Hands up how many of you felt a bit sick in the stomach, a roll of despair in the belly or just plain bored to shit just reading that title.
It’s probably going to tell you how bad shit is, yeh? And. You. Don’t. Care. Jesus! Enough! There’s nothing you can do about it anyway. You may feel – like I often do – that at this stage of the game, it’s easier to just shrug it off, read no further, go watch a cat video or download some Eddie Izzard instead.
(LOL @ Eddie Izzard. I love that guy.)
You may even be thinking, climate change. That’s not my game. It’s not for me… I’m not into that stuff.
No wait! Don’t turn away. This post is exactly for you. I wrote this for you. Really.
So don’t run away. Don’t look away. Read on. It’ll take you five minutes and it’s really important.
I promise.
In this age of daily apocalypses, I appreciate that our senses have been well and truly shot to shit with the constant barrage of Horrible Things Humans Do that make us want to shoot ourselves in the face. What with the Tony Abbotts and Alan Joneses and Andrew Bolts and Gina Rineharts and Rupert Murdochs – men and women who history will truly judge with the harshest and stickiest of brushes – it can be easy for the average punter like you and me to simply want to go have a quiet lie-down somewhere, sink ourselves into something that will distract us and be done with it all.
After all, we can’t do anything, we rationalise. This baby is a run-away train crash happening in slow motion and we can’t stop it. It’s like that time in Athens that I tripped over a deceptively flat bit of pavement on my way to Syndagma Square and fell flat on my face in a kind of slow motion, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sort of way – knowing that pretty soon I was going to scrape my palms on that pavement, and crunch my face against its ancient stones. Powerless to stop it. Yet somehow with enough time to click that it was going to happen, whatever I did. Climate change is a bit like that.
May as well go eat a Dorito sandwich or watch Game of Thrones.
No, don’t do that.
Well… DO do that (Game of Thrones IS a pretty cool show), but don’t do it just now. Make your Dorito sandwich if you must and read on.
There’s a saying that my dear old Dad used to throw at me sometimes when I was a kid (and also when I was older, much to my frustration): you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Much the same way, scientists have led us to the water when it comes to the looming dangers of climate change and the unprecedented biodiversity and species loss we now face. But – being stubborn mules, with decentralised power structures and split incentives and barriers to improvement and what not – we’ve refused to take it in on a scale large enough to do something about it. Or at least those people holding the power strings have decided their back pockets are more important than our collective well-being and made in impossibly difficult for us to react quickly enough and big enough.
Like adolescents, our politicians dither and spit, block their ears and stomp their feet, in a childish display of truly Herculean proportions. Closest to home this is best seen in the utterly irrational intransigence of the Liberal Party in Australia and Republicans of the US, but across the world a similar reaction can be seen from across the political spectrum by people who have too much privilege and too little empathy.
At its heart is a communal nurturing of the values of self-interest, greed, disconnection from spirit, and preferencing of the individual above the community. It is a state of affairs gifted to us by the Margaret Thatchers and John Howards of the world, who told us we have nothing to feel responsible for, no one to care about, and no obligation to contribute to anything other than ourselves, our back pockets and our own self-interest. Instead every prejudice is encouraged, every ignorance fostered. Modern day mainstream culture is the glorious result.
Climate change seems to be ground zero for all that is mentally unhinged in our communal value-system – from our irrational consumerism, to our broken politics. It has shone a stark and unflattering light on just how broken and insane our systems are.
Even worse, the impact our insanity is having on our planet is immense – both on a physical and spiritual level. In Antarctica the ice is melting much faster than predicted – It is warming not just from above but also (as scientists have just discovered) from below via warming oceans. Biodiversity is in critical decline and extinction rates are at a level not seen since the dinosaurs were wiped out. (That is not a joke by the way, it really is that dire). We are losing diversity not just in our wildlife but in our domestic animals too. Rates of deforestation around the world are increasingly alarming as we rip out the lungs of the Earth to feed our insanity. And everywhere people continue to make the mistake of thinking that we live in a world of disconnection – one where everyone is separate and it is each to their own. Where we can do what we like to the environment because it’s a separate thing, unconnected to us. Our dominant paradigm is a lie. It’s a lie that convinces us the economy and the environment are an either/or. That you and me are an either/ or. And if the environment wins then the economy loses. And if you win, I lose.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I know it’s a bit much. Maybe a bit too serious for this time of the day. Please don’t look away. I’m getting somewhere and this is really important. Here’s why I’m saying all of this today. Here’s why it’s important.
It is not an either/ or. We are not separate. We are all one thing and connected. That might sound a bit Star Wars or Fairy in the Sky, but it’s the essential nature of things. Science is only now beginning to understand this on a quantum level. Scientists are also now beginning to understand how interlinked nature and biodiversity are to human health and wellbeing. Where the planet goes, so we go. What happens to it, happens to us. What I do to you, I do to myself. We must understand this before it’s too late.
If we let the politicians, power brokers and media moguls numb us into insensibility and inaction; if we let them convince us that we stand alone rather than as a community; that we are just one person instead of a family of humans, that we can do nothing, when the reality is we can do much; that it’s not important, when it is; that you’re either a person who cares about that stuff, or you’re not; then we all lose and no one wins.
There are people in this world who suffer from a great insanity – an insanity of greed and self-interest that is merrily leading them to destroy the ground beneath their feet, all the while blocking their ears to the destruction they are reigning down on our heads. But in small ways or large, we are all tainted with this same insanity. We can’t escape it. It is the system in which we must try to survive. And that’s why it’s important that we don’t switch off, change channels, turn away, look away, find the next easy, soul-numbing distraction.
Instead we need to steel our guts. Find our courage. Look. Look hard. Find opportunities to laugh and rest and play. Create new stories. Challenge paradigms. But look. Don’t stop looking at the world. While we were watching the latest Masterchef, the powers-that-be took off with our crown jewels. So don’t stop looking. Don’t even blink.
(No wait. That’s Doctor Who.)
Anyway my point is, we don’t have to buy the bullshit stories and paradigms they are selling us. But we do have to be conscious.
Right now, you have in your possession a unique talent, ability or passion that can contribute good in the world. Whether you are a great writer, a performer, a comedian, an engineer, a number cruncher, a problem solver, a strategist, a family person, a good negotiator or even whether you haven’t found it yet or you think you’ve got nothing particularly special to offer… right now, you – yes, you the individual reading this - have something the world needs rather badly.
It is tempting – oh so tempting – to live just for ourselves. To think what we do, we do for us because there’s no point getting involved in anything bigger than that. Our materialistic world in fact demands this insularity from us. It does not, despite our stories, reward rebels. And often this is seen as an area you are either are into or not. Something you care about or don’t. This is not really my thing, you might be thinking. It’s for other people who are passionate about this stuff.
Well I want to challenge you on that. I don’t think that’s true. This isn’t a genre or book. It’s not a fashion trend. The well-being of our planet is as fundamental a matter as it gets. And I think we all have something to contribute to the greater good.
So whether big or small – you have a role to play. Maybe you can make people laugh. (God knows, we need a laugh). Maybe you can bring people healing or caring. Maybe you can help alleviate suffering. Maybe you can help spread the word. Maybe you can help us rewrite our communal stories – rework them into something healthier and more life-affirming. Whatever it is, it’s important. You’re important.
(Oh stop it… no really, you are… no stop. No you are. No YOU are.)
So don’t look away. Don’t turn inwards. Don’t numb yourself with distractions. Take your joy or that thing you’re good at and turn it outwards. Share it with people. Give others some reason to believe that there’s a better world we’re creating than the one that’s thrust at us every day by a colluding media. Give us something to cling to. And most important… don’t give up on the world. Don’t let the insane people win.
There are thousands of US in the world here working for good. There are more people who care than people who don’t. And we’re not going anywhere.
Change is coming. This is my invitation to you to be a part of it.
Just a thought.
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