Hello and Welcome to Me, This, Now

It’s is time to launch my blog. I want to write. I want to talk. I have lots I want to say. I have lots I want to share. I also want to get into it; think and talk deeply about these things with other people who, like me, are thinking about this stuff. Or, maybe somewhere in the back of their minds, stressing about this stuff. And mostly, I want to connect. I want to create a new community.

To this end, I hereby invite my friends and family and colleagues and everyone and anyone out there who is looking for a certain kind of “home” to be part of this effort of mine. Our community will be built around the shared concern about Climate Change. Our community will be about understanding what Climate Change means for ourselves, for our children, for our natural world, and for human civilization itself. It will be about feeling and thinking and talking and understanding. Processing. It will be about lamenting what we’ve lost, and acknowledging what we yet face losing. About discussing what actions we can take as individuals, and as local and global communities. About discovering that we are not alone in this. Discovering that we are not as powerless as we think we are. It will be about getting our heads around the problems that have gotten us to where we are now, and getting our heads around where we want to go moving forward.

The, sort of, “intellectual framework” for all this writing and talking and connecting and motivating is built around a talk I developed years ago, called “You, Me, and Climate Change.” The structure for this talk was in turn gleaned from an interview I heard on public radio years ago (that I still haven’t relocated yet). I was driving in my car back from the airport in Syracuse, NY, some dark cold rainy night. I thought it was Terry Gross’s Fresh Air, but now I am thinking it might have been this interview with Bill Moyers. In any case, the guest was Marshall Ganz, a man I’d never heard of before. Marshall Ganz and his ideas will get his own post, and lots and lots of referencing thereafter, but here’s the condensed version:

Marshall Ganz is an organizer and scholar of movements— as in the United Farm Worker’s Movement, and the Civil Rights Movement. Movements where people finally give up hope that someone else is going to fix the wrongs of the world, and they take it upon themselves to cause the changes in the world they desire to see. Turns out, movements are real things, and they can be studied, and they have patterns. What I heard outlined in that interview was the idea that movements are social phenomena underlain by three stories shared by the people in the movement: a Story of Self, a Story of Us, and a Story of Now. And these three stories in turn grow out of the answers to three questions each of us asks ourselves: “If not me, who?” “If not this, what?” and “If not now, when?” When the shared answers for a community of people are, “me”, “this,” and “now”, then the conditions are ripe for a movement.

Hearing these questions posed in this way resonated with me all those years ago. I have grappled with these questions as they relate to Climate Change a lot in the past decade. I love the natural world as much as anyone I know. I love my children. I love this planet, and the people and the diversity and wonder of it. If I am not willing to do something—something more—about climate change, which threatens all that I love, who would be?

And yes, Climate Change. It’s not as radical anymore to say yes, I’m a believer; it’s real, and it’s scary. As in, we are comfortably and solidly on the track to a significantly less-good world: life-taking floods, droughts, fires, famines, mass extinctions, economic collapse, all too likely to become more commonplace for me to be comfortable with. The end of our civilization? As least in any form we can recognize. I am not afraid to say it out loud, nor should any of us be. And I have discovered, a lot of other people, normal, everyday people, are thinking along these lines too. Privately. The changes our climate is undergoing literally threatens to destroy everything we love. If I am not willing to step out of my norms to do more about Climate Change, what would it take? If not this, what?

And finally, what about when? What am I waiting for? What are we all waiting for? It is not, and never has been, a matter of “too late.” As soon as we understand what we have done, what we are doing, and what is happening as a consequence, that’s the time to act. The best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. The best time to rearrange our lives to maximally mitigate Climate Change? As soon as we come to understand it. The more deeply we understand it, the more deeply we can engage.

A lot of people, even if they believe it is real, still can’t get their heads around how to respond to it, and thus “we” are unable to respond appropriately.

The goal of my blog and podcast and any and all communications I make to this community is to say, “Yes, me, this, and now.” I want to do something, anything, more about Climate Change. And I want to do it now. As fast and as soon and as effectively as possible. You?

But of course, then the question becomes what to do? And that takes us back to Marshall Ganz and the whole idea of movements. For me, what to do it is to create a community. And participate in one. To take all of us who want to do more, want the world to do more, and to help us all develop our community that will serve us to this end. Let’s explore this behemoth together. And while we are at it, let’s create a shared vision of the changes we want, and of the future we want, and let’s develop a shared framework of talking about this. Let’s help empower each other.

So then returning to the three stories of Gantz: the Story of Me, the Story of Us, and the Story of Now. As a person who wants to help motivate and maybe guide others in their journey to “embrace” the reality of Climate Change, I have struggled with the fact that the issues embodied by it are so sweeping that it is hard to organize them. Sure I want to talk, but I am all over the map. There’s my personal story of me and my life and who I am and why this matters to me. There’s the issue itself; emissions and weather and politics and lifestyles and haves and have nots and history and future. So big. So much to understand in the science alone. But then also about us as people, what we think, what we value, what we need, and how we react and how we are now reacting and why.

And what about the urgency. Thoughts must lead to effective action, and fast! We can’t act too fast, but the challenges are so vast and sweeping, we need to be solid, in our hearts and in our heads. How do we mobilize others to get the ball rolling in a significant, unstoppable way?

I think Ganz’s three stories creates a framework for exploring all those things.

Me, This, Now, the blog and eventually the podcast is about exploring the deeper, human side of climate change, with our eyes squarely on the horizon of how that translates, or doesn’t translate, into an appropriate level of action for the severity of the problem.

To end this initial post, I will jump to the biggest punchline I have, which is, in the end, I have come to believe Climate Change simultaneously represents both the greatest challenge, and also the greatest opportunity mankind has ever faced. We can go down with our heads in the sand, or we can rise up and fight for the world we want. We can resignedly accept whatever action the rest of the world manages to put in place, or we can work to make sure whatever is done is bigger, more ambitious, and more sweeping than we can even imagine is possible. The point isn’t the end we come to, but the path we take there. I want to help everyone see the possibilities that Climate Change offers. Because if you look from where I am standing, it isn’t just an inevitable end, it is an epic battle for a new beginning. And that can be exciting. It can be empowering. And around Climate Change, we can all use a good dose of empowering.

So, how does that sound? If it sounds good, join me.