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| Nabatean City of Petra in Jordan: Al Kazneh |
Yuletide, Solstice, a time of darkness and a time of light, a time of the year thoughtful people make resolutions not to eat so much candy. Maybe because my recent writerly project turns on introspection, or maybe because I temporarily lost my mind, I was just about to pop for my last hurrah: a trip to Jordan where the most exquisite desert in the world, Wadi Rum, offers the kind of landscape where centuries ago prophets went on vision quests, and came back with such artifacts as manna and the ten commandments.
And then I couldn’t. I
couldn’t because just before I pushed the ADD TO CART button, this article
appeared on my computer screen:
How to Help My Daughter
Face Climate Change With an Open Heart by Chris Moore Backman, (appearing originally in Yes! Magazine) which,
with its author’s very kind permission, I republish here:
When the
wildfires were still raging in California, my 12-year-old daughter and I rode
Amtrak north from Oakland to Sacramento. Nearing Berkeley, we caught our first
glimpse of the gray-brown wall of smoke issuing in from Sonoma, Napa, Lake,
Mendocino, Butte, and Solano counties. After riding 10 or so miles further on,
the illusion of the wall suddenly dissipated, and we found ourselves speeding
along in a fog of fine ash, our train blanketed in its opaque haze.
Gazing into the
smoke, my daughter seated beside me, I considered the stark difference our
awareness of global warming created between my childhood and hers. And I felt a
deep anxiety stir in my belly.
“At first, we didn’t know what we were
doing. It was reasonable for us to start burning fossil fuels.”
What happens to
a child’s psyche, I asked myself, as she gradually absorbs the knowledge that
our planet is warming at a terrifying rate and to an unimaginably dangerous
degree, then quietly observes the adults in her life, particularly those most
responsible for caring for and protecting her, doing the very things that are
causing the emergency? What happens as she observes the mundane spectrum of
everyday life in the United States amid climate chaos: as dad pulls the car up
to the pump, as mom comes home from the airport after a business trip, as the family
sits down to another meat and factory farm-based dinner, iPhones at the ready
and the thermostat cranked to 70?
I turned my
gaze from the smoke and looked again at the book in my lap, Being the
Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution, by climate scientist
Peter Kalmus. The page I had been reading would eventually lead to here: “Few
people respond to facts… While intellect certainly plays a role, it’s a rather
small one. Our dire ecological crisis calls us to go deeper.”
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| River of Sand: Wadi Rum (wadi means river) |
In his famous
meditation on children, Kahlil Gibran likens parents to the bows of the divine
archer, from which children, like arrows, are sent forth into the mystery of
their own souls and futures. The beloved bow, Gibran attests, sends the arrow
swift and far, by bending to the archer’s strength, while at the same time
remaining stable. Such flexible stability is what I long to achieve as a
parent—a certain rootedness and strength of purpose, mediated by gentleness.
It’s what I believe I need if I’m going to accompany my daughter as she learns
to face the coming storms—and fires—with her eyes and heart open.
So it is that
I’m gravitating toward the solace and instruction of other dads these days, the
more humble and down-to-earth the better. Kalmus, father of two young sons, is
one such dad.
“At first, we
didn’t know what we were doing. It was reasonable for us to start burning
fossil fuels,” Kalmus says early on in Being the Change. “However, now
we do know what we’re doing.”
When it comes to social change, how we
live our lives is of paramount importance.
It’s an
exquisitely sane point of departure for the author’s first book, which reads as
an openhearted letter to anyone deeply concerned about global warming and at
all cognizant of how quickly the climate change clock is ticking. Being the
Change details Kalmus’ process of bringing his daily life into alignment
with his conscience—a process that carries some very welcome side effects:
namely, a carbon footprint weighing in at one-tenth the U.S. average, greater
happiness, and deepened connections with loved ones and life itself.
As a climate
expert utterly in the know about humanity’s devastating impact on the health of
the biosphere (see Chapter 3), and with as clear a picture as can be had about
where our civilization’s carbon addiction is leading (see Chapter 4), Kalmus
eventually proves no match for the cognitive dissonance he experiences because
of his own outsized carbon footprint. His chosen response is refreshingly
straightforward: “If fossil fuels cause global warming, and I don’t want global
warming,” he writes, “then I should reduce my fossil fuel use.”
Although
there’s zero evidence that Gandhi ever wrote or uttered the most popular phrase
attributed to him—“Be the change you wish to see in the world”—the sentiment is
distinctly Gandhian. Finding congruence between our deepest convictions and our
outward behavior, according to this adage, is the true measure of our genuine
happiness, and of our contribution to the world. It’s an old and simple idea:
When it comes to social change, how we live our lives is of paramount
importance. In India, Gandhi captured the heart of a massive social movement
with his own rendering of this basic philosophy. “Nobility of soul,” he
summarized in a letter to his cousin, “consists in realizing that you are
yourself India. In your emancipation is the emancipation of India. All else is
make believe.”
Burning fossil fuel causes harm.
What makes Being
the Change important is not Kalmus’ restatement of this age-old tenet, but
his plainspoken description of putting it into concrete practice. He offers
thorough, humbly stated guidance on establishing new daily practices which,
step by step, can break a person free from the carbon-heavy status quo. What’s
more, through his inspiring and often funny anecdotes about his homespun
experiments aimed at paring down—things like bicycling , growing food,
meditating, embracing a vegetarian diet, and renouncing air
travel—Kalmus
illustrates that overcoming our addiction to fossil fuels isn’t a path of
puritanical self-mortification. Rather, low-energy living (low-energy
being Kalmus’ corrective for green, because of its insidious
consumerist implications) can be a deeply satisfying adventure, calling for
equal parts creativity and fun.
Boiled down, the path Kalmus advocates is based on two simple and, if we’re open to them, life-changing premises.
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| High scarps: Wadi Rum (no vehicular transportation) |
The first is
that burning fossil fuel causes harm. According to Kalmus, this harm will last
for around 100,000 years—10 million years if we count reduced biodiversity (and
why shouldn’t we?). The reason he has taken what to many people looks like
radical steps to avoid burning fossil fuel is that he doesn't like causing
harm. This connection is obvious intellectually, but most people, and society,
have not taken this in deeply enough to change their actions to any significant
degree. Kalmus, the dad, however, feels this connection in his gut. “Burning
fossil fuels should be unacceptable socially,” he says, “the way physical
assault is unacceptable. The harm it does is less immediate, but just as real.”
Who could argue that future generations—likely our own children and
grandchildren—as they suffer the consequences of our negligence, will see this
as plainly as we see the immorality of chattel slavery today.
The second
basic premise of Being the Change is that burning less fossil fuel makes
for a happier life. Despite every message to the contrary trumpeted by our
consumption-driven society, this appears to be the normal experience of those
following similar paths, not the exception.
On these two
premises rests a path of radical personal transformation with deep implications
for the collective. “Using less energy at the global scale would reduce our
greenhouse gas emissions, and serve as a bridge to a future without fossil
fuels,” Kalmus says. “Using less energy in our individual lives,” he further
(and to my mind most importantly) asserts, “would equip us with the mindset,
skills, and the systems we’ll need in this post-fossil-fuel world.”
Returning my
gaze to the smoke, it occurred to me: As soon as the wildfires ran their deadly
course, clean up, then construction, would immediately follow. The set would be
quickly and efficiently reconstructed according to the same basic blueprint
used before. And the reconstruction would undoubtedly be touted as evidence of
inspiring community-resiliency, and probably of a certain American spirit,
rugged and purportedly unique to us.
What if our children saw us respond to
this crisis with maturity, sanity, and integrity?
It occurred to
me also, holding Being the Change in my hands on that smoke-immersed
train with my beloved child beside me, that Peter Kalmus has provided us with a
different blueprint, and he’s shown through his own experimentation that we
have the capacity to choose it, and to use it. On the cusp of climate
catastrophe, we are neither choiceless nor powerless.
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| The gloaming in the desert: Wadi Rum |
At bottom, I
read Being the Change as the testament of a father trying to do right by
his kids—a testament that leaves me with a much different set of questions
about the psychic wellness of our children: In the face of the climate
emergency, what would it do to their psyches to see us, their parents and other
adult caregivers, pouring our hearts into the work of personal and societal
transformation, on behalf of people we will never meet? On behalf of all other
living beings, the rivers and trees and soil? What if our children saw us
respond to this crisis with maturity, sanity, and integrity? With the flexible
stability of Gibran’s bow? What would it do to them, for them, if we came into
resonance with our own souls?
(Chris Moore-Backman and his daughter recently
attended the hearing at the Ninth Circuit where children are suing the U.S.
government for its irresponsibility on climate action.)
I shared Moore-Backman’s
article with my son, a research physicist. This is what he replied: “For the
last three or four years, I’ve been thinking that the increased craziness of
youngsters, certainly influenced by the increasing craziness of adults, must
also be due to the demonstrated lack of care adults show for their children’s
and future generations, evidenced by their lack of care for the environment and
inability to mitigate climate change.” Perhaps I had my son and everyone’s sons
and daughters in mind when I decided at
the time of the Fukushima catastrophe to ditch my car and proceed on foot. I do
not yet use a cane; on bad balance days, I resort to hiking poles.
1. Take the train. (Make sure
the tracks are clear.) Don’t fly (burning jet fuel is highly carbon intensive.)
2. Take public
transportation. (Or walk.) Don’t drive. If you must drive, car pool, stock pile
errands.
3. Take taxis when you’re in
a hurry. Slow down. Ditch your car.
4. Turn off the lights when
not in use.
5. Reduce your garbage output
to compost, and no more than 1 cubic foot per week. Avoid bulky packaging.
6. Buy organic. Patronize
farmer’s markets.
7. Walk lightly. Leave a
small footprint on the Earth.
8. Add to this list.
