Ten days before the event, I turned my attention to Earth Day. I reflected back over the years and the slow change in my own attitude towards environmental concerns. It was not that I did not care, but I was much more occupied with other matters and other issues.
It is somewhat startling to know that 2020 is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and that for 48 of those years I hardly noticed the annual event. Last year I felt a vague desire to observe Earth Day in some way and I did. This year I want to focus on it deeply for a sustained period of time.
I am a fan of Maria Popova and she is a fan of Rachel Carson. Popova has many posts on her wonderful blog brainpickings tagged "Rachel Carson." One of these is The Writing of “Silent Spring”: Rachel Carson and the Culture-Shifting Courage to Speak Inconvenient Truth to Power.
Popova writes, "But the more Carson studied and wrote about nature, the more cautious she became of humanity’s rampant quest to dominate it. Witnessing the devastation of the atomic bomb awakened her to the unintended consequences of science unmoored from morality, of a hysterical enthusiasm for technology that deafened humanity to the inner voice of ethics."
Popova quotes from a letter written by Carson to her best friend, Dorothy Freeman: "This is a book about man’s war against nature, and because man is part of nature it is also inevitably a book about man’s war against himself."
I do not know when I first became aware of Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring but it was probably as a teenager. In hindsight, sadly, neither she nor her book had much impact on my life. From the vantage point of 2020, her impact on society was far less than it could have been or should have been.
In 1988 I reached a level of management that qualified for a company car. Under the program employees could choose any make and model. I choose a Ford LTD Crown Victoria with a 5.0 L motor, a powerful V8, a gas guzzler. I loved that car and drove it for fourteen years. I knew I was burning a lot of gasoline but I did so with little awareness of the contribution I was making to global warming. I also had little awareness of how a car selection could be influenced by our ego needs. When my Crown Vicky reached the end of its useful life I made a very different decision. In 2002 I bought a Toyota RAV4 with a 4 cylinder engine. By that time I was somewhat more environmentally aware.
As with many others, a significant factor in the evolution of my attitude was the work of Al Gore as Vice President in the Bill Clinton Administration. I had some awareness of the importance of the Kyoto Protocol. I was very aware of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth but I do not remember when I saw the film. Later I became aware of criticism of Al Gore. As the years went by I increasingly became concerned about the politicalization of the global warming issue and the extreme polarization it generated.
When Pat and I built a new home in Ajijic, we quickly decided to purchase solar panels. We had heard Don Aitken speak about climate change at Open Circle several times. We now felt a desire to be part of the solution. I estimate that my carbon foot print here is less than 10% of what it was living in Calgary. In addition to using solar power, I now no longer need to heat a home in the cold Canadian winter. And I now no longer need to drive forty minutes to go to work. And now Pat and I walk as much as we can. I now drive a Nissan Xterra which after eight years has accumulated only about fifty thousand kilometers. Saving the environment was not my motivation for moving to Mexico but I do get more than a little satisfaction from my small carbon foot print currently.
Last year I organized a Lakeside Pathfinders meeting for April 22, 2019 but I had only a vague sense of why meeting on that date felt significant. The concept did not resonate strongly with other members. We had a fine meeting but the connection to Earth Day was weak.
In 2019 I became aware of a new movement which had started in 2018, Extinction Rebellion. Its growth has been remarkable and currently its website shows 213 upcoming events worldwide. I was impressed by the simplicity of its demands. I was inspired by its sense of urgency. "The science is clear: It is understood that we are facing an unprecedented global emergency. We are in a life or death situation of our own making. We must act now."
In 2019 I became aware of a young girl, Greta Thunberg, bursting on to the world stage. On YouTube I watched her speak to the UN - Greta Thunberg full speech at UN Climate Change COP24 Conference. And along with others now numbering in the millions, I felt her anger - In full: Climate activist Greta Thunberg rebukes world leaders | A New Climate.
But Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg were, in hindsight, only small steps in a longer journey. Until last year my attitude changed at a relatively slow pace. However, a series of steps, which I have documented elsewhere, led me towards more radical change when I found The Dark Mountain Project. I quickly learned that this organization had existed for ten years before I became aware of it. Until now, I have shared this with very few people.
Unlike many on the dark mountain, I do not have the soul of a writer or an artist or a musician. Yet the Dark Mountain resonated deeply with me immediately. I felt drawn to it again and again. I read UNCIVILISATION: THE DARK MOUNTAIN MANIFESTO. Uncivilisation was a new concept to me which I explored. Currently I am following their "ongoing series of reflections on life in the current pandemic." The latest article in the series is On the Wisdom of Rabbits in Plague Years. These articles are not written in a style that I am usually attracted to yet I find them strangely meaningful. And in 2019 I found other thinkers who opened radical new ways of thinking to me, which I have explored and documented elsewhere.
My trips to the dark mountain led me to Twelve Characters in Search of an Apocalypse by Andrew Boyd, someone who I had never heard of. The character that I most identified with was Better to be hopeful. Like Boyd, now I Want a Better Catastrophe.
Also in 2019 I met Linda Joy Stone in somewhat puzzling circumstances. But I felt a strong connection with her, perhaps an illusion, perhaps not, time will tell. Our growing friendship has certainly been interrupted by the coronavirus, although we have been sharing information of interest. I like meeting people who have a public presence as it accelerates the getting to know you phase of a relationship. Linda has a blog and I read several of her posts.
I was moved by Linda's blog post of last December - A PLEA FOR A WORLD-WIDE GRIEVE-IN. I too feel a need to grieve although the object of my grief is different, but very much related, to hers, as I will explain. It was these thoughts and ideas which inspired the Joy and Sorrow theme for this year's Lakeside Pathfinders meeting on Earth Day. Linda shared her original essay with me, From Love-ins to Grieve-ins.
Two other apparently separate threads have very recently nicely come together. Amongst the other thinkers I found in 2019 were Rebel Wisdom and its associates. "When our existing assumptions and ways of thinking break down, it's the rebels and the renegades, those who dare to think differently, who are needed to reboot the system." Almost everything this group does makes sense to me. Very recently my good friend David Bryen shared an essay with me and others stating, "The Coronation by Charles Eisenstein is by far the most penetrating evaluation of the very strange times we are living. I encourage you to read it, chew on it, bring the ideas out in the open with your friends, share this with others, and dive through our fears and opinions to think about the impact of these times on the quality of life we live." It is a long essay but my own thinking very much aligned with it. And then I noticed an interview of Charles Eisenstein by Rebel Wisdom, An Epidemic of Control, and after watching it I thought it was even better than his essay. And also very insightful is the most recent essay by Eisenstein, Extinction and the Revolution of Love, in which he wisely discusses what Extinction Rebellion is really all about.
I have now shared a lot of information and I know most people will not follow me in the direction I am going, and I am fine with that. I will summarize the conclusions I have reached. I believe that we homo sapiens have built a very fragile civilization that is in danger of collapse. It seems that every step of progress carries with it unintended consequences that are very problematic but remain hidden until it is (almost) too late. The global warming crisis teaches us that if we are to save our planet we must kill the economy and if we are to save the economy we will kill the planet. The coronavirus crisis is now rapidly exposing the fragility of civilization in a way that would have taken decades as a result of global warming. Now to save lives we must kill the economy but if we save the economy we will kill people. And looking back over my life, I realize that I have been a willing participant in all of this, fully complicit, too slow to learn, too slow to act, too blind to see. All of this is what I want to grieve.
But I also want to maximize my personal well-being, and the well-being of others I am connected to, as well as the well-being of my community and the world. We must also find joy while we grieve. I share the excitement of those who sense that human beings are on the verge of some significant breakthrough although I must also confess to much skepticism. As the journey continues I am motivated by some encouragement I found someplace last year: find the others. Yes, find the others who are like-minded so that we do not walk alone.