Category Archives: Climate Disruption

June 20, 2012: Narrative(s) from The Left

Last night I joined a smallish group of people to watch “Growthbusters: Hooked on Growth” (wish more people had come*; the film’s too dense yet excellent.) Afterward, Boston writer and activist  Jack Thorndike gave a brief talk. (Jack also attends Friends Meeting at Cambridge.) Still reeling from the film and struck by how much his body language reminded me of his daughter’s—I’ve been lucky enough to be her First Day School teacher a couple of years—I finally tuned in to what Jack was urging: that people from the Left, people of conscience, climate change activists, et al, share our narratives.

So here’s one:

A week ago, I again went to the Davis Square farmers’ market to collect signatures for the “Budget 4 All” (for Massachusetts) referendum. Only this time, it was POURING.

Loathe to get signature sheets wet—we signature collectors had been warned not to spill coffee or damage the sheets in any way—and not possessing enough hands to hold an umbrella, hold a clipboard and, being me, wildly gesture as I explained what this initiative’s all about, I was about to quit when a young woman holding a large box of tomato, basil, and other herb seedlings, walked up to me.

“Where’s your pen?” she asked after politely standing in the rain listening to my (hurried) spiel.

“You really want to do this?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

So like two contortionists just beginning to work on their act, she still clutching her box, we eventually managed to get her vital info on the dampened sheet.

“You’re amazing,” I told her. “I’m gonna blog about you.”

Done.

 

*This film, shown at Somerville’s Center for Arts at the Armory, was the last of the series co-sponsored by Somerville Climate Action and State Representative Denise Provost.

 

 

June 7, 2012: “Only connect.”

As noted before, that Mother’s Day spent with Joanna Macy was, as my Aunt Kay would have said, “only transformational.”

And here’s a significant way I’m feeling The Change:

Having been away for a couple of super-fun weekends lately, I have twice, now, returned home to hundreds of e-mails. Hundreds. And 90% of them are DIRE. “Call this politician!” “Take action!” “Send $$$” “Save (affordable housing, fair elections in Louisiana. . . )” You get them too, right?

But here’s the thing. If I can’t sense the connectedness of a particular action to something greater, something profoundly, cosmically Whole I can feel in that hair-rising-on-the-back-of-my-neck way that I feel about, say, God, I push Delete. No longer will I get swept hither and yon by demands on my time and energy and credit card unless I can comprehend this action’s connectedness to Something Hugely Interconnected & Sustainable & Systemic.

This, too: Joanna Macy said something like “Our intention is more important than effectiveness.”

Which is why I’ve volunteered my time and my energy to collect signatures for a Massachusetts referendum, “Budget 4 All,” that on one level is absolutely hopeless and on a deeper level, all about HOPE.

Basically the referendum says, “Let’s end the war in Afghanistan, let’s close corporate tax loopholes, let’s raise the taxes on people making more than $250,000 and spend that money on things like renewable energy, public transportation, public education, et al.”

Pretty comprehensive, right? Pretty Big Picture, I’d say. Pretty “Hey, guys. Let’s do it differently.” And, of course, this referendum, if it does get on the MA ballot, doesn’t have a snowball in Hell’s chance of actually Implementing Anything!

But here’s the third and last thing. Joanna Macy urges all of us to do work that “reconnects.” Which, as I discovered yesterday when I collected signatures at the Davis Square Farmers Market, is a two-way street. People were so damned grateful to hear that such an initiative is happening! “Really? I love it.” One guy thanked me!

Which, is guess, brings me to another hero in my life: Wendell Berry. Who said something like this: That in his poems he offers hope because that’s the way to pull people in. (He was talking about climate-change work.)

“Only [re]connect.”

 

May 23, 2012: I’m “Going Forth”!

On Mother’s Day, maybe 50 people and I got to spend the day with Joanna Macy, the Buddhist environmental activist—heck, she’s a prophet for our times.

And as they say, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

I was ready to go deeper. I was ready to cry. I was ready to acknowledge my despair, to even pour my heart out re the things that terrify me re climate change to a young man who happens to look a LOT like an ex-husband. (Now there’s a bit o’ fate, huh?!)

And I was ready, spiritually, to have faith that the “that of God” is all of us and in Mother Earth means something. So with gratitude, after honoring my fears and outrage and despair, armed with compassion and insight, I am ready to go forth.

Wanna come along?

 

 

April 27, 2012: Connecting Dots

What a week! Hearing Michelle Alexander speak Wednesday night, Bill McKibben last night. How often do you get to listen to two righteous, profound change agents back-to-back, huh?

But who can bear what these modern-day prophets preach?

* Our supposedly colorblind nation systematically incarcerates men and women of color by the millions; the scope of this 21st century Jim Crow is beyond comprehension—although if you happen to be Black and live in a community eviscerated by this mass round-up of (mostly) men and boys you’re living, breathing what Dr. Alexander preaches.

* Because of carbon emissions, our planet is heating up at an alarming rate, causing unprecedented draughts and floods, hurricanes and alarming weather patterns (shorts in March in New England?)  If we don’t do something NOW we’re doomed.

Yikes.

Here’s what I do: I connect the dots. I see the horrors passionately elucidated by Alexander and McKibben and Chomsky and all those who speak out/have spoken out re “this filthy rotten system” as—are you ready?—symptoms. Symptoms of brokenness.

Somehow this construct lets me feel great compassion rather than despair. And allows me to be humble; always a good thing. Because what can I do? Am I going to heal this planet? Am I going to recreate human nature? Will I eliminate greed, fear of Other, how easy it is for my species to rationalize, deny, distract and distance ourselves from what’s really going on?

Nope.

What I can do is ask Spirit: What am I called to do to heal this broken planet?

What I can do is spend time with others who ask the same thing. Sometimes, like last night, when BMcK said, “When we have ‘a solar spill,’ we call it a sunny day!’ we roar together.

What I can do is “show up,” witness. (It’s truly terrifying how affective a White woman sitting in a courtroom earnestly taking notes can be.)

What I can do is practice mindfulness.

And to praise and be grateful.

 

December 8, 2011: And today’s day-blind star is . . .

U.S. Youth Ejected from Climate Talks While Calling Out Congress’s Failure
Durban, South Africa – After nearly two weeks of stalled progress by the United States at the international climate talks, U.S. youth spoke out for a real, science-based climate treaty. Abigail Borah, a New Jersey resident, interrupted the start of lead U.S. negotiator Todd Stern’s speech to call out members of Congress for impeding global climate progress, delivering a passionate call for an urgent path towards a fair and binding climate treaty. Stern was about to speak to international ministers and high-level negotiators at the closing plenary of the Durban climate change negotiations. Borah was ejected from the talks shortly following her speech.
Borah, a student at Middlebury College, spoke for U.S. negotiators because “they cannot speak on behalf of the United States of America”, highlighting that “the obstructionist Congress has shackled a just agreement and delayed ambition for far too long.” Her delivery was followed by applause from the entire plenary of leaders from around the world.
Since before the climate talks, the United States, blocked by a Congress hostile to climate action, has held the position of holding off on urgent pollution reductions targets until the year 2020. Studies from the International Energy Agency, numerous American scientists, and countless other peer-reviewed scientific papers show that waiting until 2020 to begin aggressive emissions reduction would cause irreversible climate change, including more severe tropical storms, worsening droughts, and devastation affecting communities and businesses across America. Nevertheless, the United States has held strong to its woefully inadequate and voluntary commitments made in the Copenhagen Accord in 2009 and the Cancun Agreement in 2010.
“2020 is too late to wait,” urged Borah. “We need an urgent path towards a fair, ambitious, and legally binding treaty.”
The U.S. continues to negotiate on time borrowed from future generations, and with every step of inaction forces young people to suffer the quickly worsening climate challenges that previous generations have been unable and unwilling to address.


June 2, 2011:Talking about climate change

Just back from a wonderful, five-day trip to Louisville, KY and still in that never-neverland mood when the sensibilities of that quirky city feel pretty real. I can still smell boxwood.

For this trip, my husband and I had opted to stay at an elegant B & B, the Dupont Mansion, in the heart of Old Louisville and one block from “Millionaire’s Row.” So the scene for this B & B’s making-polite-conversation-with-total-strangers-while-having-a-sumptuous-breakfast-ritual was an elegant, high-ceiling, crystal glassware-filled dining room.

Nine times out of ten, under such circumstances, after collectively oohing and aahing over such palatial surroundings, what would most strangers—sleepy strangers—talk about? Of course: the weather.

Except that it seems as if weather, like religion and politics, is not a safe, banal conversation-starter any more.

This became crystal-clear (get it?) one morning when my husband and I sat across the dining room table from three people from—yup—Missouri. After we’d heard the story about being shunted into a supermarket walk-in cooler for almost an hour with forty other shoppers to wait out a tornado, the five of us began looking into our laps.

Bill McKibben’s Washington Post article playing in my head, I was hyper-aware of how fraught, how layered that lap-studying moment was. Because one simply doesn’t say aloud, “Jeez! This weird weather we’re having scares the bejeesus out of me!” to a total stranger.

First of all,  there’s the possibility you’re talking to a climate change denier—and who wants to get into that over fruit cups and french toast?

But I sensed something else in that heads-bowed moment: A still-working-on-it etiquette: One simply doesn’t talk about the scariness of tornadoes and droughts and deluges and violent weather because it IS so terrifying. It’s a kindness not to speak The Truth?

Well, yes and no. Like discussing religion and politics, it’s a kindness to strangers to tread gently. But now that I’m home, I’m pondering what I could have said in that lap-studying moment.

Or asked.

February 19, 2011: Let Go, Let Flow

Today I spent a couple of hours tabling at Somerville’s winter farmers’ market on behalf of Somerville Climate Change. (“That’s a verb?” my mother asked earlier this morning when I’d told her what I’d planned to be doing today.Yes, it is.)

Mostly we SCA folks talked with passersby about our “350 Challenge,” i.e. encouraging 350 Somerville households, neighborhoods, schools to take one positive action towards reducing Somerville’s emissions, encouraging sustainability, etc. And, as you might have expected, the sorts of people who shop at a winter farmers’ market were positive, curious, eager to do their part.

‘Course the “teutonic” me, the me that loves order and charts and graphs and checklists found these 350 Challenge conversations, lively as they were, a little frustrating. “How are we keeping track of who’s doing what? How do people register, so to speak, so their individual action can be counted? Huh?”

But, hey, it’s early days; this challenge is just getting started. So this accounting mechanism will happen. I have faith.

And, besides, the fact that one of the initiatives we’re pushing is around depaving should calm that teutonic me right down:

Fact: Somerville is 77% paved over.

Fact: We had terrible flooding last year.

Fact: Today, when I talked about rain water and “Where will it go?” I saw keen interest in the eyes of my listeners. Ditto, when I showed pictures of SCA depaving a Somerville back yard last fall.

So maybe I should let go of my need for record-keeping and just believe that this shared community concern of impassable streets and flooded basements WILL capture the interest of lots of people who, over time, will contact SCA for volunteer help, guidance, resources.

And when they do, . . .

January 31, 2011: I did it!

Hey, I posted every day for a month—and a month with 31 days, too!

Outcomes:

My meanderings re heat and Light led me to arranging for a Home Energy Assessment.

I got to use the word permaculture.

I discovered all kinds of resources—including my own friends— re ways to conserve heat.

I now receive frequent mailings from Mayors Against Illegal Guns (maybe not the greatest outcome but, hey, anything to support a worthy cause, right?)

I’ve gained a few new readers.

I learned a ton. Like where my electricity comes from.

So maybe I’ll try this posting-every-day-thing again next month? (I only have a few more hours to decide.)

January 26, 2011*: Arright, Already!

This summer, while at Baltimore Yearly Meeting, I went to a wonderful workshop: “God, the Chesapeake and Us.” At its conclusion, participants were asked to promise to do ONE  THING to change how we lived. So, because the woman sitting next to me had mentioned them, I’d promised myself to check out “wind credits”—although I still don’t know what she was talking about. When I returned home, I promptly forgot my promise. (Looking at my notes re that workshop, the workshop leader had lots to say re covenants. Guess it’s a good thing I’m not God, huh?)

But while moseying around while researching how the electricity currently powering this computer, the radio softly playing in the background, my space heater et al, I found this re a New England-based Wind Fund.

[* Written a day early!]

January 24, 2011: Date Scheduled? Check.

Called the number listed on the MassSAVE website and was connected to a pleasant woman in. . . Florida. She connected me to another pleasant woman in Fall River, MA who scheduled our house for a Home Energy Assessment in 4 weeks.

How pleasant was the Fall River woman? When she asked me why I was signing up, I answered, “Because I want to save the planet,” then remembered (not for the first time) that most people don’t get my sense of irony. So I amended my answer to something about my concern re my carbon footprint. She didn’t snicker at that, either.

THAT’s how pleasant she was!

January 23, 2011: Plugging In

When I first opened the envelope, our electric bill seemed higher this month than I’d expected. When I thought about it, the increase seemed easy to explain: my daughter and her family here for a cold, blustery Christmas meant turning on our third-floor space heaters for a week (although NStar’s bar graph re monthly use seems to counter that fact), baby, it’s been cold outside this month and, I’m afraid,  I’ve gotten into the very bad habit of simply turning on the space heater next to my desk.  The bill also announces a 2011 “rate change”, i.e. increase, too.

Gotta admit, this $28.05 increase—not a big deal, really, and certainly within my budget—has nevertheless upset me.

But why?

Well, first of all, because I know about it (lucky me: my husband pays our natural gas bill so I am totally, ahem, in the dark about that expense). And secondly, I realize, upon reflection, that although I have about as much understanding re how natural gas is produced and physically gets to my house as I do about our household’s NStar gas bill, I have a slight understanding of how electricity gets here.

When I think “natural gas production,” nothing comes to mind. Zip. Ah. But ask me to think about an electric plant (is that what you even call it?) and I can easily picture a) a roaring, powerful waterfall making some humungous turbine spin or b) a coal-burning plant doing the same thing. And , yes, it’s not hard to conjure up images of the top-razed mountains I have seen in West Virginia or miners trapped in poorly ventilated and dangerous mines.

But, really, is any coal burned to provide New England with its electric power?

I have no idea. But now that the Home Energy Assessment thing is moving along (I’m calling MassSAVE tomorrow to set up an appointment), maybe my next project this month will be to investigate this.

Stay tuned. Or should I say, plugged in?