Opinion: Love Justice and Climate Change. Tips for Stepping Up Our Action On Climate Change

We continue to make slow progress on climate change in the United States.  More of the population is concerned about the situation, more political leaders are advocating action, and a few businesses are reducing their carbon footprints. But slow progress is not what we need in the climate emergency we are facing. Only dramatic acceleration of our action on climate will give us any chance of avoiding global catastrophe.

With the failure of the Congress to pass the Build Back Better bill and with big businesses mostly trying to improve their PR campaigns instead of actually cutting emissions, it is clear that neither government nor business on their own can be relied on to solve this crisis. Only a very large people’s movement demanding bold action has any chance of accelerating action sufficiently. We have a good climate movement in the U.S. with bold solutions, but it needs far more people actively engaged. I propose that most of us could be more engaged, and all of us could be doing more to get other people join in taking action.

Love
I want to be clear that I do not want you, or me, to do more to help stop the climate crisis out of panic or guilt. Those motivations are not healthy for us and will not build a powerful, long-term, sustainable movement. I want us to act out of love. Love for our fellow human beings all around the globe; love for the many other creatures that share this planet with us; love for the beauty of the natural world; love for children, and grandchildren, and generations of yet unborn children who will live with the results of our action or inaction.

Determined
Some people panic in a crisis, but those who are most effective, become more determined. I think we can be the ones who become more determined and act to address the climate crisis without delay.

A Skill We Each Need
Whether we plan to do just a little more or want to do something big, there is one skill that I think is critical for us to develop. We will each need to become more and more able to decide to act in spite of our inhibiting feelings. Virtually all of us have feelings that what we do won’t make a difference.  Many of us have feelings that we don’t want to be seen as too weird, unreasonable, or extreme as a result of our actions. Many of us feel discouraged, or worse. These feelings, and others, push us to remain small or inactive. Deciding not to let these feelings direct our lives is critical. We can decide to do something more for the climate; we can decide to join with others; we can decide to be different on behalf of our planet and its creatures. Day after day we can choose to act against our feelings of discouragement, insignificance, and conformity.

Will It Make Any Difference?
Early in our lives our efforts to change things may have been ridiculed, or just been ineffective. We’ve often been told that what individuals do doesn’t matter. In Small Works: Little Actions Everywhere, Sarah Lazarovic disagrees. She writes that “a big thing is just a bunch of small things put together.” She offers 5 ways “small things have huge power”. I think we get to decide that no climate action is too small to be significant. We get to decide that we will do our part and also cheer others on.

Decide – Act – Be Pleased – Repeat
I recommend that first we decide that we will do something to address climate change. Then we act, whether we feel our actions will make a difference or not. Then it’s very useful to decide to be pleased that we’ve done something. Then we repeat this process–decide, act, be pleased–over and over again.

The Fetish Of Centrism
Naomi Klein, the author of This Changes Everything, says that “the habit of thought that truly rules our era”– especially among liberals–is a “fetish of centrism – of reasonableness, seriousness, splitting the difference, and generally not getting overly excited about anything.” But as some respected scientists have written, “in the face of an absolutely unprecedented emergency, society has no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization.” Whether we’ve been thinking of ourselves as activists or not, perhaps it’s time for us to be more atypical, more outspoken, and maybe sometimes more dramatic, in our demands for climate action by both governments and businesses.

I Don’t Know What To Do
Many of us feel we don’t know what to do.  One of my earlier posts, “The Only Path to Climate Success?,” offers 7 different actions. You could pick any one of them, or all of them, and get started now. None of them require you to be an expert or know a lot about climate change. As you act, I urge you to get a buddy or a group, so you can cheer each other on and feel accountable to each other for continuing to act, even when you feel discouraged.

In my next post I’ll share more about some of the actions I’ve been taking recently, and make some new suggestions for further action.  Please use the comment box  below to share with me and other readers what action steps you are taking or think would make sense. I’d also love to hear stories about times you’ve acted despite feelings of insignificance or discouragement, and were glad you did.

Russ Vernon-Jones was principal of Fort River School 1990-2008 and is currently a member of the Amherst Community Safety Working Group and of the Steering Committee of Climate Action Now-Western Massachusetts. He blogs regularly on climate justice at www.russvernonjones.org.