“But there is a part of me–call it naive, if you like–that can’t help but believe that somewhere out there in America, all but drowned out by the din, is a native strain of reason that could be cultivated, a peculiarly American kind of common sense and courage that would give us the strength to at least begin an honest discussion about the challenges we face.” Seamus McGraw, Betting the Farm on a Drought
Hurricane Harvey has just upended millions of lives. On the other side of the world, monsoons have upended tens of millions more on the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Will our common sense give us the strength to begin not only an honest discussion, but take the actions we must take for a safer and more just world?
These thoughts and McGraw’s hope and the stories that follow it sum up why I’m having my students read his book. It’s why I’ve invited McGraw to join our class for the third semester in a row. That optimism and hope–naive as it may seem–is what drives my work every day at Penn State, in local government, for human rights, and in writing. It’s my hope that my students will see that climate change and other sustainability changes are more than just real. It’ also terrifying. And something we can act upon.
Reality. Hurricane Harvey. The rising tides compiling risks for Louisiana. The wildfires consuming the west. The adelgids eating the hemlocks and the ticks drinking our blood and giving us Lyme and other diseases. The cascading risks that military analysts say has brought on the “age of consequences.” “No one needs prophets to show what’s all too clear.” They will see it and face it as we can in a class. But they also get to see that we live with it, some with more difficulty than others.
Ordinary people in the United States are living with climate change. It’s part of the fabric of life. And whether you fish for a living off the New Jersey coast, farm in the midwest, live with sunny day and king tides in Miami, hunt game in Montana, analyze data from over a thousand years of tree rings or hundreds of millennia of ice cores or live in the Bald Eagle Valley or Baton Rouge or West Virginia or Houston where record storms hit, human-caused climate change has become part of life. The very fabric of our world is being restitched.
There’s not really that much distance between you and them. In neither space nor condition, any of us could have been born into another position. And when something changes your life that much, you too will be changed. But how?
That question is a question of both sustainability and leadership. It relates well to David Orr’s ultimate question for the ecologically literate: “What then?” If we live in a way that consumes so much that it’s raising sea levels fast and high enough that it “threaten[s] to erase from the map some South Pacific Island [most people] have never heard of,” as McGraw says, well what then? What then for them and what then for us? What then for the geochemical cycles that ceaselessly and unthinkingly move nitrogen, phosphorous, carbon, and water around the planet without sentiment? What then for the creatures with whom we inhabit the planet? What then for the weakest and meekest?
What then for the personal choices or political representation? What then for the consumer whose choices have proliferated exponentially or can travel on a jet for a fraction of the cost a generation ago? What then for their energy choices? Their food? What of food for the poor? The weak?
The avalanche of questions rolls down. It’s easy to let pile into a mountain of bad news. But perhaps with many of us observing the avalanches there is hope. Those of us thoughtfully and collectively responding have a role to play.
Whether we like it or not, those of us teaching about the messy relationship between people and our home–the Earth–are leaders. Of course presidents, military, and corporate leaders need to consider these things too. Some are and aren’t. Donald Trump and some of his enablers are not. The military is. And some on the Fortune 500 are taking climate change seriously. But those folks can be insulated by their power and privilege. But it’s harder for the educators of the world?
What then for those of us who see something that both holds a promise for hope in action and a grave moral hazard from inaction. We have to ask,”Whom do you serve?” Hopefully, our students. And through them? Our communities and the world.
My students will be talking with Seamus about that “American kind of common sense and courage that would give us the strength to at least begin an honest discussion about the challenges we face.” Let’s hope they get a little closer to serving one another, our democracy, and our biosphere.
Peter Walks for Democracy 