Aspirations for the Living Earth

Based on an article by Rebecca Solnit in the Guardian

So much is happening to the world that is both wonderful and terrible – and it matters how we see it. We can’t simply erase the bad news, yet to ignore the good is the route to indifference or despair

This is as true of climate chaos as anything else. We are hemmed in by stories that prevent us from seeing, or believing in, or acting on the possibilities for change. Some are habits of mind, some are industry propaganda. Sometimes, the situation has changed but the stories haven’t, and people follow the old versions, like outdated maps, into dead ends. We need to leave the age of fossil fuel behind, swiftly and decisively. But what drives our ways of doing things won’t change until we change what drives our ideas.

In order to do what the climate crisis demands of us, we have to find stories of a liveable future, stories of popular power, stories that motivate people to do what it takes to make the human world a better place in which to live. Perhaps we also need to become better aware of how things are, better listeners, more careful about what we take in and from who’s telling it, and what we believe and repeat, because stories can give power – or they can take it away.

To change our thinking about the Living Earth– to end an era of profligate consumption by the few that has consequences for the many – means changing how we think about pretty much everything: wealth, power, joy, time, space, nature, value, what constitutes a good life, what matters, how change itself happens.

As the climate journalist Mary Heglar writes: “We are not short on innovation. “We’ve got loads of ideas for solar panels and micro-grids.” While we have all of these pieces, we don’t have a full picture yet of how we can build an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on Earth  . Up to now the climate debate has been limited to scientists and policy experts. While we need their skills, we also need many more practical ideas and positive action.

Global warming has been a story that fell on mostly indifferent ears when it was first discussed in the mainstream media around 50 years ago. Even 20 years ago, it was supposed to be happening very slowly and in the distant future. There were a lot of references to “our grandchildren’s time”. It was a problem that was difficult to grasp – this dispersed, incremental, atmospheric, invisible, global problem with many causes and manifestations being expressed by the general public.

The voices from the various climate movements have finally succeeded in making many, many more people across the world understand it, and many care passionately about what is happening to the Living Earth. This might be the biggest single victory the climate movements have so far achieved. Because once you’ve won the popular imagination, you’ve changed the game and its possible outcomes. But this was a long, slow, arduous process, and misconceptions still abound.