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.

We are the "Architects of the Future"

Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was an architect, writer, systems theorist, designer, inventor and futurist. He once said, “We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.”

People, at least in my circles, seem to be finally talking about the climate crisis. But there still aren't many who are actually taking some action — action that will create the future. 

So, in the interests of the new year, and new year's resolutions, here is a short list of actions that you can take to do your part in 2019 to help safeguard the future.

1. Create Political Will

• write a letter 
• sign a petition
• send an email or a fax
• make a phone call
• visit your elected officials, at all levels, and ask them what they're doing about climate change
• vote in the candidates who understand climate change and who include viable climate change solutions in their campaign
• talk to others about how they can create political will

2.  Make the Following Demands of Your Elected Officials

• declare the climate change emergency (if London, England can do it, then your municipality can, too)
• end fossil fuel subsidies

3. Meet with Like-Minded and Like-Hearted Members of Your Community

• it's important (for our mental health) that we learn to mourn and lament all the sadness and "climate grief" surrounding this greatest crime ever against humanity
• cry, laugh, and come up with solutions for local resilience together over tea
• support a local coffee shop or library as a meeting place

4.  Set an Example for Others

• choose a plant-based (lower greenhouse gas-emitting) diet; go vegan (and share vegan foods with your friends and family)
• grow some of your own food using no-till, no synthetic chemical methods
• be an early adopter of new (lower/zero carbon) technologies, if possible (and if not, learn about them so you can promote them in your community)
• be seen with your low/zero-carbon technologies (renewable energy, transportation ... like walking!)

5. Seek Out Courageous and Compassionate Ways to Make the Conversion to Zero Carbon

• there are so many possible (viable) solutions to the climate crisis — and we need them all ("clean coal" is not viable)
• spend some time to do some research; become passionate about some of the solutions
• do this for all the children, of all species
• ignore the deniers — or, if you've done enough research, stand up to them (but, be forewarned, it's time-consuming)

After all, as Peter Drucker says, "The best way to predict the future is to create it." And it's our future to create.

 Plant something in 2019!

In the Interest of Keeping Some Friends ... The Five Stages of Optimism

Am I a climate change crank? Possibly. I put my climate change work ahead of everything except my marriage (and my dog ;-). I put off friends if I've got a writing project on the go. I can't bring myself to attend social events that are going to be all happy happy. My house is a mess. 

I don't believe that "hope" is more important than action (but that action is our only hope). I rarely see my family "back home" because I don't want to fly. My social media posts are almost always about environmental issues (although I'm not averse to a joke or inspirational story now and then). And I can't remember the last time I got to go on a "real" vacation that wasn't a climate change conference (and the attendant stresses).

Yeah, maybe I am a climate change crank. But it's how I can live with myself. It's how I know I'm doing (almost) everything I can.

However, as more and more people discover how bad things are, they are talking more and more about their despair ... the despair I've been feeling for years and years, and crying about every. single. day. So in the interest of keeping some friends in my life, I'm not going to say, "What took you so long?" or anything snarky like that. However much I believe that truly feeling the pain of what we're losing and then lamenting it is vital, I'm going in a different direction today.

I'm going to share what Al Gore (my mentor in the Climate Reality Leadership Corps program) and other leaders presented recently on The Five Stages of Climate Optimism. (I suppose Mr. Gore wouldn't have anyone signing up for his trainings if he didn't present some sort of optimism.) 

BTW, please consult a qualified professional if you believe you may be suffering from anxiety or depression, or experiencing other forms of mental health distress. Or find a climate change buddy you can share this burden with. (Now that's a good friend!)

The Five Stages of Climate Optimism

In a TV interview earlier this week, Climate Reality Founder and Chairman Al Gore said this about the recent flurry of scientific reports about climate change:

“It is hard at times to hear all that and feel the tragedy of it and maintain your hope and optimism that we’re gonna solve this problem. I continue to believe that we will, because we have faced almost insurmountable obstacles in the past…and we have rallied, as human beings, to do what’s right.”

Even when scientists uncover new information about the impacts that will result from climate change, even when the research tells us that we have only a few years to make global changes if we’re to avoid the worst, here at Climate Reality we remain optimistic.

We each, as individuals, keep our hope tanks filled in different ways, but here are five things we’ve found to be particularly good for refilling our optimism.

1. Acceptance

As a climate advocate, you’re likely tuned in to the latest research and policy progress regarding climate change…and so it’s not news to you that the headlines aren’t always sunny.

Many people who contemplate climate issues find that they wrestle with a whole spectrum of emotions – including, for some, grief. And it’s no wonder.

But the five stages of grief end with acceptance, and there are many wonderful activists, researchers, and medical professionals working today to help people who are working through environmental grief to reach the acceptance stage and stay motivated. 

There is great power in acknowledging and talking about the feelings we have about the climate crisis – and accepting our own feelings is important if we’re to turn acceptance into powerful action.

2. Community

“Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world.”
― Joanna Macy

The best antidote to despair is a community of people you can talk with, learn with, and work alongside to make a difference.

When we meet directly with the people who make up the Climate Reality Leadership Corps – parents, teachers, doctors, scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs, community organizers, faith leaders, and so much more – we find at every turn that there are new reasons to be optimistic.

Did you know that just last week members of a US Climate Reality Chapter in Santa Barbara worked together with the students in a Campus Corps Chapter to get their local transit district to commit to using all-electric buses?

This community of passionate activists met together, campaigned together, and ultimately won together.

And this singular accomplishment doesn’t exist on its own – take it from those of us who see your Acts of Leadership come in every day. Thanks to people coming together to support and inspire each other, change like this is happening right now in places all over the world.

And that gives us hope.

3. Inspiration

"In the struggle between hope and despair, I always come out on the side of hope." 
― Vice President Al Gore

It’s not too hard to find inspiration in the work of Climate Reality Leaders, but where else can you go for a quick dose of hope?

The bad news often grabs the big headlines, but it continues to be true that in spite of attention-getting policy setbacks at the national and international level, the economy continues to turn in favor of clean, renewable energy. For instance, we just learned that in some parts of the US now, wind and solar are cheaper than coal and natural gas, and the We Mean Business Coalition now boasts 830 companies committed to significant climate action.

Companies, as well as local governments, continue to prove they can make big changes. Cities, which are responsible for approximately 70 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and a place where policies like building codes and renewable energy standards can make a real difference, are stepping up in a big way – in fact, 27 major cities (including London, New York City, and Melbourne) have succeeded in reducing their emissions by 10 percent over a five-year period.

Back in 2016, Vice President Al Gore explained some of the many inspirations for his optimism in a popular TED talk, most of which still apply today.

The truth is that the news isn’t all bad, even if it may seem that way sometimes – and we’re consistently inspired by the real world progress that we see beyond the doom-and-gloom headlines.

4. Action

“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.” 
― Wendell Berry

Knowing the reality of the climate crisis is important – and we must see it for what it is before we can hope to fight it. But without hope and inspiration, it’s hard to maintain the will to act [this is where I disagree; I think that if we act, it maintains our hope and inspiration; otherwise, it's a cop out, but then I did say that I'm a crank! but just because I'm a crank doesn't mean I'm wrong] – which is one reason why Climate Reality continually looks to highlight and support the solutions that are already underway to fight the climate crisis.

If you want to be inspired by how people all over the world are taking action, make sure you tune in to this week’s broadcast of 24 Hours of Reality: Protect Our Planet, Protect Ourselves. We’ll highlight stories from around the globe not just about the impacts of climate change, but about the solutions that are already gaining ground. We’ll also share a unique way you can take action by contacting world leaders.

Watch 24 Hours of Reality live at 24hoursofreality.org on December 3-4.

5. Self Care

“Take breaks when you need them. Rest, take care of yourself, and return to the work. I promise it’ll still be there when you’re recharged.” 
― LaUra Schmidt

When confronting the existential crisis presented by climate change, we can’t always jump to our feet – sometimes the sheer scope and size of it all, and the weight of our emotions, means we must take time to sit with our feelings and take care of ourselves. [Now we're talking! This is what I mean by lament, and being willing to feel bad for the sake of the future.]

One way we like to recharge ourselves is to get out in a natural place – get close to the very environment we’re all working so hard to protect. Whether you head to the beach, forest, mountains, or local park, the simple act of being outside has numerous physical and mental health benefits.

Consider, as well, taking a break from the news and the science for a time. Consider disconnecting from social media or any other distraction that doesn’t directly contribute to your happiness and wellbeing. Whatever it is you do to care for yourself, make sure you make time for it. Often, taking a break from the action to pause and appreciate the life we have on this planet is just the thing needed to allow us to come back refreshed and ready to make change.

This fight won’t be over soon, and it won’t be easy – but if we look out for ourselves and each other, if we focus on sources of inspiration and opportunities to act, we can make a positive difference in the future that the next generation will inherit.                                  
******* 

That is my gift of compassion to you this week! May you find a place in your heart where you can hold the pain so that young children don't have to.

What Parents Won't Acknowledge About the Climate Crisis is Going to Kill Their Children

I went seakayaking with a great group of students recently. It was a lovely west coast (of Canada) almost-summer afternoon ... sunny but not too hot. We spent the morning learning how to handle the boats and exploring the intertidal life along the shore.

We stopped for a lovely picnic lunch on a beach. Afterwards, I managed to fall in the water getting back into my kayak. (It's a habit I have ... I figure if I fall in, nobody else will have to. And it made for some comic relief.)

On the way back, the group was more focused on technique and speed, but I had a few moments of calm to talk with the leader of our outing as we floated under the bridge with the current. 

A seagull passed by us. "The whitest thing in the world," I proclaimed, "is a seagull's breast." The leader laughed and agreed. Then I said, simply to carry on the conversation, "Seagulls and other seabirds are in huge decline [see page 6 Seabirds Going the Way of the Dodo?]. Have you noticed that?"

"No ... do they know why?" she asked. I managed to get one or two reasons out (mainly, a decrease in their food sources) before she said, "I can't hear that stuff. I've got two young kids and it makes me too sad." 

Even on a gorgeous day with the wind at our backs in self-powered (i.e., zero-carbon) conveyances, still we can't face it. If we can't face it when our own circumstances are good, does that mean we're really going to wait until the local %$#@ hits the fan before we even acknowledge the impending implosion of global ecosystems?

If people who have wonderful little bundles of reasons to take action aren't taking action, truly, where's the hope in that? People want hope, but they won't pay the price for it. And the price is feeling the sadness of what's going to happen if we don't feel the sadness and let it motivate us to speak up on behalf of the children we love so dearly. 

Speak up. That's all I'm asking. Or even just listen. Hear. Open your ears and eyes. Open your hearts. Be willing to feel the pain, to lament the losses that have already led to precipitous declines in seabird populations. 

That same fate (environmental and ecological changes caused by climate change; pollution and habitat destruction diminishing the biodiversity upon which we depend) awaits our children if ... but you don't want to hear it.

I Experienced It! Visceral Denial! And the Solution is Simple

My best friend and life partner, my husband, is ill. Not with the flu or a cold but with something much scarier, a repeat of an illness that left him crippled with fatigue 12 years ago.

This was unexpected. He's been feeling much better over the last few months, so we thought he was "a new man" if not quite "his old self." But this thing has hit with a vengeance, and it couldn't have come at a worse time. (He's trying to get ready to present his life's work 
on climate change at two upcoming conferences.)

I'm so busy and stressed out and angry trying to keep it together and take care of him and get him to medical appointments that I haven't allowed myself to cry yet. I don't know which way this will go yet, so I've been keeping my reaction all bottled up inside.

But because my husband is a retired doctor, he does have a good clue about what's going on. The other day, he sat me down and tried to explain it all. And that's when I felt it. That's when I finally understood your everyday, garden-variety climate change deniers! I could sense myself glazing over. I could feel myself shutting down. I could see myself doing an interior "La la la, I'm not listening!" When he was done explaining, it was like I had to snap out of a daze — and apologize, because I hadn't heard (or at least, hadn't taken in) what he'd said. 

I started wondering why I can face the climate change emergency with strength, courage and determination, but I couldn't even listen to what's happening with my loved one's health. And then it struck me. 

It's because I haven't cried that I can't hear it, can't let the bad news in. I haven't been willing (or able yet) to "feel" my fear and sadness, therefore I am not willing to countenance the severity of my husband's illness, nor able to think about it or even conceive of it.

So I've had it wrong all these years. I've been thinking that if we could just get people thinking about climate change, learning about it, then they would feel the sadness and therefore get to work on behalf of their children and all future generations. 

It turns out we probably have to help people feel the pain of the realization that we've condemned our children to a future of climate hell, and only then will they be willing to start learning about it and able to start thinking about it rationally.

The other thing that breaking through that emotional, visceral denial does is make it very clear how much of the life we live day to day isn't important. And who the heck wants to face that truth until we've psyched up and it's spiritual spring cleaning time?

I've written about this issue before (see You CAN Handle the Truth!), but I had the order wrong. My thinking now is that we have to help people open to the sadness, lament and grieve, and then tell them the truth about the climate crisis.

Remember that old show, Laugh In? (Okay, some of you are too young to remember it.) You could almost hear the laughter coming out of people's homes up and down the streets of every neighbourhood in North America when that show was on! 

Renée Jeanne Falconetti as Joan of Arc

Maybe it's time to create a new TV show: Cry In. One that will help people get their tears and sadness out so that they're ready to open up to the sad reality of climate change.

It's So Freaking Lonely!

I felt so alone yesterday, so lonely, so isolated and solitary. I attended a (very well attended) panel discussion put on by my island community's conservation association. The event's title included "climate change" and "apocalypse" in the same breath: Upland and Near-Shore Apocalypse: How Climate Change, Plunging Fish Stocks and Declining Orcas Will Affect All Our Futures. So you can imagine that I went with some expectations.

It was fairly interesting, I can't deny it. But by the time I reached my car (my car! sheesh) to come home, I was sobbing in lament that we never once talked about how bad things are getting, that we spent a whole morning together, so many of us, and talked about restoration of eelgrass beds and how to protect beachfront homes from storm surges post sea level rise, but never talked about the 400,000 people being killed every year due to climate chaos. Apart from some IPCC temperature and sea level graphs and an Arctic map of disappearing sea ice (with no "therefore" presented), we didn't even dance around the topic of what's really happening. 

What really stuck with me was a government ecologist's mention of "assisted migration" – meaning that plants and sessile (or immobile) animals (like barnacles) that can't move on their own to adapt to our changing climate might have to be helped. That broke my heart, not just to think of all the species we're threatening, but that we didn't once talk about assisting the migration of millions of people whose lives are being so impacted by the changing climate. 

And the other thing that struck me is that the panelists never talked about food. I'm a vegan and don't think of fish as food, but as our agriculture goes down the toilet due to droughts and heat waves and wildfires, more and more people will start relying on "hunting," gathering and foraging for food. 

That might have been a way to make an emotional connection for the audience between their foreshores and their futures. But no one bothered. 

Surely it's not because no one else cares. Is it because no one else knows? Is it only a few of us on the fringe – those who put it all together rather than studying climate change in fragmented bits – who see what's coming? Either way, it's very lonely holding that knowledge, that knowing. Life would be much nicer (and the burden, the secret would be shared) if others were willing to know it, too. 

Alas. 

You CAN Handle the Truth!

You know what? We're in a no-analogue Catch-22. Psychologists tell us not to tell people the full truth about the climate change emergency because they won't be able to handle it and will shut down and not do anything. But if we don't tell people the full truth, they're not going to do anything anyway! I've recently asked readers and friends for advice on how to handle this conundrum. Below is some of the feedback I've received, and then I'll give you my new take on all of this.

Unknown shared this: "I say go ahead and tell the whole truth, don't sugar coat it. You'll get people more scared, but maybe a little fear is what we need -- along with a heaping dose of reality. People are still WAY too self-absorbed, or worried about which celebrity is divorcing who, or which sports team scored higher than another. They need to realize that none of that matters at all, that their world is crumbling around them and they're too blind (or busy watching television) to see it."

So, truth as wake up call! That resonates with me. Unknown finishes with "So bring it on, sister!"

My online friend, David Wilson, concurs with the age-old adage "The truth will set you free." He also brings up an excellent point, told through this anecdote:

"Back in the days of Simon Charlie's Festival of the Sun, there were always people showing up and taking too much of the wrong thing ... bikers on tequila, kids on shrooms, acid, whatever ... and you know, my learning then, which has not changed much over the years, was and is that people get through their freak-outs if someone will just invest the time and energy to talk to them, calmly, openly, compassionately, in a way that lets them know you are not going to up and leave them stranded there."

So I can't just plop the full truth on the table and walk away. I know there's always someone who asks, "What can I do?" as if they haven't been awake for the past 20 years. "Create political will" is not the first thing I'm going to suggest to people like that. But there will have to be hand-holding and hugs. After all, I've been dealing with this bad news for years now. The general public has not. (More on that here.) 

And patients who have just received a terminal diagnosis don't jump into action -- they have to digest the news and grieve a bit first. Then, however, according to my husband-the-doctor, they are ready to jump into action, to do whatever it takes to change their prognosis or prepare for the end.

My husband-the-doctor and I have had many conversations about the psychology of climate change communication. There is just a small handful of psychologists who have driven the don't-tell-the-truth-about-climate-change agenda here in North America (and in the UK, too, I think). We suspect these psychologists weren't alive before World War II, so they haven't witnessed how the people in our culture can rally together when necessary. Nor have they worked in medicine to witness the courage of people who discover they are terminally ill. 

It's not that people (in our culture/society -- it's frustrating when psychologists talk about "people" as though they mean the whole human species when their research has dealt only with Americans; and even there, check out the Yale study Global Warming’s Six Americas) can't handle the truth. It's that people need someone -- their doctor, a Winston Churchill, their president or prime minister, a Climate Reality Project leader, ahem -- to be there for them once they've absorbed the truth.

Furthermore, the truth does need to be the full truth (for example, the history of the denial machine) so that cognitive dissonance doesn't set in. You know, "the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change." In other words, if people finally come to see the urgency of what really needs to happen in the world but still don't see their leaders taking action, that's going to mess with their minds unless they understand all the forces at work to keep us embroiled (pun intended!) in the fossil fuel economy.

And finally, here's my epiphany for the week (keeping in mind that sometimes my epiphanies are things I figured out long ago and then forgot about ;-). When "common knowledge" says that people can't handle the full truth about the climate change emergency, that they'll shut down and become immobilized, there are quite likely two flaws in that thinking. 

First, it's quite possible that the researchers (including the armchair variety) who tell us this are simply projecting their own fears and attitudes onto the rest of us. 

Second, that view of the human spirit forgets that we've really only been taking people to the door to peer in. 

We haven't yet been taking people right in, inviting them to sit down, and introducing them to the emergency in a way that allows them to calmly get to know it.  

We haven't yet asked them to feel deeply the plight of others in more climate-change-vulnerable regions of the world -- or their own country.  

We haven't yet put a box of tissues on the table next to them and encouraged them to cry their pain or sing a song of lament (the lost art in our society of passionately expressing our grief or sorrow) that will surely bubble up once this new knowledge is deeply understood -- and felt.  

And we haven't yet urged the perfectly natural anger that parents will feel once they realize their children's future is literally at risk because we're not willing to make the switch to cleaner, safer, healthier, more peaceful and more equitable perpetual energy technologies. 

So no, unlike Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, we do not have the right to tell our fellow citizens that they can't handle the truth. We've never given them the chance.

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."