Purpose

I’m having one of those weeks where the things coming into my life are just a little too coincidental. It’s either that, or it’s the magic of shifting my attention and therefore all of the related content comes into the viewfinder.

This past week has felt like an emotional whirlwind surrounding an issue that I’ve always been extremely passionate about. Today, however, I broke down in tears while harvesting veggies out of my backyard garden. The issue? The harsh reality of climate change’s existential threat to our species and how fast we are speeding up that ultimate fate.

Now, l’ve always considered myself and environmentalist. I have praised myself for doing many of the “crunchy granola” things. I live in Portland, recycle, compost, raise backyard chickens for eggs, grow veggies, never use pesticides, own a single car for a family or four and have bike commuted regularly for the past 10 years. I have been vegan, raw-vegan, vegetarian, locally aware, worked for Whole Foods, vote democratic and progressive and run a local small fitness business with my husband. Now we are relocating in order to become even more sustainably focused and convert our family property in the Hill Country of Texas into a sustainable educational retreat.

So… mostly feeling pretty good about my personal alignment with combating climate change….. until 3 days ago, when plastered all over every major news outlet was “New Study out of Australia: Climate Change Poses Existential Risk to Humanity by 2050”. (Go ahead and Google it. I’ll save you time, though, and link you to the report HERE )

I read the report and felt compelled to further dig, which led me to ordering the New York Times Bestseller: “An Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells, (a New York Magazine journalist, turned unexpected climate alarmist).

Here a snippet, so you get the gist:

“It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. And yet the swelling seas — and the cities they will drown — have so dominated the picture of global warming, and so overwhelmed our capacity for climate panic, that they have occluded our perception of other threats, many much closer at hand. Rising oceans are bad, in fact very bad; but fleeing the coastline will not be enough.”

The book is an extended version of an article published earlier by Wallace-Wells, HERE (please take the time to read)

So, what do we do in the midsts of Doomsday reports, frightening science and increasingly frequent extremely weather and fire events? What do I do as a mother of two small children when experts are reporting a high likelihood of civilization collapse and threatening the existence of humanity on this planet?

I have so much anger, frustration and helplessness and it all came out this afternoon, crying into my nasturtiums as 8 chickens watched me through their run fencing.

Have all of my personal efforts amounted to nothing? Why am I recycling if we are already past the threshold? Am I moving straight from denial to despair without any kind of middle emotional processing stage?

Another article that I stumbled across on Psychology Today, addresses Climate Change Denial and the psychological processes that make up this very real mental state:

“Too Large to Believe

Among the myriad reasons that we shun this problem is its enormity. We aren’t “merely” being told that unless we take action our identities will be stolen, we will lose thousands of dollars, or even that it will take a few years off our lives. What the climate scientists are telling us is that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels the human race faces extinction. We can grasp a potential calamity if we know it is made up and will be okay in an hour and a half. But we resist when that calamity is real, will be spread out over decades, and is of catastrophic proportions that can only be averted if we change almost everything about the way we live”

Yes. All of this. How do we wrap our brains around these prospects? How do we not just give up?

So… after having a good backyard garden-cry, I came inside, started to cook dinner and vowed that I will move forward fiercely as a climate activist like never before. I have a moral duty to the children that I brought into this world. I have to be able to look them in the eyes 10, 20 & 30 years down the road and let them know that when I truly realized how bad things would become and how quickly, that I did everything I could to make the changes needed to curb the worst of it.

I am not perfect and never have been. The more we point fingers at each other for our past mistakes, the more time we are wasting. Make the choice to change now. Make the sacrifices that are needed. Let go of the unsustainable luxuries that we cannot sustain. Welcome new options, simplify, consume less, boycott damaging industries, protest and VOTE.

This is, without a doubt, THE defining issue of our generation.

Nasturtiums in our Portland, OR backyard garden