Hello hello,
How many articles or people on Twitter or politicians standing on podiums have told you today, and any other day for that matter, that you need to do more to save our planet?
The question is posed as if it came directly from the mouth of Mother Nature.
“What have you done today to save our planet, chirp?”
Yet, the context from which it actually comes couldn’t be much further away from any sense of a natural world, where people live in harmony with the environment and the elements and the, erm, eagles.
It comes from inside a system in which the “doing your bit for the environment" story is always—often unconsciously—followed by the silent whisper “but only if it keeps the economy growing”.
In other words, you can keep buying your new clothes and new furniture, you can have that brand new electric car, and you can have your multi-million dollar international organic selfie stick business that you built from the ground up, but only, only if you be a good boy or girl and recycle, rideshare, and maybe give a small portion of your profits to a cause that will help future generations.
And if you do that, then wow! Look at you. You’re doing a heck of a lot to save our planet. Thank you child.
BS.
A better question that may be closer to what Mother Nature might actually say, apart from chirp chirp, is:
“What have you not done today to save our planet, chirp?”
This is a much less popular question. Rather than building grand initiatives and making overt gestures and becoming seen as an eco-hero, it means making silent sacrifices and trading in convenience, comfort, and saving money for taking extra time out of your day, discomfort, frustration, smelly hair, and potentially fewer holidays.
But, I hear someone say, can’t we have them both? Can we not have the utmost in convenience, comfort, and profit and a healthy, flourishing, happy planet?
The mainstream narrative leads us to believe that rapid and constant growth is the way we will save the environment while continually improving our "quality of life". But all the while it conveniently goes ignored that rapid and constant growth is a major cause of environmental destruction and the continual degradation of our quality of life.
The illusion that as long as we keep growing we will solve our's and the world's problems while having everything we could ever want at a good price and not having to think about where it came from is not just an illusion that isn’t sustainable, it’s the grand illusion that obscures our view of how things really work, and thus what the world, and ourselves, really need.
You don't need to set up a massive organization or invent a new whirlygig or go to a prestigious university for ten years to get a Ph.D. in Environmental Science to look after the environment. It's not a question of how much you can do. It's a question of how little you can do. How much you can do without. How much you can sacrifice. How much pleasure and convenience and wealth and time you can give up in place of serving something other than yourself.
This story isn’t popular because it isn’t easy. Or sexy. It’s difficult, boring, and lonely.
But, News Flash, life is difficult, boring, and, sometimes, lonely.
Most of the stuff we do in life is in an attempt to deny, obscure, or get rid of these realities. But to no avail. What makes us think taking the same approach to saving the environment, by finding solutions that will make the problem of climate change go away so we can continue living in our separated illusion, is going to work?
Don’t get me wrong. Doing less and little is not the same as doing nothing. Quite the opposite. When we’re less inclined to keep ourselves busy all the time and buy tonnes of stuff for no good reason other than because it feels good and its good for the economy, we can instead come to untangle ourselves from what we’ve heard and learnt is true and come to find out what is really true for ourselves.
That may sound a bit woo woo. And it is. But it's also the most practical and natural, albeit difficult, thing you can do to discover what you, and therefore the world, really needs.
Told you it was woo woo.
So, I don't know about you, but for Earth day, what I did and I'm going to continue to do for the world is: much much less.
Chirp.
Joe