it was all about. (I had no clue at the time.) We drove south out of town for quite a ways until I shouted, "Turn left here!" Again we drove for quite a ways until we came to a lovely little campground by a pretty little lake. "This is it," I said. I wandered about in the campground and sat by the lake until I realized this wasn't the right place.

I decided to cross the road, and started bushwacking up a wooded hill through trees and leaves and branches. My husband was following his own path now, so I was alone. I kept wondering what I was there for, what I was going to find.... And then it happened. Something caught my attention, and as I looked over my shoulder, I saw myself — my dead body — lying next to a log in a bed of moss.

A wondrous sense of serenity came over me as I realized that my death will be a gift to the Earth, a returning to my Mother. In that instant, I was no longer afraid of my mortality, knowing deeply and calmly that death is not an end but a new beginning in the cycle of life.

Perhaps that sounds cliché (not to mention sudden) but I made my peace with the idea of becoming compost after I die. And now I fight to protect all life (not just my own) — the very miracle of life — on this planet.

Which has me wondering ... are all climate activists at peace with their own death, and therefore able to to fight for the right of others to live?

p.s. No, that's not me. (I wish!) It's a beautiful photo by Scott Fitzhume from Pixdaus.

"A Child is Trapped Under that Car!"

The latest synthesis of ice core data combined with the latest predictions about food security and climate change in the Arctic are painting a very dark, very scary picture of the quite close future. I cried myself to sleep last night, and by this afternoon, still had not shaken my sadness at the thought that my beloved niece is likely going to be robbed of her future.

"Doom and gloom," my mom called it when I phoned her today. I burst into tears. "You don't get it. It's like Savannah is trapped under a car," I sobbed to my poor dumbfounded mother, "and NOBODY'S LIFTING THE CAR OFF HER!"

A whole generation of wonderful young people is trapped underneath that metaphorical car. Urban legend tells us that loving mothers in a "frenzy of maternal fear" can lift cars off their trapped babies. A new kind of urban legend, Tom Boyle Jr., lifted a Camaro off a bicyclist crumpled beneath it. Neuroscientist Jeff Wise shares that story in an article on the "super powers" we get from fear.

He explains that "[t]here is a bright side to crisis. The experience could give you a rare opportunity to meet a part of your mind you otherwise would never encounter—and to find out just how powerful you really are." Here are the four "super powers" fear gives us:

1. Fear — our danger-response system — allows us to respond rapidly and vigorously to a threat.
2. Fear can increase our strength — in the moment, sometimes accomplishing this by deadening pain. (Boyle discovered later that he'd clenched his jaw so hard while lifting the car, he shattered eight teeth — I want this guy on our side!)
3. Fear gives us incredible focus.
4. Fear dilates time, putting everything into what seems like slow motion. This helps us do what we have to do.

Unfortunately, as so many commentators have pointed out, the climate change emergency is, for the vast majority of us, a creeping emergency. So we haven't had our amygdalas and limbic systems fired up and our hormones and neurotransmitters released. Yet.

And because we're so gawddamned comfortable (lazy, greedy, cowardly, insert-suitable-adjective-here), we're simply going to ignore the child pinned under the car. "Car? What car? Legs? I didn't see any legs. Did you see legs? I didn't see any legs."

Maybe I can't singlehandedly lift the car, but I am not going to refrain from expressing my fear and my sadness. (It's now officially your problem if you can't handle the truth. Though as a friend said recently about a blog post here: "Clarity of understanding creates hope for me.")

I am going to do something very concrete in response to my sadness and fear. I am going to help get our first Green Party Member of Parliament elected here in Canada. I am going to respond rapidly and vigorously when our climate-change-denying prime minister calls an election. I am going to use all my strength to work round-the-clock. I am going to focus like mad. And the whole campaign will go into slow motion so that we can get everything done in order to make history here in my riding.

And THAT is going to give me the courage TO LIFT THE CAR OFF ALL THE CHILDREN, OF ALL SPECIES, FOR ALL TIME.

P.S. I did help get our first Green Party MP elected! Woohoo!!

A Different Perspective on Fear (Turning Our Cowardice on Its Ear!)

A lovely friend who's a therapist sent round an essay by Dr. Robert Anthony entitled Are You Motivated by Fear?

Dr. Anthony explains that most of us stay in our comfort zone precisely because leaving that little nest makes us feel uncomfortable. He says, "Uncomfortable is a catchall term that encompasses many emotions; fear, unworthiness, doubt, anger, hurt and distrust, to name a few. Since we have labeled these emotions as bad, we don't want to feel them and so we crawl back into our nests."

Now it becomes interesting:

Except for rare occasions, most of the fear that we experience is over imagined circumstances or consequences. But, since fear keeps us from doing things, we never really check out the validity of the fear itself. A feedback loop of fear --> not doing --> ignorance --> then back to fear develops.

[...] Let's look at what happens when the body feels fear; adrenaline, glucose and other energy producing chemicals are released into the bloodstream. Our senses actually sharpen when non-essential fears* such as "Did I remember to [turn off the iron]?" pop up and we gain an instant ability to focus on the task at hand.

And here's the important insight:

When we are outside of our comfort zone, most of the time, the only thing we are in danger of is learning something new.

What is helpful in learning something new? Energy, clarity and the ability to focus — all available to you via your friend, fear.

So, while certain psychologists, mainstream environmental NGOs and several climate scientists keep saying we mustn't frighten the masses by telling them the truth about the climate change emergency we're in and the global catastrophe we're producing, new age therapists and medical doctors know that fear can actually be put to good use. Nothing like a little energy, clarity and focus to help us out of our climate change mess.

* I've thought about the use of that term, non-essential fear. I believe Dr. Anthony means we're not talking the "fight or flight" kind of fear here. And, frankly, most people in most industrialized nations haven't been hit hard enough by the ravages of climate change yet to be truly afraid ... it's still a "non-essential fear" (time-wise for us, not magnitude-wise), which gives us time to put our energy, clarity and focus to work.

130 Days to Copenhagen, and the news just keeps getting worse and worse

Here is an excerpt from

A FOREWARNED FUTURE

by Mike Blanchfield, Canwest News Service

25 July 2009

• Thousands of people pour out of Manhattan onto the waiting armada of ships. The "October Surprise" has hit with a vengeance -- a massive hurricane has flooded and paralyzed New York City.
• 
  
• Dozens of world leaders watch the disaster unfold beneath them as they are airlifted from the United Nations General Assembly that had just convened on the banks of the now overflowing Hudson River.




• "I guess the problem was that we counted on this not happening, at least not yet. Most scientists assumed the worst effects of climate change would occur later in the century," the president of the United States writes in his diary. "The culmination of disasters, needed cleanups, permafrost melting, lower agricultural yields, growing health problems and the like is taking a terrible toll, much greater than we anticipated 20 years ago."




• This presidential diary entry is, of course, fiction. But its inclusion in the 120-page November 2008 report by the National Intelligence Council, a Washington security think-tank, illustrates a grim and troubling reality that is causing worry in such diverse places as the Pentagon and British Defence Ministry, major aid agencies, the United Nations and, of course, among environmentalists.




• Real life 21st century threats due to climate change — massive flooding, droughts, population explosions, massive migrations of uprooted and desperate people facing life-threatening food and water shortages — have made "climate security" a buzzword that now extends far beyond the war rooms of western capitals.




• The trepidation is very real that this will be the driver for war on a scale we have yet to see on this planet, bringing tension to stable parts of the world, making the tense places worse.




• Don't dismiss this as military-driven paranoia: the alarm is being sounded by non-military actors — United Nations agencies, leading philanthropists, the World Bank, as well as major international aid agencies that have always strived to maintain a healthy distance from the world's military establishment.

Remember, folks. The opposite of fear is complacency. There is nothing wrong with fearmongering when there is something to fear. Monger away! The sky is falling, or at least, filling up with carbon. And of every five little carbon dioxide molecules you release, one of them will still be up there in 1000 years, continuing to heat the planet beyond the capability of life to survive. 

Unless, of course, we take action to demand action, as Greenpeace is suggesting in their new You-Turn-the-Earth campaign. If you haven't written to the leader of your country lately, please take 7 minutes and do it now. 

For the Earth, the Future, and the Children of All Species.

p.s. See the rest of the article here.