Yelling Fire in a Crowded Room
Or How to Become a Climate Hero
Climate Change Editorial by Marnie Parker
Published 9/9/2011
Being an environmentalist (or environmentally concerned person1) these days is like standing in a burning building wanting to yell fire so everyone can get out. Only there’s nowhere to go. There are just a few wisps of smoke at the moment, and the building is going take two weeks to burn down. But, still, it is burning, and you know it is, and you want to warn people – you want to do something about it.
You want to stand up in the middle of church services and yell, “Fire!” You want to stand up in the middle of a classroom and yell, “Fire!” You want to stand up in the middle of office cubicles and yell, “Fire!” You want to stand in the middle of the local supermarket and yell, “Fire!” The pressing urgency to warn your loved ones, everyone, is sometimes all you can think about. You want to stand up, wave your arms around, and yell at the top of your lungs, “Fire!!! Get out! Save yourselves!”
So how come we aren’t doing exactly that? Well, believe it or not, we are.
The building is, of course, the earth. The fire is global warming that leads to climate change (extreme hot and cold, wet and dry, ice caps melting, sea level rising, stronger storms, etc.). The two weeks is about two hundred2 years. The out, well, there is no real out considering we don’t have space travel yet and can’t migrate to another planet. So the only out is reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere -- reducing humanity’s entire carbon footprint. Admittedly, a rather daunting task.
You’ve been hearing this for a while. And two hundred years sounds like the distant future, doesn’t it? Well, unless you have children and/or grandchildren. Then you realize it might only be three generations until the earth becomes uninhabitable, maybe four. And, well, uh… it is already day 2 or 3 of the two weeks before the building burns down completely. It’s not next year it will START burning. It’s not next month it will START burning. It’s not next week it will START burning. It has ALREADY started and it’s day 2 or 3. There is no more time to debate about yelling,
“FIRE!”
So we’re waving our arms around and yelling. Why aren’t people hearing us?
Well, you’re listening, because you’re reading this, and this editorial is addressed to you. I presume you know some or most of this already, but let’s briefly recap.
First, some people simply aren’t listening. It is like they have stuck their fingers in their ears while childishly chanting, “Nyah, nyah, nyah,” at the same time. They don’t WANT to hear it -- usually for religious and/or political reasons.
(If you feel you can handle it and want to skip over the "gentle lead-in" to the bad news on climate change, you can jump to Part II now. Although I recommend reading the excerpt, "Becoming a Climate Hero," at the end of this part. And I hope you come back to read the rest of Part I later.)
Denial Reasons
1.) God Will Provide - They believe God gave humankind dominion over the earth and everything on it. Thus everything is a tool for us and we can dispose of everything however we want. There are no consequences. “God will provide,” or “Nature always heals itself.” Or, God set up it so that nature will always heal itself to continue to provide for us. It is almost impossible to argue with this kind of belief system, as scientific evidence will just about always be ignored. “God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth .’” Genesis 1:28
2.) Sinister Plot - Global Warming is unreal and some kind of nefarious scheme, probably launched by Al Gore, to get everyone to buy into some “big government” liberal paradise. This, of course, ignores the fact that scientists from all over the world have been warning about climate change for some time (and continue to do so). And wouldn’t it have to be a HUGE conspiracy to have all kinds of liberals from all over the United States use climate change as a front to promote big government?
3.) The Profit Motive – Companies sell green products and services, like snake-oil, simply to make money – CFLs, solar panels, retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient, windmills, etc. Or scientists use it to finagle grant money for their research. So it’s all a PR campaign, just scare tactics, to get people to buy, buy, buy or grant, grant, grant. (Again, this would have to be a conspiracy of unimaginable dimensions.)
4.) It’s Still Open To Debate or The Big Lie – The public confusion over whether climate change is real (or just a cyclical function of nature) and/or if it was caused by human behavior is very deliberate. For the past twenty years, big oil companies and others created and funded numerous “grass roots” organizations (i.e. astroturf organizations), faux think tanks, and hired nominal scientists (with fields far removed from climatology) to “debunk” climate change. Or, at the very least, to get articles published in order to sow confusion that respected scientists don’t agree.3
“Covering the climate story during the 1990’s, I often wondered about the deniers’ motivations. Did they sincerely doubt the scientific case for man-made global warming? Or were their attacks rooted in an allegiance to continued burning of fossil fuels? Years later, an answer emerged after a lawsuit pried loose internal documents of the Global Climate Coalition. It turned out the coalition’s own scientific advisers had informed its leadership in 1995 – two years before the carbon lobby led the fight against the Kyoto Protocol – that the science behind man-made global warming was ‘well established and cannot be denied.’ The coalition’s board of directors responded by ordering their scientists’ judgment removed from the coalition’s public records… In short, the carbon lobby knew perfectly well that global warming posed real dangers, but it chose to deny those dangers and disparage anyone who sought to bring them to public attention.” Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth by Mark Hertsgaard
“…the American Petroleum Institute (API) to create a ‘Global Science Communication Action Plan’ (the precise contents of which Greenpeace later discovered and made available for public viewing). The API made no bones about its intent in creating a plan for the public. The document plainly states that its purpose is to convince the public, through the media, that climate science is awash in uncertainty… Victory Will Be Achieved When… Average citizens understand (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom…’” Climate Cover-Up by James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore
Okay, maybe we can never convince people like the above that the life of the earth and of the human species is on the line. It is a big problem. Although, personally, I am convinced that once things get really, really bad – more frequent and stronger natural disasters – when tornados, hurricanes, floods, killer heat waves, droughts, land in everyone’s backyard -- people will start DEMANDING that “government DO something.” And they will probably complain at the same time “they didn’t TELL us!” Of course, that may come way too late to do much about it.
People of Good Will
The bigger problem is people who accept climate change as real, but still don’t want to listen. They also have their fingers stuck in their ears while childishly chanting, “Nyah, nyah, nyah.” They don’t want to hear it. They really don’t. I sometimes wonder if they realize the effect is the same as if they were climate change deniers?
Why they don’t want to hear it is very understandable, but more on that later.
The irony is, if all these people of good will, nation-wide, who don’t want to hear about it, actually did something; then, presto, bingo, climate change would start to be mitigated. I.E., it would not mean the complete end of the earth as we know it. Yes, climate change has started and, yes, it will not stop on a dime. But it could be slowed down to the degree that would ensure a future for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
For instance, if everyone at MDUUC that was concerned about climate change got on the Green Group’s Action E-Mail List it would be a powerful “force for good” and for mitigating climate change. If they took five minutes a week, or ten minutes a month, to sign e-petitions, it could really help. Coming together, we CAN make a difference.
Examples of Making a Difference
- Proposition 23 was defeated. Propositon 23 was on the November 2010 California ballot. It would have overturned (essentially) AB 32. “The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, or Assembly Bill (AB) 32, is a California State Law that fights climate change by establishing a comprehensive program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all sources throughout the state. AB 32 was authored by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) and signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on September 27, 2006.” Wikipedia
Because enough people, including people in our church, agitated, signed petitions, and got the word out California voters defeated Proposition 23. On the whole, Californians want to be green and deal with climate change (they see a lot of smog, for one thing). Your vote DOES matter. But so does a whole lot of citizen activity.
Living in California, we have a special obligation to deal with climate change. A lot of air pollution starts here, and once we pass green bills into law, many other states end up following our lead (they always have on green issues). Also we are a BIG market.
- We recently circulated an e-petition on the action list started by the Sierra club to encourage Jerry Brown, who was meeting with President Obama, to press for stronger emission controls. If we demand better mileage/emission levels from cars and pass them into law then auto makers HAVE to improve cars to match our levels, because, quite frankly, they need to sell cars to Californians.
“Aligning themselves with California in its fight against global warming, the Obama administration and automakers on Friday announced an agreement to dramatically increase mileage standards and cut greenhouse gas emissions from new cars by about half in the next 15 years. The average new car in 2025 would get overall gas mileage of 54.5 miles per gallon in 2025, compared with nearly 30 mpg today… Gov. Jerry Brown, who defended the state's greenhouse gas measures as attorney general, saw vindication for California's habit of imposing regulations on industries and trusting those industries to find innovative ways to meet them. ‘The government can set standards and California has, and that's made all the difference,’ Brown said during a conference call with reporters.” Contra Costa Times, 7/30/2011
E-petitions and e-mails are the ways things are getting done these days. Sometimes there are organized mail and phone call campaigns, but mainly it is e-petitions and e-mails. All of them are usually pre-prepared by some environmental/social justice group where you can also personalize them with individual comments. In this Internet age, with enough signatures or senders, they can have quite an impact.
So why isn’t everyone who cares about climate change in this church clamoring to be on the Green Action E-Mail List?
Burying One’s Head in the Sand
“It’s too depressing.” “It’s too overwhelming.” “I can’t deal with it.” “It’s too big a problem; nothing I can do will help.” “What we do doesn’t matter because of China.”
As I said, these responses are not surprising, they are very human reactions, but we simply can no longer afford them. YOU can no longer afford them -- not any more.
Katrina. California Fires. Arizona Fire. Mid-West Drought. Southern Heat Wave.
Accepting Climate Change is like going through a grief process, grief for the earth as we have known it. Grief for the earth as our parents and grandparents knew it. It is accepting that everything has changed and that you can’t count on or predict what the future will hold, based on how things were in the past. It is grief for what was known and familiar – for what was.
In the Kubler-Ross model, the five stages of grief, are: Denial - “I am fine. There is no problem.”; Anger -“Why me? Who is to blame?”; Bargaining - “Let me just live my life/enjoy this for a few more years. I’ll deal with it later.”; Depression- “What’s the point? There’s nothing I can do.”; and Acceptance -“It’s happening/happened. I might as well accept it.” The five stages of grief (with some alteration for the example quotes) from On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.4
There is no “New Normal.” The climate is now in flux, it will KEEP changing, there are no plateaus for the foreseeable future. Not only can’t you predict the future for your children and your grandchildren, and you can’t predict it for YOURSELF. Climate change has already started, and you will see major changes IN YOUR LIFE TIME. It is no longer that distant a thing, because scientists originally underestimated how quickly it would go. In the past twenty years, they have gotten better at gathering data and predicting than when they started.
“So how did it happen that the threat to our fairly far-off descendants, which required we heed an alarm and adopt precautionary principles and begin to take measured action lest we have a crisis for future generations, et cetera… How did time dilate and, and “100” or “200 years from now” become yesterday? The answer, more or less, is that global warming is a huge experiment. We never watched it happen before, so we didn’t know how it would proceed. Here’s what we knew twenty years ago: the historic level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the level that produced those ten thousand years of stability, was roughly 275 parts per million… But no one really knew where the red line was… The number that people tossed around for about a decade was 550 parts per million… That is, a doubling of carbon dioxide would happen well beyond the time anyone now in power was likely to still be in office, or still running the company. It was when everyone’s grandchildren would be in charge.
It was that summer of melt of Arctic ice in 2007 that seemed to break the spell, to start raising the stakes. …James Hansen, still the planet’s leading climatologist, gave a short talk…. at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco… he said… it was clear that the safe number was at most, 350 parts per million… we’re already past 350 – way past it. The planet has nearly 390 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We’re too high. Forget the grandkids; it turns out this was a problem for our parents.” eaarth by Bill McKibben
I know when I first really got the impact of Climate Change I went through a grief process that took about a year. I may have almost “gone off the rails” a bit as I did. I was that deeply shocked. In 2006, I took a trip to the Southwest. I took another one a few years later, to many of the same areas. I saw smog everywhere – where I hadn’t seen it before on the previous trip. I also saw a great deal more (in those areas that had already had it). I saw it in the middle of the Arizona desert, nowhere near a big city. Something was changing, very fast, and drastically. I could SEE it. When I got home I was very disappointed to find it no better here. According to Generation Green, Contra Costa County’s emission rate, in terms of tons per person, is the highest of all Bay Area counties. According to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), our county’s ozone levels already exceed state standards. I won’t go through all my emotional in and outs, but in the end, I walked into the church and joined the Green Group.5
Heavy smog in the middle of the Arizona desert, 2010. For the relationship of smog to climate change, see the Appendix.
Now I accept Climate Change as a given. But it was not easy to reach this point.
However, I had avoided reading a book about Climate Change until recently; I didn’t want to be THAT bummed out. I skim about twenty newspapers and TV news outlets each morning on the Internet and I had been reading articles about it, and paying attention to the Action List. But, I didn’t want to read something really comprehensive that would pull it all together. (And, to this date I’ve never seen An “Inconvenient Truth.”) But I was aware that in the environmental/climate change movement things were changing. Then I recommended a book to someone, so I thought I better read it myself. So, I sat down and ended up reading four books.
I got seriously depressed (and scared) for about three days. Then I got angry. Anger has often rescued me in the past from fear and/or depression. Too scared, I want to curl up in a ball and avoid everything. Well, literally, once the panic has passed (fear is an emotion that is hard to maintain for any length of time), I read escapist books and watch old TV shows that are comfortingly familiar. Too depressed, I drag around, feeling listless and hopeless. Well, literally, I eat gobs of ice cream, and sleep and daydream a lot.
Feeling panicked and/or hopeless is not good, because both are paralyzing. But anger can be very motivating.
The grieving process really is why those who CARE still don’t want to hear it.
“It’s too depressing.” – Yes, it is depressing. Very depressing. But avoidance doesn’t make it go away. In fact, avoidance usually makes things worse.
“It’s too overwhelming.” – Yes, cutting back on all of humanity’s carbon footprint is a daunting task, but it can be done. Or it can be cut back a lot, or enough.
“I can’t deal with it.” – Well, maybe you can’t. But if you don’t, then who will? I mean, really, who will? You’re an adult, right? Will you simply leave it for the next generation to deal with? Or for the few remaining generations after that?
“What we do doesn’t matter because of China.” – Actually, if the U.S. took a stronger stance then China might well follow our lead, just as many other states tend to follow California’s lead on green issues. China, already has, whether consciously or unconsciously, followed our lead on how they have industrialized. But the United States, as a country, has not stepped up to the plate. It only signed a “non-binding” agreement to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Recently it only “took note of” (did not agree to) the Copenhagen Accord (from the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference which was a follow up to Kyoto). The U.S. is NOT a climate leader.
Ironically, China, because it has industrialized so rapidly, is well-aware of the effects of global warming. Right now, Chinese climate scientists are assessing impacts to agriculture and a decreasing water supply. If the government is encouraged to adopt the right policies, it could still feed itself when even more arable land is lost. And in some ways, it has already done a lot about energy (and continues to), maybe more than the U.S. China does not have its head totally stuck in the sand.
“..if China is to embrace ecological agriculture, the government will have to subsidize the transition.
The government has been doing exactly that in regard to energy. Thanks to well-funded government directives, China has closed hundreds of ancient coal and cement plants that were fouling the air during my visit in 1996. China has become the leading producer of solar panels, it has made great strides with wind power, and it is accelerating its impressive record on energy efficiency. The problems of agriculture are somewhat different, but a similar shift in policies might well produce similar results, if China’s leadership is so inclined.” Hot: Living Through The Next Fifty Years on Earth by Mark Hertsgaard
“China’s an interesting case. China is burning a lot of coal and oil, not as much oil as we burn. But they are also putting in renewable energy at an astonishing rate. They’ve got now about 250 million Chinese that when they take a shower at night it’s with hot water that is coming off solar panels on the roof. China’s not the villain here. We need to work with them, but we need to stop trying to use them as the excuse for our bad behavior.” Bill McKibben at the August 2011 civil disobedience action at the White House to Stop the Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline
Taking action can be invigorating. It definitely chases away that feeling of helplessness. Being helpful is the diametric opposite of helpless. Take just a little action: sign an e-petition, use a fabric reusable bag when shopping, attend a meeting, write a congressman, install solar, recycle, grow your own food, etc. You will feel that you’re doing something, not just curling up in a ball, overwhelmed and paralyzed. Maybe it won’t be enough, but maybe, taken with thousands (millions) of other’s actions, it will be. It is, frankly, a “leap of faith.” Faith that what you do matters, that you are a part of a bigger movement, that you are firmly aligning yourself with the earth, and that everything is interconnected.
Something I ran across in my reading recently, really resonated with me. I thought it was a very good way of viewing things. Isn’t it better to become a climate hero, than feel intimidated by the problem and bury one’s head in the sand? Then maybe younger generations will look up to you now, instead of cursing you for all eternity later when they discover how bad you’ve left things for them.
So don those hero boots and cape. (Us older and/or dumpier people will skip the form-fitting spandex suit and just stick to jeans and normal clothes.)
“A few years ago, when my first child was born, I became paralyzed with fear about climate disruption. It was so clear that our children would be punished for what we adults were doing to the world. I got depressed. I got anxious. Then, from sheer desperation, I started writing letters to editors. I remember well the first one that got published… The thrill I got. The sense of agency.
After that I was out of my seat… Now I go to every demonstration. I write to every politician.
I insulate my house fanatically. I don’t own a car.6 Every year I do a little more: composting kitchen waste, shopping at farmers’ markets, recycling, buying only secondhand. Using carbon calculators, I’ve figured that I’ve lowered my family’s emissions 50 percent in seven years. That’s a big step. Because of my actions, my fear for my children’s future is not incapacitating. I’m striding down the aisle trying to help. Not only have I improved my emotional state, I’ve broken group cohesion and started to pull others from their seats. I’ve gotten friends and relatives to insulate more and drive less, to admit the problem and start thinking about the solution.
Scientists tell us we have ten years, if that, to make significant changes. Every indication, from ice caps to defrosting tundra, seems to show this is the tipping point. This is our moment. Perhaps you never thought you’d get a chance to play hero. Here it is… The weather is convulsing. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t sure what to do. Make your best guess. Call 9-1-1.” Excerpted from “How to be a Climate Hero” by Audry Schulman.7
How Bad Is It? -- Don’t Panic
Before I start doling out the bad news, I want to go back to the analogy of yelling fire in a crowded room. Of course, in real life one does not do that, because people may panic and stampede.
I, and those of us in the Green Group, don’t want you to panic, we want to motivate you to act, and give you the facts (as many as are known), so you can make informed decisions about you and your family’s future. We are not doom and gloomers; we and do not relish spreading around dark, oppressive clouds. We enjoy our lives and MDUUC. We value the earth and future generations. We affirm life. But, because we are UU’s, we are also “obligated” – morally obligated -- to warn you. We NEED to warn you. We NEED to stand up and yell, “Fire!” We respect you, your ability to reason, your willingness to inform yourself, and your desire to take right action. We know you could easily get depressed and overwhelmed. But, just as we NEED to warn you, you need to listen -- you NEED to know.
Going back to that yelling fire analogy, it IS a crowded room, full of people and voices; many other things compete for your attention. You have a lot on your mind: work concerns, money worries, job hunting anxieties, social justice aims, children (if you have them), and myriad of other relationships. You have a LOT to think about and deal with, so you could see this as just another issue.
Except climate change really trumps all the other issues. Not that our other issues aren’t important and social justice will certainly be at the forefront as we deal with climate change, but because we are talking about SPECIES SURVIVAL and survival of the earth. Nothing more, nothing less.
Okay, coming up… How bad is it going to get? Mitigation and adaptation: what are they? What can be done? Then a dash of hope and some blue prints for survival.
You might want to take a break here, walk around, get a snack, because some of the coming-up-stuff is very bad news. But, remember, I’ll throw in a dash of hope…
- I don’t call myself an environmentalist. I tend to reserve that word for scientists or for strong environmental activists. I have done very little, not enough to qualify for that label. I guess I think of myself as “green.” I do a little bit, hoping it helps, and constantly bearing in mind that there are thousands (millions) of others out there also doing a little bit. When you add those little bits up, they become MUCH bigger. “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” Mahata Ghandi
- I am rounding the date. The most common date given for when the earth will become too hot, uninhabitable for humans, is about 2300 (289 years). That is if we continue on the course we are on and do not significantly cut carbon emissions by the year 2020 -- only nine years away.
- Other sources – Enemy of the Planet, by Paul Krugman, New York Times, April 17, 2006; Merchants of Doubt video by Naomi Oreskes, Naomi Oreskes: fierce defender of climate change science, The Christian Science Monitor, July 18th, 2011
- Not everyone goes through all five stages or in the same order.
- This is a condensed version of the process I went through. I have to bow to Kate Olsen (deceased), founder of Eco-Info, helped establish Howe Home Park and local community gardening, one of the originators of Earth Day at the Concord Pavilion (which no longer occurs), and a former member of MDUUC. She is the one who first got me thinking more deeply about environmental issues. Driving her one day, about 20 years ago, to a Planet Drum conference, I commented on the yellow hills “Those hills are what make me think of California as the Golden State, not the gold rush. The rolling, golden California foothills.” “Well, you know, once the foothills weren’t gold. Very likely they were green, covered with native grasses that were drought tolerant.” “Green all year around?” “Yes.” (I am paraphrasing, and note that this was well before the native plant movement became popular. What covers the foothills is European Hay, which was grown for cattle ranches, starting when most of California was divided into Spanish rancheros. Then it became an invasive plant, spread, and forced out existing plants.) It was an “Aha” moment for me, when I realized that people could become USED to environmental degradation. And subsequent generations would think it normal because they wouldn’t remember anything different. That makes me wonder if future generations will come to think of white skies as normal?
- While I am admiring, I don’t personally advocate you give up your car. It would be very hard, in some cases impossible, for most Californians to do.
- he analogy she uses of aisle and seat doesn’t make much sense in an excerpt. You will have to read the whole article to find out what that refers to, and it is well-worth reading.
