[SustainableTompkins] Upbeat Climate Change article by Francis Moore Lappe

[Elan Shapiro]

   Climate Change, Courage & Celebration

by Frances Moore Lappé

  http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=2117

(Note: her longer article on "Natural Abundance" 
in the Jan 2008 issue of Shamballa Sun magazine, 
link unavailable, goes into more depth about her 
critique of the Energy Descent mindset.)


I'd been preparing for a speech by devouring 
literature about the global environmental 
catastrophe-50 species disappearing daily and ice 
caps melting way faster than experts had 
predicted.

The messages were tough: Hey, you Americans, the 
party's over. Be more responsible and less 
greedy. Give up your toys and wake up to the 
disaster happening around us. "Power down" and 
stop trying to get your status from acquisition. 
Remember, you've had it easy compared to the rest 
of the world.

Inside I'd felt tight, frightened, and guilty.

Then I got a call from Helen Whybrow, host of the 
Mad River Valley, Vermont, event at which I'd 
been preparing to speak. All she really wanted 
was reassurance that I understood the nature of 
the event. "Each fall our Center for Whole 
Communities puts on a Harvest and Courage 
Celebration," she explained.

That was it. All it took were these few words, 
and my body eased and heart lifted. In my mind's 
eye, I could already see hundreds of Vermonters 
(among whom I will always count myself, having 
been one during the '90s) filling a huge barn to 
share steaming bowls of soup, homemade bread, and 
pies. Together, we'd dig deep for answers to our 
global crises and take strength in our common 
search.

I've spent much of my life focused on learning 
that, in regard to world hunger, fear and guilt 
don't truly motivate systemic change. Sometimes 
they have the exact opposite effect. Telling 
people "no" can intensify our craving, our 
grasping for even more before it's all gone.

Yet many impassioned, well-intentioned 
environmentalists believe that now we must sound 
the shrillest possible alarm, for Americans are 
asleep-unaware of the now near certainty that 
unless we cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by 
2050 or earlier, the consequences of climatic 
disruption will be catastrophic.

But what if many of our messages are themselves 
trapped in mechanistic and moralistic thinking 
that helped get us into this mess in the first 
place? And what if, to make this historic turn 
seem possible-even compelling-we changed the way 
we talk and think about it?

Instead of scolding people for being wasteful, we 
encourage ourselves and others to shed a belief 
system that denies us power and happiness, and 
keeps us on a treadmill wasting the Earth's 
plenty. In that inefficient system, only 6 
percent of the material extracted and processed 
actually ends up in products we use. Rather than 
"power down" we can offer ways to "align with the 
Earth's answers." After all, the sun provides 
daily doses of energy 15,000 times what we 
currently use from fossil sources. The message 
might also shift from "simplify" to enrich and 
diversify as we make new connections in our heads 
and in our communities, as we learn new skills 
and ways of being. The challenge becomes less 
about restriction and more about trusting our 
common sense and curiosity.

For its event, the Center for Whole Communities 
links "harvest" with "courage" with 
"celebration." For me, the three words capture it 
all: We can harvest the abundance that is our 
home if we have the courage to break away from 
the dominant culture of waste and destruction and 
to walk with our fear of the unknown and of being 
different. These natural fears are the dark side 
of our beautifully social nature; but we can tame 
our fear of separation as we make new connections 
in communities of common purpose-instead of 
common purchases. Then we can celebrate. For-who 
knows-we may just be able to make this historic 
turn.

Frances Moore Lappé is a YES! contributing editor 
and author of many books, most recently Getting a 
Grip.

-- 
Elan Shapiro
Sustainable Tompkins Program Co-Chair
Sustainable Living Associates, Principal
Frog's Way B&B
211 Rachel Carson Way
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-275-0249

"We must be the change we want to see in the world"
	          Mohandas Gandhi