Despite pleas from many readers,
and not a few other eco-bloggers, How to Save the World remains
impatient, angry, and occasionally confrontational with many moderates
who do value a clean environment, but think we have to be satisfied
with small victories, and even, sometimes, only small setbacks. The
three biggest environmental blogs, TreeHugger, WorldChanging and Grist
all take an upbeat, patient, technophile view of the future of our
planet, while How to Save the World publishes grim assessments like
that in John Gray's Straw Dogs, and even supports radical acts, provided no creature, human or other, is physically hurt by them. My signature essay The Truth About Nature, and most of my environmental essays are strident, restless, idealistic, and dissatisfied with small changes.
When I was in university, I was a moderate. I joined the Young
Liberals, but was actively recruited by the Young Socialists. For
awhile, I debated them. When they said to me "if you're not part of the
solution, you're part of the problem", I replied that there was no
point staking out a position that would always be a minority one, and
that by their uncompromising tone they were alienating moderates and
actually undermining opportunities to achieve small legislative
victories. They were unrepentant. Nothing short of a "people's
revolution" would make a significant difference, they argued. As a
liberal I was actually doing more harm to the class struggle than the
conservatives. I was encouraging the illusion that some kind of
compromise was possible. I was perpetuating the slavery of the masses.
Now, thirty-five years later, I've become the radical. I shook my head
when I heard moderates cheer the pathetic, paltry, inadequate
agreements of the G8 leaders this week. I am furious that the news is
full of celebrity scandals, and in-depth coverage of the release from
prison of child killers, while news about global warming, Bush's and
other corporatists' criminal misdeeds, and weekly social and
environmental setbacks are ignored. I am appalled that the lazy media
played right into the hands of the homegrown British Arab nationalists
by providing them with millions of dollars worth of free, undeserved
and unwarranted publicity for this week's cowardly, unimaginative
attacks on innocent citizens, to the total exclusion of far more
important, and actionable, news events.
Most people are concerned, but feel helpless to do much about important
issues. They are generally uninformed about these issues, and often
deliberately misinformed by
wealthy and powerful people and organizations whose interest is served
by spreading misinformation and suppressing the truth. And what's the
point of being informed if you're helpless to do anything about it? So
who can blame people for turning the channel when bad news that might
make them feel guilty comes on, when the other channel carries either
false comforts and assurances or diversions -- information they know
needs no action on their part, and events for which they can genuinely
feel no responsibility.
The reality is that we are all complicit, through ignorance, inaction
and willful disregard for the horrific state of our world -- a world in
which there is more suffering by more creatures than almost any other
time in the history of life on Earth, in which poverty and misery and
destitution are all-pervasive and never-ending in many, many places in
every nation, and in which species extinction, loss of biodiversity and
climate change are occurring at a rate not seen on this planet in 65
million years, and accelerating. And the truth is we want
to believe there's nothing much we can do about it, beyond the little
things that are totally inadequate, and which ultimately change
nothing. Because otherwise we would have to turn our comfortable lives
upside down, change everything, make huge sacrifices, and put ourselves
out there, giving everything, and giving up
everything, to fight what may well be an impossible fight against
overwhelming odds and daunting, ruthless opposition. Few of us are
ready for that.
The truth is that sustainable living isn't sustainable. It's like
patting ourselves on the back for cutting back from two packs of
cigarettes a day to one, and expecting some remarkable improvement in
our health. It's like an alcoholic excusing 'social drinking' as not
really drinking, as an acceptable lapse. For every one of us that stops
eating meat, or insulates our house better, or takes a bicycle to work
instead of a car, there are a thousand Chinese who are consuming vastly
more than they did yesterday. For every one of us who chooses to have
one child, or none at all, there are one or two planning to have three
or more children right in our own communities, and a thousand in the
third world planning to have more than that, especially if they can
make their way to our affluent countries and have them here, where they
can live the dream of unsustainable excess that was our dream just a
generation or two ago. Nothing less than a revolution in human thinking
and human behaviour will be enough to save the world, and it may
already be too late.
One of my readers told me recently that what makes my environmental writing both accessible and sometimes agonizing is that:
- It is as if I am constantly trying to convince myself that
what I am writing is correct, so that my readers get caught up in my
internal struggle with my own ideas and ambivalence (which sometimes
reflects their own),
- I seem to be pushing myself towards a tipping point that will cause me to change everything in my life and rededicate myself to being the radical change that I claim is needed, rather than just writing about it, and
- I seem to be looking for reassurance that by writing about
needed change I will bring about enough changes in others that I will
not have to make a radical change in my own lifestyle.
On the first two scores she is probably right. But on the third score,
I no longer have illusions that my writing alone, and any changes I can
help bring about through AHA! (our fledgling learning and discovery
enterprise), will be enough to prevent me from the need and desire to
make radical changes to the way in which I live my own life. Revolution
is not for the weak of heart, and you can only lead radical change from
the front lines, not from an armchair. Like many of you, dear patient
readers, I am not yet ready for that, and I entirely appreciate your
annoyance with my more strident articles when I seem so reluctant to
practice what I preach.
But I'm getting ever closer. As surely as the Earth is warming, and
precipitating massive changes we can only begin to guess at, so too am
I slowly warming to the realization that I have a very different
destiny than the one I have lived out this far. To those who have
already reached that tipping point ahead of me, who are already out
there fighting that good fight -- I salute you: fare forward, fellow
voyagers. I will see you on the other side.
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12:58:02 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
