Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As we work towards this new culture, we experience frustration, fear, anger, grief and many other dark emotions, not to mention physical exhaustion. In these uncertain circumstances, which are unlikely to end any time soon, we need spiritual and intellectual courage, as well as persistence and patience.
There are no easy solutions to the problems we are facing. Addressing climate change will take a lot of work by a lot of people all over the planet. The fight against our climate crisis is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. We will need to learn how to build resilience of our interiority as much as we engineer resilient communities and infrastructures.
A carbon footprint is a best guess about how much greenhouse gas my actions (and those taken on my behalf) cause to be put into the atmosphere. It’s an attempt to measure the harm I do, understand it and then reduce it by making different choices. If you’re wondering whether it matters, I recommend reading The Uninhabitable Earth.
Connie Barlow, a climate activist, writer, and film maker, dislikes the word “apathy” used to describe people’s response to climate change. She says, “I now bristle at that word. In my view, what looks like apathy, especially when it comes to climate disruption, is actually a variety of psychological protections.”
The stuff we humans buy is a disaster for the planet we love. Livestock intended for human food now make up 60% of the total weight of mammals on Earth, while wild mammals make up only 4% (the rest is humans and pets). The global clothing industry is responsible for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the emissions from entire European Union. Single-use plastics are choking the oceans. Transportation (including the cars we drive, but the semis that cart our products to stores) accounts for almost a third of U.S. emissions.
Around here, we have a goal to produce 80% of our veg, fruit, meat and dairy within five years of moving onto our land. This is year three, and while we’ve reached that goal for summer veg like tomatoes and cucumbers (until this year’s drought), I have not had as much success with the fall garden until this year.
It’s going to be a rough year. The fatal combination of escalating climate breakdown and the capture of crucial governments by killer clowns provokes a horrible sense of inevitability. Just when we need determined action, we know that our governments, and the powerful people to whom they respond, will do everything they can to stymie it.
First of all, wood stoves are not an automatic environmental impact win. You should know that right up front (more about it later). We always consider environmental impact when we choose but we also take into account other things: comfort, safety, labor commitment and especially resilience. Our wood stove was chosen mainly for resilience.
The phrase “integrity of life” reached out and grabbed me when I heard it in church a while ago. Those three words express what I’ve always been trying to work toward: why I’ve several times given up my old life and gone to live in primitive circumstances; why I’ve worked, raised my family, and ordered my daily tasks the way I have. I have been trying to find integrity of life. I’ve never achieved it, and sometimes I feel I’m farther from it than I’ve ever been.
During the process of writing my book Shut It Down, I have been learning what it means to truly love and accept myself, knowing that I am enough just the way I am. Sometimes this just means knowing what I am feeling, needing, and wanting and being gentle with myself. From all of my learnings, I am hopeful. Here again, complexity science informs my understanding—we are amazing, complex beings made up of many systems that are always interacting and changing.
Knowing that our lives are brief—and worse—not knowing where the end of the waterfall is (is it a short drop or a long one?) means it is up to us to live every moment of our lives well. Not “live it up” but live meaningfully, purposefully, and conscious that life could end at any moment.
Those of us who are lucky enough to be living somewhere in the world where there is enough food to eat, water to drink, and security for us and our loved ones, are living in a bubble.
