Do we really have time for this? A dialogue

Just received this from my friend Jeff Neuman-Lee.  See my response below.

Do we really have time for this?
A letter to environmental leaders.
by Jeff Neuman-Lee
September 17, 2014

I was at the rally yesterday to greet the demonstrators taking the train to NYC. These things are all good fun and perhaps I should simply take the event that way. We were there to bolster the spirits of those who would spend their time and money to demonstrate the necessity for very rapid movement away from fossil fuels and other human activities which are changing the survivability for humans of earth’s climate toward new ways of powering our human communities and consumption of protein.

But on the part of the majority of speakers, as I heard them, the focus was not simply on the necessity of dealing with our human specie’s climate disrupting behavior, it was also on the necessity of dealing with our social order which has arguably gotten us in this fix. The comments on social order include such topics as social justice and the deficiencies of capitalism. While historically linked, I see these two things as distinct for one simple reason: time.

It took well over one hundred years from the abolitionists to Lincoln to King. And from King to now, well a few of us older folks have experienced how little/much progress has been made. (Why was our rally so white?) We don’t have two hundred years. We have maybe 20 to set new trajectories in our energy and protein production.

We can deal with our climate using very practical means, new technologies, new behaviors (i.e. riding bikes, eating beans, etc.) which can be learned with some rapidity.  And these changes can be made within the current social order.

On the other hand, creating a new set of morals as well as economic exchange, is very problematic. As a religious leader I know “religious” language when I hear it. It doesn’t need robes and buildings, just simply be utopian enough. And that’s what we were speaking to ourselves, a religious code. Of the speakers at the rally, several I count as good friends, I personally agreed with what I could hear of it. But it is a distraction.

I dislike putting it this way because I know in my being that humans are far more than dollars and cents, but in this American culture, that is what speaks. And we have a powerful, economic message that can be heard by most Americans, just not including ourselves. I.e. the price of wind is cheaper in Colorado than any other source of electrical power, the price of PV plummets, storage such as pumped storage is very available, as the price of utility grade batteries is coming down. Other, very promising to be cheaper techs are in the pipeline. Monetary cost is the signal that has the most universal acceptance today.

When we talk in our utopian vision, we enter into religious war with those who don’t like it, for whatever reason.

Our messaging matters. If we are just speaking to ourselves, let’s be clear about it and forego the notion that enough others will rally to our side.and adopt from us what they see fit.




     --Thanks for sharing  this, Jeff.  I will share it further on my blog.  Not because I totally agree with everything you said, but because it deserves to  be heard and considered. My own response is that you are right, but also that only government action can create behavioral change on the level and to the degree that is needed to avert catastrophic climate change.  Maybe that is what you are saying, as well. So the Climate March is one effort to impress the necessity of government action upon the world's leaders.  Now, I'm pretty sure that those leaders, or at least those among their advisors, are aware of the facts and the realities which you cite. But I also believe that those facts and realities are not enough to spur them to the action we need from them; if that were the case, I think they would have done so by now.  Only a mass movement of people will motivate those leaders to act with the kind of dispatch that is needed, and only a powerful spiritual/moral message is going to mobilize that kind of mass movement. That's why I'm on the Climate Train, and that's why I spoke the words I did at the rally.  I trust that I am among those friends whom you reference in your letter.

Thanks for your witness, your leadership, your energy, your courage. Adelante!

Nelson


Jeff Neuman-Lee