All summer, I’ve been traveling and teaching regenerative approaches to our current environmental and social breakdowns, showing people how we can redesign our way of living to meet our needs while healing the environment around us. It’s been an inspiring but very packed trip, with few days when I haven’t been working or traveling, and no time to write long, reflective pieces.
And meanwhile—the Amazon in burning. Fires rage across Africa and the tundra, and instead of responsible global leadership, we have a collection of white supremacist, misogynist, blustering sociopaths making the situation worse.
Ok… But What Can I Do About It?
Someday I will write the long, thoughtful, reflective post about why that’s no accident, about how racism, misogyny and all their kin isms go together with assaults on the earth.
But for now, I see my students and friends in anguish about what to do at this moment. So I offer this:
What can we do about the planet burning?
Take action!
1.Get Involved With the Climate Movement
It’s burgeoning, led by the youth who know that they will live through the worst of what’s coming. Support them!
Do you have friends who are also stressed and angry about the situation? Get together, form an affinity group, and do something! Choose the level of risk that feels right to you, whether that’s a legal march or a risk-arrest bockade.
There are climate actions planned all over the world for the week of September 20-27. I’m so thankful I’ll be home in time to join the action in San Francisco on September 25!
2. Educate Yourself Ecologically
We live in a world of simplistic memes and blanket solutions, but nature doesn’t work that way. She works in complex systems and cycles, not linear cause-and-effect. In permaculture, the single thing we say most often is ‘it depends’.
But here’s the good news—if we think of climate change as massive ecological dysfunction, then the solution is massive ecological repair. And we know how to do that! This is precisely what we teach at Earth Activist Trainings. Join us for an upcoming course!
What we need to do are generally nice things—get off fossil fuels and switch to clean renewables, protect our existing forests, build soil, plant trees, localize production of food and goods, build community.
We absolutely must stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere—and when we do, we stop a hundred other abuses of land and people, from the fouling of Nigerian estuaries to the pollution of Ecuadorian rain forests. We can draw down the excess carbon that is already present—and when we do, we’ll reduce erosion, mitigate droughts and floods, increase soil health and food quality and wildlife habitat.
Knowing this makes me even more enraged at our current stupidities—because nothing truly stands in the way of a healing, regenerating world except the profit-driven greed of a few—and the ignorance and ill-will they mobilize to support them.
We Are Approaching A Critical Mass of Voices
We need a big, loud, fearless, powerful climate movement to pressure politicians and corporations to do the right thing—or better, to take power away from those who use it irresponsibly. Thank Gaia, we have one growing! And thank the organizers of the Sunrise Movement, Extinction Rebellion, 350.org and all the others who have been building this movement for decades!
The power of committed and organized people is the only thing that can counter the entrenched power of the oil interests and their political lackeys.
Take Heart, the Earth is Calling You!
The situation is urgent and grim, and it’s natural to have moments of despair and overwhelm. Acknowledge the feelings, let them flow, and then remember that both the earth and human beings are incredibly resilient and creative.
We were born for this crucial time, to midwife the great transformation, and the earth is calling each of us to bring our unique gifts to make this change. You are part of her team, and there is something in this struggle that only you can do. When we all step up together, when we ally with the great powers of regeneration, we can and will transform the world.
It is very true and deep. Would be awesome to have an option to share this on FB. Cheers
Circle the women! Thank-you.
Sylwia,
You can share on FB just by copying the url on the FB page.