Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This chapter is about how we can start asking different questions – specifically questions that begin with ‘What if . . .’ and that help us unlock the imagination in service to the big challenges we face. It’s about more than the question per se, however.
So I present an unpopular but fact-based argument in the form of two “Am I wrong?” queries. If you accept my facts, you will see the massive challenge we face in transforming human assumptions and ways of living on Earth.
I welcome being told what crucial facts I might be missing. Even a realist — perhaps especially a realist in present circumstances — occasionally wants to be proved incorrect.
Repeating and evolving. We are learning together. You are welcome in. Your voice is needed. Your transformation of shock and grief into response and relief is needed. We’re all in this together. Humanity finally has a common challenge.
So finally, vegan or not, it comes down to this: Live rightly, and don’t worry about how large an impact you’re having. The intractable evil of the world around you is no excuse for you to violate your own conscience. If you think it is right to eat differently, spend differently, live differently, then do so, just because it’s right.
And what I say to those who choose to criticise XR is please by all means criticise us, and come up swiftly and proactively with something better we can do to meet the challenges of imminent climate catastrophe and ecological disaster. I would be the first to be behind you. But if you cannot then I would think very carefully about what you are going to say to the present generation, Greta’s generation, today’s children and grandchildren when they ask, ‘What did you do when we had our last chance to avoid catastrophe?’ Think very hard about that question.
Human beings are at their worst when they are consumers, locked into the miserable pursuit of satisfaction through the isolation of individual consumption – particularly when that shopping and consuming is done online (and when, as with Instagram, we learn to turn ourselves into commodities). T
Kadalie’s book is one more testament that a collective awakening is taking place to jettison the state and redefine global history from the bottom up.
For all this, direct democracy by itself can hardly promise social and ecological restoration. Democracy is not a matter of implementing formulaic procedures and structures; it is a matter of fostering bonds of mutual support and the sharing of communal power.
Climate literacy, which should by now be universal, lags out of all proportion to the crisis — and yet it promises large returns for a relatively small investment. If every student was climate literate, we could begin to effect change on a large scale. If every person was truly climate literate, imagine the change we could make.
Disaster localization could help us avoid “each new disaster leading to a more entrenched global capitalist system, with its social impacts as well as its hefty contribution to increasing carbon emissions”. Rupert and I draw on inspiration from a variety of sources, especially Helena Norberg-Hodge’s vision of localization, Charles Fritz’s research on disasters and mental health, and Rebecca Solnit’s writings about post-traumatic growth in the aftermath of crises.
Are there rural Americans who will embrace neighbors who do not look like them, go beyond tribalism and fear, and welcome diverse allies in the struggle for common goals? Will rural whites come to see that their future is tied to racial, environmental, and economic justice for all? I believe the answers to these questions will determine whether our national drive to form a “more perfect union” can survive. Everything America stands for is riding on this.
When unpacking the systems of harm around climate change, we reveal violation upon violation upon violation, like layers around an onion—and a feminist, anti-racist intersectional lens is necessary to understand these interconnected systems of harm.
If we were meant to be autonomists, we would look like sabertooth tigers or sharks; instead, we are small and weak on our own, but with the means for complex cooperation and community, we have become the intelligent, flexible species we are today. It’s time to debunk this mythology of autonomy and consider the nature of our true relationships with the world and each other.
