Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [3]
So I asked people how they were coping with the ongoing flood of news from the receding edges of nature. The more people I asked, the more I realized that I was not alone in asking. During my travels to teach in different parts of the world, I increasingly heard similar questions. A woman in Helsinki phrased it this way:
If our world is really looking down the barrel of an environmental catastrophe, how do I live my life right now?
One woman responded to this question by fluttering her hands (a flutter that I now recognize goes with issues too big to imagine): “With so much stress in our everyday lives, how can we think about that?”
Some people were adept at changing the subject. Often they brought up another problem: “My husband never gets home when he says he will” … “The clutch on my Chevy keeps giving out” … “The IRS is auditing my taxes again.” They shifted the problem to a scale that was imaginable, one that they could wrap their heads around.
When people respond to these questions, I sometimes hear despair. More than once, I was told, “We are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” The desire for practical suggestions is strong for many people; they want to know what they can do. Others expressed a longing for a spiritual perspective.
My inquiries made me realize the urgent need for thoughtful people to provide reflection, inspiration, and direction. So I sent the question of the Finnish woman to environmentalists, artists, CEOs, grassroots organizers, religious and indigenous leaders, scientists, and folks who simply are concerned, to hear how they would respond.
The first wave of replies came from people who feel resigned to imminent disaster. One wrote of friends who are stocking caves in the Sierra; another person grows potatoes on his rooftop as emergency food. One person likened the inflation of our planet’s population to a stock market bubble, due for a big “correction”—and soon. Several of these responses came with the addendum, “Hug your loved ones while you still have the chance.”
And then responses trickled in from people taking time in their lives to seek remedies. Some were gathering with their neighbors to build sustainability groups; others had started grass roots organizations; still others were negotiating a closer marriage between science and public policy. Friends told friends about my query, and soon a flood of people who had meditated on these questions were offering to contribute to this anthology.
I began to sleep better, knowing that so many people care and are taking a stand in their communities for what they feel and know in their hearts. These individuals helped me discover that a major antidote for despair is engagement and participation. Their responses to the question “How do I live my life right now?” have been compiled into the anthology you now hold in your hands: Hope Beneath Our Feet.
We Have a Choice
Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, demonstrated how the misconceptions and misdeeds of our civilization have put us in a dire predicament. This film clearly shows that we each have a choice: either we find effective ways to contribute to making changes now, or we will have to sacrifice—with unbearable losses—later.
My family watched the film together. A few days later, Liza and I asked our two teenagers for their reaction. There was a long silence, and then William summed up the movie: “So basically, we’re fucked, right?”
After seeing the film, many people commented that they now needed tools, both practical and spiritual, to handle this new awareness. They wanted more. I could tell that William and his brother Wyatt had been jarred, but they never brought the movie up again. Even so,