The Push-me, Pull-you Climate Crisis
Can Changing Out Lightbulbs Really Stop Climate Armageddon? | ISSUE 14, April 27, 2019
THE-SHORT-OF-IT: We usually publish short, punchy stuff. This is the first of occasional articles and essays. PS: Subscribe to the free CCT newsletter here and pass it on to friends. We also just launched a new Twitter feed: @TimesClimate. Follow along.
A Joshua tree “in the round” from the Mojave desert by David Imbrogno. For more of his work, visit cowgarage.com. (Yes, we’re related, but he has more hair.)
By DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO | Push-me, Pull-you conversation often surfaces on Climate Crisis Twitter. Someone urges personal action on climate change: Electric vehicles! Bicycling instead of cars! Flying less frequently or even better, not at all!
Then, someone barges in with the—quite pertinent—point that these old Earth Day nostrums are way too little. And way too late. The only thing that will save us now is shuttering—today, if not tomorrow night!—the fossil fuel industrial complex. Meanwhile, we must plant a billion trees, mobilize a World War II-caliber planetary de-carbonization and plump up gaunt polar bears.
All of this we should heartily support. (Especially the polar bears.)
But what about taking personal, homespun action? How about reminding self and neighbors, friends, relatives, town, county, shire, et cetera, that you—that we, that I—must change our ways, personally and collectively?
What if we are not famous, powerful and influential? What if we really, really wish to hand off a livable, bearable world tomorrow, to whomever under age 30 you cherish today. (Think of one of them right now. Or maybe you are one.)
Our choices deepen the oily rut of our huge carbon bootprints. Or they can soften the blow that Amazon (Maximus) Prime consumerism, unchecked carnivorous capitalism and screw-the-consequences growth have dealt planet Earth. This one. The planet that, for all intents and purposes, is hooked up as we speak to beeping monitors and squiggly electronic readouts in one very big Intensive Care Unit.
This is a good thing to recall. Daily.
SO, AS A SEMI-PRO Climate Twitter Gawker, I am always pleased to see conversations like the one below, kicked off by iconic climate scientist Michael E. Mann. See the responses to his tweet (including folks taking him to task for a solution not everyone can afford), for the full flavor of the ‘individual action versus unfolding planetary catastrophe’ thing.
Mann—who next to climate scientist and “Global Weirding” podologist Katherine Hayhoe, is one of Twitter’s busiest climate communicators—made the point succinctly in another recent tweet. (The following give-and-take is why I love Climate Twitterati).
The teensy Twitter account Steps2KeepCool, which advocates for those good-old save-the-Earth Day solutions (lightbulbs are involved), tweeted to Mann: “Do you think social media influencers changing small behaviours at scale can give a little more time for action by larger sluggish organizations and governments?”
Good question.
Mann gave perhaps the definitive answer to those who despair that flying less, changing to LED bulbs, and biking instead of driving to the farmer’s market is a helpless, if not hopeless, drop in the bucket:
I am going to repeat that line: “It’s the beginning, not the end, of engagement on climate.”
BUMP THIS: Short and Sweet Climate Change Tweets
This would make a good bumper sticker.
PS: Send your nominees for new climate bumper stickers to: douglasjohnmartin AT icloud.com
NOW, TWO WORDS FROM THE FRONT: How you do it
Speaking of the future, I will leave you to discover on your own the pushback to global teen activist Greta Thunberg. But this 04.24.19 Sam Knight NewYorker piece, “The Uncanny Power of Greta Thunberg’s Climate-Change Rhetoric,” gets at what riles up climate denialists when a Swedish teenager speaks. And the world listens.
The piece quickly sketches how the recent Extinction Rebellion protest turned London topsy-turvy and got not just England’s but the world’s attention. Then, the piece turns to Thunberg’s ability to master a microphone and adult attention:
The climate-change movement feels powerful today because it is politicians—not the people gluing themselves to trucks—who seem deluded about reality. Thunberg says that all she wants is for adults to behave like adults, and to act on the terrifying information that is all around us. But the impact of her message does not come only from her regard for the facts. Thunberg is an uncanny, gifted orator. Last week, the day after the fire at Notre-Dame, she told the European Parliament that “cathedral thinking” would be necessary to confront climate change.
Yesterday, Thunberg repeated the phrase. “Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking,” she said. “We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.” In Westminster, Thunberg’s words were shaming.
Thunberg is also a master of the pithy response that says it all. Adults, note how it is done.
PS | You Promised Cartoons
I did. This one is by Clay Jones. Please pass this issue forward if it was forwarded to you. Subscribe to the free CCT newsletter here . We also just launched a new Twitter feed: @TimesClimate. Be well. | Douglas John Imbrogno, Changing Climate Times Curator and Concierge