I’ve been pondering. Too much, I think. But please indulge me…
My Background: The Red Button.
When I was in high school in the -ahem- late 80s, it was the end of the Cold War. Like my grandfather’s generation grew up seeing the world through the eyes of the Depression, I believe I have grown up seeing the world through the eyes of the Cold War. When I was a child I had a recurring nightmares of a nuclear war. People used to talk about that “one red button” that could instantly eliminate life on earth.
That idea gave some of us an urgency to do something quickly or perish. I created a Sister Schools Committee in my high school, through the Sister Cities Committee of Seattle. Together students and teachers arranged peace parties and we invited Soviet children to come here and stay with us. Hundreds. And the next year we went there, to the big unknown USSR.
The idea was to bridge understanding between our peoples, and to make new friends. These friendships, we thought, would then be a personal motivation to put pressure on our governments to… well, not kill our new friends.
That one red button was a motivator for real, quick change. And I won’t say we school kids in Seattle ended the Cold War. But throughout the world actions like ours occurred simultaneously. We all pressured our leaders who did finally meet and come to an agreement, and we successfully pressured Congress to fight the Star Wars programs. And today we are alive.
Our New Red Button.
Climate Change.
If we don’t do something quickly, we will lose our planet as we know it.
There are other pressing issues in our world, too. Peak oil, the possibility of a global pandemic, worldwide environmental destruction and species extinction, seemingly endless wars around the world, genocide…. These are not things I take lightly. But if we irreparably change our climate to the point of no return, there will be more wars, more extinction, more genocide, more widespread diseases.
Peak oil will exacerbate the problem, as we will have fewer means of transportation and global communication, higher costs of importing and exporting and rescuing people and other species affected by climate change, higher medical costs, increased scarcity and higher costs of food, and a myriad of other issues that will confront us over time.
What Do We Do About It?
That is a big question. And I’m not alone in asking this question: some of us have had a great discussion here. Chile and I have been discussing it in a recent post of hers. Green Bean and I discussed it as it relates to what books to read for inspiring solutions here. Several of us discussed how to build a community in the comments of this post and this one. Finally, there is some discussion in the comments here about where our personal sustainability movement can go from here.
I joined two challenges this month. Green Bean’s Bookworm Challenge is one, where she inspires us to read an ecologically-relevant book for this month (and last month). Last month I read Deep Economy. This month I’m reading Fight Global Warming Now: The Handbook For Taking Action In Your Community.
And I joined Chile’s Quit Now Challenge, where she inspires us to quit an addiction we have, before it becomes more difficult to quit. For this challenge, I chose to give up complaining about what’s wrong and focus on figuring out how to make it right.
I am in a phase where I’m focussing on solutions rather than dwelling on the problems we face. Because I believe I know what our problems are, and I don’t really want or need to know too much more about the details. Incrementally we are seeing changes in food and gas prices, in fires and floods and famine, and in environmental devastation. I know it’s going to happen, and I prefer not to dwell on each increment as it plays out.
I also know we are dealing with a finite time before we do reach a tipping point in our planet warming. And I have a finite time every day to work on this.
What Are The Solutions?
I would like to focus my own life on how to make it better. And as I see it there are two main things we as everyday humans can do:
1. Redefine Normal in our own lives and lifestyles. This requires living locally and sustainably. This requires reducing our carbon output substantially.
2. Help change the world at a global scale.* Individually, we can reduce and live sustainably. But we are but a few. We need to be a bigger population, we need to form a community of like minds. We need to spread the word to others, to motivate others to change. We need a tipping point of awareness and, more importantly, of action. And we need to help mitigate the current and future damage, to help other people and species who are affected by our past actions.
How Do We Do It?
If you read some of the comments and discussions I linked to above, you’ll have read some of my life story. You see, after the work I did in the late 80s, I literally set out to change the world. (Singlehandedly, of course!) I went into a great amount of debt studying ways to create change. (This is what I mean by pondering too hard!)
Here is my abridged journey to find a career path and a life path:
I began in cultural anthropology, thinking that I could preserve disappearing cultures so that their lives were not for nought, that they could be remembered, and we could learn from them in the future.
Then I pondered law - was that the answer, to fight large corporations at an international level? Was it politics, where policy is made and unmade? Was it social marketing, which creates sustained change within specific populations?
Eventually I decided to enter the visual media world, first as an artist. But I felt this wasn’t reaching a large enough audience. So eventually I became a documentary filmmaker, thinking I could speak out with my voice to an extremely wide audience. I also studied policy and social marketing, and along with the power of emotions, they have become extremely useful in that field.
I’ve continued to be a documentarian, but I’ve also become a blogger. I found that with a blog I can interact with people on a daily basis. It is an interactive media, where we bloggers all work together with a synergy that just one person cannot create. We change and inspire one another, and we change and inspire our readers. As a group, I think we create more sustained change than any 1.5 hour documentary can. And it’s also extremely personally rewarding.
Still, every day I wonder what I should write about, what I should focus on. And every day I wonder if this is enough.
So I read more about finding solutions, about communicating, about creating sustained change in the world. Essentially, I’m still stuck on #2. How do we participate at a global level? How do we spread the word? What is the word to be spread? And how do we inspire others to change? What is the solution? How do we motivate the world’s people to save the planet?
Questions…
In addition to those really small questions I just posed (ha!), will you help me? I can’t stop thinking about this, so anything, any thoughts or ideas would be helpful!
What inspired you to change your lifestyle? Do you read about what’s happening now? Does the fear of the future scenarios help motivate you to do something now?
Or do you ignore all things pessimistic, does all that news drive you to depression or too much anxiety to do anything? Do you feel you should even bother helping others, and instead focus on preparing your family?
Or do you read my words and others’ for other reasons? Do you focus on your food sources, gardening, simplifying or frugality, rather than these global scenarios?
What motivates you to live this current lifestyle? What motivates you to redefine normal? What motivates you to act on a personal level? Do you act on a global level, and if so, what motivates you to do so?
