A Rapidly Changing World Needs A Rapidly Changing You

People fear change. But change charges forward whether you are ready or not. Extinction rebellion is about system change more than climate change.

The day to end fossil fuel-based capitalism is here. People do not feel ready. Do you feel ready?

I have felt ready for some time, and yet, I feel apprehension as never before. Today, I read about the tragic fate of wildlife, confined and brutalized so that people can take selfies with drugged tigers, and spike-chained elephants. This kind of pain, combined with rapid extinction rates, terrifies me.

How does one find the inspiration, the encouragement, in that? For myself, I look to those brave souls, like the NatGeo journalists who did the sad story on wildlife tourism, and find that their truth telling is inspiring.

Life is hard right now, how do I find the middle ground between fear-mongering and hope? How indeed. I think truth, and love, work together.

Many of us now see the smoke in the air, or feel the pull of flood waters dragging us down, yet we still resist changing our everyday routines.

We can’t really react to crisis until the crisis invades our senses. There are still thousands of people in London, for example, who find the presence of extinction rebellion activists inconvenient. But for homo sapiens, it is facing inconvenient truth that is often more challenging for most of us human beings.

You can handle the truth

Of course, the many deaths today of pollution are more disruptive to other people, than being late for the office, but who wants to think about that? Vulnerable people can not yet find the courage to stand up even though they overwhelmingly prefer representative democracy to rigid hierarchy.

Poll after poll also shows that regardless of whether people believe in human caused climate change, we overwhelmingly believe clean fuel is smarter than dirty fuel. We just haven’t, as Greta Thunberg says, been told the truth.

We believe health concerns are linked to clean air and water. We believe rapidly innovative technology, infrastructure, and food production creates more jobs. We believe all people should be represented.

You can handle the truth, however, if you are allowed to know it.

There’s not time enough for slow change

Many people are out in the streets, but most people are not. Does this mean people don’t want a cleaner, more just, earth?

It must be remembered that when suffragettes wanted fairness, most people did not march with them. When the civil rights movements came to the American South, most people did not dare join the movement.

But the changes came anyway. Slowly.

And some change has begun to arrive with the slow, but steady replacement of polluting industry with clean industry. It’s just that all of this welcome progress is not only too slow, it is actively fought against by those interests that work against representative democracy. There is, and always will be, more profit to be made if most people generate that profit, no external costs (pollution clean-up, for example, or the cost of lost top soil) is charged to the most profitable industries, and the media has far more interest in generating ratings than in inviting cooperation.

But rapid change is also more likely in this global movement. That is because, the urgency, and rate of change happening every day in every neighborhood is accelerating. It is also happening because many people between the ages of Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough are realizing what is happening and saying so.

Do the things you can do. And start today

Most people do not want to stop eating meat. Fine. Just eat less meat. Most people don’t want to overthrow capitalism. Fine. Advocate for the overthrow of only the unfair, or rapacious, capitalism.

Don’t believe you can quit your gas station job, or buy an electric car? Fine. Just examine every choice you make in your daily life and make choices based on less waste and more abundance.

It’s just not yet an emergency for you? Fine. But dig just a little and you will find an endangered species, an under-represented minority group, a dying island, children threatened by famine and/or resource conflict, a town needing renewable economy. They are in an emergency, and you have the power to affect that. And, you will feel better by doing so.

Tune in. Turn it off. Don’t drop out.

There are real steps to take today to feel better on earth. Eat smarter. Waste less. Embrace quality of life over quantity of crap. Invest in renewables, or at the very least weatherize your home. Green your commute. If it beeps, lights up, roars, or runs on fossil fuels turn it off whenever you can. Avoid plastic. Get outdoors. Plant a tree, or garden. Breathe. Feel nature in your bones.

It’s easy to hide from reality so long as reassuring media messages soothe your need for distraction with an ever more, vast, array of gizmos and distractions.

It is much harder to ignore an existential crisis when the storms of our grandchildren are now suddenly here. Collectively, according to that bugaboo, science, the last five years have been the hottest in history.

It’s 2019, and the IPCC has told us we have just a decade to make real change in our toxic habits. Personally, the wildfires in the American West have impacted my family directly. The steady rise in food costs affects all of us indirectly.

Tariffs on avocados from Mexico? By some miracle of nature (blessed be) our avocado tree has just sprouted hundreds of baby fruits. Be thankful for little wonders like that in your own life.

Be brave. Belong.

It is normal, and predictable that we self-medicate with shallow sports, celebrity gossip, screen time, and every other diversion possible. I don’t think it’s because we are bad people, but because we have had to adjust to a broken system where we knew rapacious consumption thrives.

Profits and jobs have originated there, and few of us are in a situation that allows us to divest from the system as rapidly as we now realize we must.

The bigger picture benefits from those who align with the right side of history.

Most of us have already done most of the common sense measures mentioned above, like eating smarter and wasting less. Some of us even know that the rewards of such participation go far beyond saving the planet, and remind us we can save ourselves by finding belonging.

Make no mistake, your mental, emotional, physical and even spiritual well-being, depends upon you being able to change with the onslaught of changes.

Maybe you can activate quietly, but if you can make some noise and over turn some apple carts –peacefully — summon the courage, and do it. Tell me your personal story of self-empowerment. Being courageous, as NASA scientist, Dr. Kate Marvel has noted, is more important that being hopeful, at this crucial time.

Not all of us have to go to jail, but those of us who do, can truthfully say their lives and minds are where we need to be. Some can affect the system rapidly enough to end rapid extinction. Right, left or center, you live in an era of threatened biodiversity, and a changing world. You must choose how slowly, or rapidly, you will adapt.