Time for True Confessions

Today, by admitting my true confession to the world, I am going to break a recently formed bad habit and get on with saving the world.

BACKGROUND (also known as EXCUSES)

I don't remember ever being read to as a child. No memories of that whatsoever. Once I learned to read, I enjoyed reading (and am currently reading one of my childhood favourites to my own students) and read a lot. But not often fiction. It wasn't until I hit midlife that I realized how much I crave story and "plot" in my life.

Several years ago, once the US illegally invaded Iraq, my husband and I decided to stop watching television. We didn't want that violence and insanity in our home every evening. (Plus it hadn't helped that I shushed him once during a live show. Ooops! Humans before screens, I said to myself. ) So about once a week we'd snuggle up with a good movie (if there's a gun on the cover, we won't rent it). Once we got laptop computers, we'd snuggle up with a laptop and watch a DVD. Without TV every night, that's when our activism really took off, of course. (Winters are long and dreary here.)

After the fiasco called the Copenhagen climate change negotiations (you'll recall that this blog started as a countdown to the oxymoronically named "Hopenhagen" talks), I become quite depressed. Did I already mention that winters are drearier here than in Copenhagen? Plus I'd broken my ankle the previous summer and tendonitis was keeping me inactive. I, like many climate change activists, found myself at a loss. We'd been told (just like millions of people around the world who asked for peace before the US invasion of Iraq were told), "You don't matter. What you do, think, want or care about doesn't matter."

THE CRUX

I started watching TV on my laptop. There, I've said it. I discovered that I could watch some interesting shows (no, not documentaries) for free online. For over a year now, several times a week — when tired after work, when depressed at the state of the world, when too lazy to figure out what to do next — I've turned on my computer and watched an online TV drama.

It almost makes me gag to admit it. But I have to. Keeping a bad habit a secret only makes it fester. Not to mention that my hubby became angry with me (he used the word "disappointed" but my reaction was the same) the other day for not having completed the updates to his website that I'd promised to do in February. Now, I can give you a huge list of all the other things I've completed since then (indeed, in my own defence, I created that list!), but I know in my heart of hearts that I've wasted many, many hours watching TV shows on my laptop when I could have been helping to save the world.

LESSONS LEARNED

Quite often over the past year, I've told myself, "This is research." Watching TV was helping me figure out why so few people are engaged in the struggle to safeguard their children's future from the climate crisis. So here's what I've learned:

1. TV can truly be addictive. It's easy, it's passive, it's mindless, mind-numbing and mind-dumbing. You are convinced that you're doing something while you're actually doing nothing, not living your life at all. What a waste of time! ("Luckily" I grew up in a family where the TV was never on before supper. Daytime television ... now there's a serious addiction!)
2. Human beings need story. The indigenous peoples know that this is how we learn best. Plus, the TV/computer screen takes the place of the glow of ancient campfires. But watching someone else's pretend two-dimensional life night after night is not learningful — it's deadening.
3. Ignorance is bliss. Watching TV can convince you that environmental problems don't exist. (Although there's this one family drama where they believe in global warming. Wow.)

DENOUEMENT

So, I'm back. I'm not saying I'll never watch another episode of ... well, never mind. But I'm back on track with my activism, over the depression (it's springtime anyway!) and pretty clear again about what I can do to contribute to the climate change campaign.

And if you need a hand getting over a screen addiction yourself, just drop me a line. I've got lots of climate change work you could be doing, too! Or maybe you could just sacrifice one of your least favourite shows per week, and donate that time to some climate change activism. Seriously, let me know and we'll figure something out for you.

Calling on the Feminine

Today is one of those days when everything came together to help me decide what to post about.

Depending on where you live, you might know that Canada is in the midst of another federal election campaign. And that the leader of our federal Green Party, Elizabeth May, has been banned, for no clear reason, from the upcoming televised debates (one in English, one in French) between our political party leaders. (Even if you're not Canadian, check out Canadian Election 2011: Demand "Democratic" Debates at ecoSanity.org — if only for the Rick Mercer rant, which rocks!)

But long before that debacle started, I made a commitment to myself to help get our dictator of a prime minister out of power. This is a man who must (there's just no other explanation) be numbed to any love he ever felt for his children. He is certainly completely ecologically illiterate, believing that humans can eat money. He's broken so many laws and done so many unethical things, I've lost count. And he has completely changed the feel of Canada here at home and the face of Canada on the international stage. (See The New Solitudes by Erna Paris, in The Walrus, for more info.) And it hasn't been a pretty transformation. Many of us don't even recognize our own country anymore. (You know how the best kind of love is when you like what you see reflected back when you gaze into your prime minister's, er, lover's eyes?)

It's a vast country, so I decided to help Elizabeth May get elected. By sheer chance, she's running in my riding, and we have the chance to make history here! (First Green MP in our parliament. Electing a future prime minister.) Elizabeth is bright, funny, with it, incredibly intelligent, well spoken and politically savvy. She understands the climate change emergency. She's calling for a more civil, more humane House of Commons. Her party has an outstanding policy platform that integrates fiscal responsibility with care and concern for the children and their future. And there's an excellent chance she's going to win here! (The Conservative Party incumbent fired our federal nuclear regulator when she pointed out something dangerous at one of our reactors, and he's also called for nuclear power plants to be built near the Alberta tar sands to speed up our destruction of the biosphere. A smidge of bad timing there.)

And then I started thinking ... what if all the women in Canada voted for their Green Party candidate? Isn't that an exciting thought? We could have a a complete sea change in the politics of this country!! We could move from an adversarial bunch of guys (and gals) in suits running the country to a consensus-building coalition of people who care about Earth, the future, and the children of all species, everywhere.

When my knowledge of what's happening to the world isn't crushing my spirit, I have moments of excitement at the potential for change! Read the Green Party of Canada platform (Vision Green) and send me anything you disagree with. (The only thing I've seen so far, and I'm reading through it carefully, is the mention of alternative fuels, or biofuels. No, we have to get away from burning altogether. The Burning Age is over. It's time for zero carbon energy. No more fuels. Period.)

And then a friend sent me this video. Men, listen up. Women, get your hankies. Then women, listen up and men, get your hankies. While honouring the good things that masculine energies have brought us, let's call on the feminine energies in all of us to create the transformation all future generations need us to make, today (and on May 2 here in Canada, as we vote).

The Secret is Empathy

So many thoughts, ideas, questions converging this week. I started reminiscing about a successful environmental campaign that my hubby and I participated in nearly 20 years ago (gak!). A friend sent me one of those cool animated lectures and asked me what I thought. An issue of New Scientist kept staring at me til I finally opened it. And I discovered Jeremy Rifkin.

Okay, here we go.

Peter and I lived for 10 years in a wonderful city in north central British Columbia. During that time, a multinational corporation (which had already dammed the river once) started talking about how much more water they needed. There was one woman who raised the alarm. She worked tirelessly for quite a while — until she heard that the political party she belonged to (and which was in power at the time) wasn't going to do anything about it.

So she disappeared. Just like that. Her sense of belonging to that political party outweighed her love for the river. We carried on without her (and WON!), but I've always been intrigued by her sense of allegiance. This is the kind of thing that's happening in the United States around climate change. If you're Republican, you're not really allowed to believe in it if you want to stay in the club. And belonging, as we know if we think about it, is everything. (Maslow certainly knew it.)

The animated lecture sent by my friend is a wonderful polemic (I mean that kindly) by Barbara Ehrenreich, who has been described as "a barbed social critic." The lecture, called Smile or Die, is about the cruelty and moral callousness of the very American belief that positive thinking will fix everything — and if things aren't right, it's our own bloody fault for not thinking the right things. This belief was immortalized in that recent bit of claptrap, The Secret. That movie made my blood boil! Not only did it imply that those of us without mansions are losers, but that anyone who wants to think hard enough and positively enough deserves a mansion! Grrrrr. No regard for anyone else. Just me, me, me and what I want.

Ehrenreich's lecture does a stellar job of denouncing this delusional view of the world, suggesting instead a form of realism that allows us to see what we can change. No, the people impacted by tsunamis are not sending out tsunami-like vibrations. No, the people hit by earthquakes are not sending out earthquake-like thoughts. And no, the people who are losing their lives and their livelihoods, their food security and water sources, their homes and entire homelands due to the climate change emergency are not creating their reality! We are, with our bloody fossil fuel and livestock emissions. And we can change that.

She also points to the nonsense, as my friend describes it, "of having to be positive and hopeful, thereby compromising and minimizing the truth and danger/threat" of the global climate change emergency — like a lot of mainstream environmental NGOs feel they have to do. It's pretty consternating, and leads to a whole lot of cognitive dissonance.

As you know, I think the answer is compassion. According to researcher Margaret Kemeny at the University of California, San Francisco (this is where the 8 January 2011 issue of New Scientist comes into the story), compassion is a complicated construct that likely involves several emotional skills. "To be compassionate with someone, first you have to recognize that they are experiencing a negative reaction. Then you have to consider what a beneficial response might be. Then you have to have the motivation to do something about it."

Did you know that Stanford University opened The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education in 2009? It's "funded by neuroscientists, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the Dalai Lama." I think they should get on with it. I haven't heard boo from them — and we could use a little research about compassion around here.

Finally then, I'd like to share with you 2 versions of a similar lecture by Jeremy Rifkin, who is a new climate change hero of mine. Rifkin is an economist, writer, public speaker, political advisor and activist — and he gets that the secret is empathy. In this video (The Empathic Civilization), he explains that our drive to belong is hard-wired (and soft-wired), but so is our empathy. In fact, he calls us Homo empathicus, and explains that empathy has evolved and expanded along with our sense of belonging.

Rifkin asks, "Is it possible that we could extend our empathy to the entire human race, as an extended family, and to our fellow creatures, as part of our evolutionary family, and to the biosphere as our common community? If it's possible to imagine that, then we may be able to save our species and save our planet." ***

I've talked about this before, but it bears repeating. If, as Rifkin suggests, we can start thinking of ourselves as members of a species — and one that is threatened — then perhaps we can start to feel compassion for those members of our species who are less fortunate (ie, hit sooner rather than later) than we are when it comes to the climate change emergency. There but for the grace of ....

Enjoy Rifkin's animated explanation of the Empathic Civilization, below, and then to watch a more scholarly explanation of it, visit this link.

***What George Carlin didn't know back in 1992 is that the planet we know as Earth is indeed in peril if we're talking about its biosphere. But he's still funny. He also points out that much of environmentalism isn't based on empathy or compassion, but on having a nice, clean place to live — for me.

Waking Up from This Nightmare

A lovely young mom and wonderful artist — someone I count as a friend — wrote to "check in" on me and my "green (and tender) heart — in light of all this devastating news coming from Japan."

I know that this woman has a tender, green heart herself. "Between the human loss and the environmental impact (and nuclear issues), well, it makes me overwhelmed. How about you?" She continued: "These are scary times. And how scared should we be? I hate being a parent in times like these. Are people overreacting? What is your opinion on such matters? Because I'm silently freaking out.... I want someone to tell me, nahhhh there's nothing to worry about, everything will be fine. But I know that's a pipe dream."

I realized then, as I explained to another friend, that I had been hovering between the panic of not understanding (the nuclear situation in Japan, the connection between global warming and natural disasters) and "oh, for heaven's sake, relax" — and didn't have a clue which way to go.

Ignorance has not been blissful over the last few days. So I started reading. Knowing is no better, however. But my nightmare is not the usual one. Mine is that the world over, it seems, people are petrified of nuclear fallout that might never, ever impact them ... and totally oblivious to the global warming fallout that is impacting their whole biosphere. The vitriol and invective now being hurled at anyone who suggests the global climate change emergency is a bigger threat than the Fukushima nuclear accident is nightmarish, too.

My friend wrote again:

"Tonight my kids were afraid to go to sleep because they didn't want to have bad dreams. I burned a sage smudge wand in their room to chase the bad dreams away. They went to sleep. And I think to myself after checking the news all evening, that I am in a bad dream and I can't wake up. So I've been sitting in the kids' room watching them sleep for the last hour or so. To remind myself of the light in all of this darkness."

Yes, our beloved children ... all the children, of all species ... are the light in all of this darkness. Let's hope we can stop all the nightmares before they wake up.

p.s. My heart goes out to all those impacted by the earthquake(s), the tsunami(s) and the nuclear accidents in Japan. Please visit Prayers for the Earth to share what others are feeling (scroll down to the bottom of the page).