We are all on this together

These days, many in the environmental movement point out “There is no Planet B!” I prefer to look at it from the perspective that the Earth we’re inhabiting is our Planet B. It’s our only option for the foreseeable future. The way we treat the resources on which our very existence depends makes our Linnaean nomenclature highly questionable. Homo sapiens translates to wise or knowledgeable human. Since the beginning of the Anthropocene, perhaps earlier, the "wise or knowledgeable" categorization has become more and more a misnomer.

I’m old enough to remember (vaguely) life before the initial publication of the Whole Earth Catalogue in 1968. Stewart Brand, the creator, stated the magazine’s purpose with the phrase “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” Looking at our “progress” since then, I’d say we’ve become too much like the Greek and Roman gods, perpetually at war with and pranking one another. The collateral damage has become unacceptable. Mount Olympus is still in Greece, but its continued existence as the home of the gods is questionable. We, as gods in the Anthropocene, face our own existential crises, in part, it looks  like, due to greed; in part due to an increasing inability to trust each other (see yesterday’s posting); and in part due to an apparently insatiable desire for “more and  better” material goods in the lives of many of those participating in the “developed world economies.”

Paul Hawken’s Regeneration follows on his edition of Drawdown. It describes how to end the climate crisis in one generation. What it does not address explicitly, as far as I’ve read, is the necessity of regenerating trust to accompany truth, reverence, respect and compassion. I’m also looking for examples of tolerance to accompany how we stitch together broken strands. Hawken’s model is appealing and offers a framework for success. It’s necessary, but doesn’t specifically include all the pieces to the puzzle which we must solve within the next few decades. The paragraph that follows below concludes Hawken’s introduction to his latest work. It’s the supplemental clue we promised yesterday.

Earth: our “Planet B”
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

This is a watershed moment in history. The heating planet is our commons. It holds us all. To address and reverse the climate crisis requires connection and reciprocity. It calls for moving out of our comfort zones to find a depth of courage we may never have known. It doesn’t mean being right in a way that makes others wrong; it means listening intently and respectfully, stitching together the broken strands that separate us from life and one another. It means neither hope nor despair; it is action that is courageous and fearless. We have created an astonishing moment of truth. The climate crisis is not a science problem. The ultimate power to change the world does not reside in technologies. It relies on reverence, respect, and compassion—for ourselves, for all people, and for all life. This is regeneration.

the earth is a living thing

Lucille Clifton - 1936-2010

is a black shambling bear
ruffling its wild back and tossing
mountains into the sea

is a black hawk circling 
the burying ground circling the bones
picked clean and discarded

is a fish black blind in the belly of water
is a diamond blind in the black belly of coal

is a black and living thing 
is a favorite child
of the universe
feel her rolling her hand
in its kinky hair

feel her brushing it clean

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