Bummed out by relentless rains? Friends lost their homes to forest fires? Feeling sorry for those retreating glaciers, melting ice caps, and starving polar bears? Stuck at the airport with flight cancellations? Your basement’s leaking, and that’s never happened before. You’re rattled by all the uncertainty?
If the climate change blues gotcha, you’re in good company. About half of Americans are anxious about what’s going on. Here’s how I find myself in the other half.
There’s No Free Lunch
I understand that we can’t have the amazing benefits of our industrial society without some costs. We’ve been dumping waste into the environment since the steam engine became a commercial reality around 1800. We didn’t notice we were overwhelming Mother Nature until the 1940s. Now even climate deniers experience the consequences of global change.
Change Is Constant
Cultures constantly evolve in response to their ever-changing situations. Our changing situation led us to this point, and it will lead us beyond. Meanwhile, there’s plenty to be anxious about; global warming bringing extreme weather and species destruction, political and social tribalism with leaders who too often show the very worst of humanity instead of the best, growing inequality and inequity, an unloving and uncaring culture that often seems to be against people instead of for people, and so forth.
Yes, there’ll be major adjustments as we evolve out of this industrial consumer society into whatever form our culture takes next. But the changes won’t feel any greater than when we transitioned into our current form. They were gradual, hardly noticeable until we looked back. That’s probably how it always is. Future generations will likely say of us, “How could people have ever tolerated living like that, mindlessly polluting and consuming? Were they stupid or something?” Can any generation possibly understand the realities that shaped the previous one?
We Aren’t Lemmings
But no matter how loudly the Doomsayers shout, our world is not going to collapse, the sky is not falling. We will solve these problems just as we have evolved through every cultural problem since we invented culture 10,000 years ago. But we will not return to the world we knew. That is gone forever. We have permanently changed our planet, and that change will continue, one way or another.
So please, don’t fall prey to those who seek profit from your anxiety. There are many of them and they do not love you, so do not give them your time.
I’m In for The Ride
I’m actively volunteering in several areas, doing what I can for humanity and the planet. But until there are major cultural shifts, as a child of my culture, I will keep polluting, adding carbon dioxide directly by flying and driving, and indirectly by buying goods and consuming services. When I visit my family in Washington the plane dumps about 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide on my behalf. I accept that, though I wish it were otherwise.
Our current belief in industrial consumerism — that led us to unwittingly modify the planet’s ecological balance — is relatively new. Its 250-year run may soon end, necessarily tossed along with other historic “truths” onto culture’s endless discard pile. That stack holds; slavery, the divine right of kings to remove your property or head, the Roman, Prussian and British empires, the stagecoach, and so on.
Me, I try not to get worked up about things I can’t change. I’m deeply conscious of the issues we face but also thrilled by life’s journey, the exciting evolution of our culture, and the life paths of those I know and love.
If you resonate to our culture of anxiety, try crossing to the other side. You’ll be warmly welcomed.
Thank you for reading.
Barry
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