I have a friend who is brilliant, Ivy League educated, decent, and very concerned about the environment. So -- we have things in common...well, one out of four ain't bad.
He is in the hard sciences, and he is not unlike Cassandra. And no one likes a Cassandra. The messenger who brings ill news is often treated like the missive. That said, my friend persists. He moans and groans about climate change, food shortages, and predicts pillaging and mad throngs in the streets. None-the-less, he commutes to his highly-remunerated job (an hour each way), lives in a single-family domicile, and adores travel and acquiring new shiny things.
Here are the two trains that our arguments take, and where the tracks diverge: Me, I think we can implement societal, sustainable choices through individual -- and some government -- action. His stance is that we are...well, stripped down from polysyllable language...screwed. It will take a heroic effort, led by scientists and mandated by governments, to make the change of the magnitude necessary to save our collective hides. And even then... it may still be too late. He bandies about ideas like, "Perhaps a chemical shield to save the ozone," or "There is enough aluminum on earth to make a reflective shield that we would place in the Sahara.”
I take a sunnier stance -- and not because of the glare off of the Sahara shield. For one thing, in my 'hood, mad throngs and pillaging are going on already. There is not the same fear of the unknown. It is home. (Whatever "home" means, but that's a post for another day....)
I suggest that rather the Sahara shield, he could simply fashion himself a tinfoil hat. Then I light one up, puff, and explain that I'm helping fill-in the ozone layer.
Where we differ is that it is my opinion that we can make daily changes that will add up. All of us. The heading towards 7 billion bodies/souls/spirits of us. We can live more communally, re-use and refuse -- before we even get to recycle. We can bicycle. Strip things down, literally and figuratively, and then re-purpose them. There are many, many species of plants (hello Nettles!) that are not on the common menu, but are easy to grow and highly nutritious. There are ways, there are means.
In the end, in may be a bit from column A, some from column B. The hard choices, and the soft sharing. However, there is something in the zeitgeist: We need to do something, probably many things, and soon is preferable to later. Like the search for a soulmate at a bar come closing time, that resolves with a pick up, it'll have to do, until the real thing comes along. The personal is the political; the political is the person.
We do what we can. And then we do some more.
