My Hands Tremble As I Try To Say Just How Much I Love My World
Faith is more important than ever before — and so is action
All of last month, I was an absolute wreck. Why? Activists worked hard to shut down London, to bring attention to the climate crisis most of humanity is ignoring.
I was stuck in Hawaii, Hawaii. What is happening here? The Merrie Monarch Festival. Hula. Pretty, but disconnected. People do not seem to take the coming losses very seriously.
From London came outcry not just by Extinction Rebellion, but at them. There were some fine words by Greta Thunberg. I searched through the images, but most of all I searched through apathy, or worse, despair. Worldwide the crisis was side-tracked by Trump, and all the Mueller madness he makes, threats of war with Venezuela and Iran. More loss of reproductive rights in the USA. It’s exhausting, and a dangerous distraction.
Meanwhile, Brave activists glued themselves to Shell headquarters. They staged die-ins. They sang. They drummed. They spoke. They, DID stuff. And that is what makes this action notable — the deployment of civil disobedience to fuel civil discourse.
Enfolding the whole world in our arms is hard
But few people on Earth noticed. Our human “other” ness had brought about yet another mass murder, in Sri Lanka, this time. Most people are still stuck thinking we are separate, that we must compete rather than recognizing our common origins and destinations.
We are not other. We all need equality, compassion, justice, and cooperation. It is the only way. Unite as humans, and then uniting with our biosphere kin — all living networks — is as natural as it is necessary.
This is the same exact otherness that drives the sixth extinction. You can’t protect your own skin if you think you are in some sort of Matrix battery cell. Since most people are blind to the fact that we are in fact, in the natural world, they self-medicate with screens and other opiates. But just as in The Matrix, using human energy to power the world is almost as stupid and counterproductive as using toxic fuel.
We ignore the plight of our own reality because politics is so toxic. The Mueller report in America has sent pundits into spirals of convulsive spin that no Cat Five hurricane, even the one coming to bury Florida, can out-spin it. Regardless of whether you are a scientist, denier, believer, or just like life, The next Gulf hurricane, coming soon, will be BIG and WET.
2020 Vision for hope
Earth day is over. But the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day, 2020 — the one where we need 2020 vision — looms in less than one year. We all have to do something.
You have to do something. If you love someone, they likely live in this world. (If not more power to you, interstellar relationships are challenging). If you have kids, ditto. If you just love the idea of clean air and water, or if food is something you like daily, do something.
Great, if you believe in thoughts and prayers. I do sometimes. But in our world where conflict and resources are threatened, we need action too!
The lead up to Earth Day 2019 had me in a spin as well. I have been working, writing, farming, recycling, marching, for years, years, and years. And yet, leaving the Paris Climate Accord is what our government thought was wise response to existential crisis. Deregulation. Rewarding polluters. Cutting education and declaring open season on innocent animals, parks, indigenous people, and more.
Except for Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state, no candidate has seen fit to make an crisis that is MUCH bigger than September 11, 2001, an issue.
There is no time to waste, there is no Earth to waste
The terrorist attacks of 9ll were horrendous, but air pollution alone kills seven million people a year. Why not use cleaner fuels for up to one half a million new, US, jobs and thriving economy? Perhaps because it gives us no one to scape-goat, no one to hate, except mother nature herself?
What about the heat drought that is killing millions of animals in desert regions? Dying walrus falling into the sea? Polar bears starving? The loss of bees and other insects that make your food possible? What about the tens of millions of climate refugees coming to you, soon? No one knows which life continues if we kill all the coral reefs. And a green new deal to take your cows? What will cows eat when droughts, floods, famines result in less mono-cultural feed?
More destructive heat than we have seen in three million years. Accelerated warming is wreaking havoc on unstable regions vulnerable to conflict and poverty.
We have lost sixty percent of wildlife since the first Earth Day 1970.
Most people care about money enough to live, so how about the trillions and trillions all disasters, famines, epidemics, structural and property loss will cost? And let’s not forget the loss of our own belonging, our humanity, our ability to care during an apocalypse.
Happy for once
Does all this mean I am scared to death? Yes. And I am scared for you. But now I feel more hopeful than I have for decades. People are noticing that tiny boat we are in together. That is reason to hope. As much as I grieve for every being that we exterminate, I have hope, too.
Check out the Act Now Bot, https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/take-action.shtmlThe United Nations is just one organization you can support.
Sir David Attenborough is more inspiring than discouraging. He will not live to see the next century, but our civilization could, if we simply change the system, and not the climate. Please watch Share Our Planet, his Earth Day message, and share it widely.
Attenborough urges us to watch Our Planet. Turn off the pundits, they are part of the problem. Why not get hopeful for a better world? It’s a beautiful effort. We have everything to gain, by joining to appreciate and protect all that is good.
Did you know you don’t even have to believe in climate change to know clean energy is better than dirty? Did you know huge job programs and economy boost are inevitable if we rise to meet the challenge?
People are waking up, all over the planet. My hope is restored, bursting out in bloom, like spring.
For the first time in many, hopeless and despairing years, people are seeing the flames, feeling the storm surge, smelling the smoke, tasting the toxins, swimming the floods, and believing.
We need to believe
If we can believe in our Apollo moon shot, we can make this Earth shot. We can fire all leaders who lack vision. We have roughly a decade before many millions more begin to die. This is your world. It was too exquisite for us to inherit, perhaps, when we couldn’t see the grace and beauty of belonging and equality.
But now, thanks to science and technology, to justice seekers and believers, we have a shot. We are ingenious, creative, and we belong to this earth. If you love anything, anyone at all, rise to the challenge of being your best self.
Believe in us. We are Earth.
