I’ve been participating with a local faith community—a Unitarian Universalist congregation. We adopted a covenant which includes these words: we join with one another . . seeking . . ecological sustainability. However, after several years, I’ve seen no actions resulting from those words. Every Sunday folks drive their cars to church, spewing about a ton of carbon. The uninsulated meeting house is heated with fossil fuel. After the service a fellowship hour takes place in an adjacent old house, heated with fossil fuels, uninsulated. I found the disjuncture between words and action too jarring and stopped attending services.
But last Sunday I got a phone call asking me to come and look at the church’s 4th of July Parade float. I designed the float three years ago. It’s powered by two bicycle riders.
Late Sunday morning found me in the Fellowship Hall talking with some UU friends and acquaintances. One man, who invested $207,000 in solar thermal panels and a ground source heat pump system for his home, told me he believes Americans will not take the actions necessary to avert climate catastrophe. A woman passing by overheard his comment, and, smiling, said, “They just don’t get it, do they?”
I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut. I believe we need to be at zero carbon emissions right now, and need to be removing carbon from the atmosphere until it’s below 350 ppm. This woman and her husband each drive fossil-fuel-burning cars, live in a large fossil-fuel-burning waterfront home in suburban sprawl, and as far as I know have done frick-all to reduce their carbon emissions. Yet somehow she has concluded “They don’t get it.”
Her remark haunted me the rest of the day. And the next. I began wondering, “What is she thinking? She’s an intelligent, well-informed, good-hearted person. How has she managed to overlook her part in exacerbating climate disruption and place all the blame on ‘them’?”
It’s not just climate disruption. There’s the Gulf oil spill, the cancer epidemic, poisons and carcinogens in our food, water, air, and soil; animals going extinct, fish populations sadly depleted or gone, oil wars the presidents say will never end. This list has no apparent end either. This information is frightening, it makes me feel helpless, it makes me feel sad and discouraged, it makes me feel complicit and guilty. How am I to respond?
One option is to block it out-- to not think about it. In response to my last post, one reader e-mailed me: “Try not to think about the Gulf.” A friend told me, “Why do you choose to think about depressing things? I choose to think about joyful things!” I understand this impulse. However, I liken it to the good people of Germany under Hitler’s rule who chose to not think about the holocaust.
A second option is to let it in. Let it in to my mind and heart. Then what will happen? I will feel frightened, helpless, sad, discouraged, complicit and guilty. How do we normally respond to overwhelming feelings like these? One typical response is fear—fear that we’ll fall into a deep depression and never emerge.
That fear leads to numbing out my emotional side. On the other hand, if I have the courage to let it all in, I’ll find myself going through the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief.
1. Denial: “Oh my God! It’s not really happening; it’s not true. It’s a liberal hoax!”
2. Anger: “Dammit, why don’t they do something about this!”
3. Bargaining: “If I recycle my plastic water bottles, and use a cloth shopping bag, then I won’t have to feel these feelings, will I?”
4. Depression: “No one seems to care or is doing anything about theses things. It’s hopeless.”
5. Acceptance: “Yes, I’m part of this whole problem. I don’t know what to do. But I’m going to start finding solutions.”
I’m going to put a reminder on the dashboard of my car: THIS CAR IS A DEATH MACHINE. I want to be reminded every time I drive it that I’m adding to climate disruption. I want my passengers to know I own the responsibility, the guilt, the complicity.
Cars are death machines.
Making cars kills ecosystems.
Collisions kill millions of humans.
Animals are crushed into the asphalt,
one million per day in the USA! One million!
Exhaust gases cause climate disruption.
Armies kill to take oil to fuel cars.
Don't try to tell me cars aren't death machines!
I’m not stuck in depression. Yes, every day I witness thoughtless behaviors, thoughtless destruction, people spraying toxic substances on so-called weeds in their asphalt driveway, substances now in the air, soil, water, food, causing cancer and brain tumors. Today on my bike ride I removed seven dead animals, my brother and sister animals, from the streets. What tragic deaths!
Yet I also felt the joy of seeing an osprey soaring high overhead, seeing and smelling flagrantly lush roses and peonies, feeling the sea air on my arms and chest, the warm sun on my back. I’m letting it all in. How about you?
In other words, I let it all flow through me. Some of it hurts me; some if it thrills me. I received help in arriving at this place: Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects. I would never have been able to do this alone. I needed a wise elder to lead me in group exercises where the walls numbing my heart were able to crumble. Corporate America wants to keep us isolated; locked in fear, unable to open our hearts to Corporate Destruction. If you’d like to explore The Work That Reconnects, there are likely trained facilitators in your area. Find one. Sign up for a workshop. Come back to life.
As far as I can see, the statement issued by the evangelical churches has accomplished frick-all. I think/feel the energy of that initiative, and others like it, goes no deeper than the level of ego and intellect, failing to be empowered by soul. Soul? Yes, soul, the level of the gods. Or Higher Power. Or however you name that which is greater than you. If you do. It’s apparent to me that we humans, guided by ego and intellect, are still fouling our own nest. We’re certainly fouling the Gulf of Mexico, the seas it’s connected with, and the shores of those seas.
I spent several years in a twelve-step program-AlAnon. One of the many things I learned there is a person does not change addictive behaviors, regardless how self-and-other-destructive the behaviors are, until the person hits bottom. It took hitting bottom to get me into the program. Up to that point I did not believe I was like “those people”. Now I get that I am exactly like those people.
We in the USA are going to have to hit bottom before we kick our oil addiction and other addictions that are murdering uncountable forms of life on Earth. I think we’re gonna have to hit real hard. At the moment it’s still too easy to pull our big fat black SUVs up to the gas pump and fill ‘er up with $2.75 gas. I don’t know about your gas pump, but the one where I buy gas only reads in dollars, not lives lost in the Middle East, the Gulf of Mexico, Africa, South America. Nor the horrors likely to be visited upon future generations as a result of climate disruption and the myriad other crimes against Earth we’re nonchalantly committing each and every day.
I’m not qualified to predict when or how we in the USA are going to hit bottom. There are smarter folks than I who have given it a great deal of thought. Chris Martenson posted a new report this week, in which he states: “Our date with an oil supply shock now seems probable for the 2011 to 2012 timeframe.” And: “It would not be too strong to suggest that our federal commitment to energy efficiency is a farce.” I highly recommend his Crash Course as a basic primer in what’s likely coming your way in the next few years. The Crash Course is, IMHO, concise joyful learning at its best.
Another more-qualified-than-I is Johan Galtung, founder of the field of peace and conflict studies. He is a guest on Democracy Now this week, and his prediction is: “(The US is) an empire against a wall; an empire in despair; an empire, I would say, in its last phase. My prediction . . . is it cannot last longer than 'til about 2020. And that could lead to (fascism) or the blossoming of the US. . .”
So what am I doing in the midst of oil spills, oil shocks and collapsing empires? In July I’m moving to central Maine, where I’ll explore acquiring multi-family properties and renovating them into zero-emission true communities. I don’t know if the numbers will work, but I don’t know what else to do. Gotta try something! As my life coach Kerry says, ”Jim, throw some spaghetti on the wall! See if it sticks!” Wish me luck!
