Even if I
knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple
tree.
Martin Luther.
Crisis has usually been the generator of major changes
throughout human history. Whether it was the political changes wrought by the
revolutions in the US and France or the economic impact of the Great Depression
or the social crisis of the Civil Rights era, change has frequently been driven
by turbulence.
We are now facing turbulence of a different type –
climate turbulence. But the climate crisis is different to all earlier crises because
the physical forces it will unleash, once the point of no return is passed,
will plunge the planet into an irreversible downward spiral, affecting everyone
regardless of socio-economic status.
As Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker points out, we may not be able to control the climate
but we can still determine its direction. The window of opportunity to change
direction, however, is rapidly closing as demonstrated by the extreme weather
in North America this year.
The crucial question is how we motivate people to
change their lifestyle behaviour to avert the impending crisis, especially when
apathy is so widespread. Doom and gloom is not an effective message, fear
depresses many and information overload seems to paralyze most of the rest. But
demoralization and ignorance is no excuse for inaction.
President Roosevelt nailed the issue succinctly in one
of his fireside chats during the Depression: We have nothing to fear but fear
itself. Now, we need a new narrative for the climate crisis: Hope itself is our
only hope.
Hope, however, is a double-edged sword. Delusional
hope and illusory optimism, devoid of action, is dangerous and “stiff upper
lip” fortitude simply entrenches inaction. On the other hand, positive hope
driven by passion and action is inspirational and contagious – it is our only
hope.
Alexander Pope’s well known line “Hope springs eternal
from the human breast” from An Essay on
Man written in 1733, no longer inspires the same optimism. Today, we are
more skeptical of Pope’s confidence in hope and faith and his notion of an
ordered and divinely inspired universe.
Hope in
action
A spirit of hope that is in harmony with nature,
suffused with love and humility and underpinned by a program of action must be
our objective. Faith, optimism and hope all need action for fulfillment. Constructive
action nourishes our souls.
As the Lappes point out in Hope’s Edge, hope is an action verb, not a passive noun. We
establish a self-perpetuating chain reaction when our actions inspire hope that
in turn re-energizes the passion for further action, driving an irresistible
momentum.
We will need courage and tenacity because building a
secure future for the planet will require a herculean effort. The challenge
will not be for the meek of heart. It will demand in Churchill’s stirring
words: Blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice.
No species, certainly not humans, can claim
entitlement to life on a stable planet. Optimism and hope for the future have
to be earned. We have to learn to live within the regenerative capacity of the
biosphere. That is hope’s one and only bottom line.
Initially, the focus of our activism and advocacy must
be on minimizing our individual carbon footprints. A carbon campaign, focused
on fossil fuel reduction, is essential to slow the growth of greenhouse gases
that are inexorably warming the planet. Your personal footprint, carefully
quantified using the various calculators available, is a powerful symbol of
your level of hope and commitment.
Hope for the future then, means taking individual
responsibility for our lifestyles. We cannot make excuses for our shortcomings,
blame others or project our guilt on society. We cannot criticize unless we
have set a personal example. We have to live our hope as individuals and in our
communities and places of work.
Illusory hope
An artificial optimism seems to pervade our society
today. Being endlessly up-beat has become a dominant cultural trait. But the
social critic, Barbara Ehrenreich, has shown how the relentless promotion of
positive thinking is crippling North America. By masking our feelings, by
denying our dark sides and by trying to inure ourselves against pain, we are,
in fact, living a lie.
Are we also hiding behind hope? By professing positive
feelings and optimism for the future, as opposed to expressing our anxiety and
fear, are we absolving ourselves from the moral responsibility of acting? It
may be easier to assuage our consciences by a Pollyanna approach to global
warming rather than confronting our personal demons, such as excessive
consumption.
Why do we seem to latch on to doubt and denial so
easily? Misguided optimism may actually be a type of denial. Just as patriotism
is the last refuge of the scoundrel according to Samuel Johnson, so has hope,
short on action, become the last refuge of the climate denier.
It is a utopian myth to believe that governments or markets
or technology will solve our environmental problems. Simply tweaking our
lifestyles by changing light bulbs in the hope of slowing global warming is an
irrational dream. Optimism can so easily lull us into complacency but glibly
professing hope for the future is akin to living in a delusional bubble if it
is unaccompanied by a determined commitment to adjust our lifestyles to the
needs of nature.
The downside
of hope
A school of writers that include Derrick Jensen and
Paul Kingsnorth, founder of the Dark Mountain project, argue that not only is
hope futile but it could also be detrimental to initiating essential societal
changes.
Jensen is regarded as the philosopher-poet of the
environmental movement. In a widely read article in Orion Magazine in May/June 2006, he addressed the issue of “Hope.”
He writes that hope is a longing for a future condition over which we have no
control. It is false hope to expect that a mythical savior will rescue us. Once
we stop hoping for external assistance, we are then forced to do the hard work
ourselves. When hope dies, action begins.
Why, he asks, are we afraid to express despair and
sadness about the environment? It is a perfectly natural response to our
present plight. Perhaps there is an underlying concern that, if we actually allow
ourselves to acknowledge the gravity of the situation, we may be forced into
taking action. Despair, therefore, may be an excuse for inaction.
Giving up hope is liberating, he suggests, because we
cease relying on others, such as governments and environmental groups, to solve
our ecological problems. It also frees us from fear. When hope dies, the
culturally conditioned “you” who allows others to exploit your hopefulness also
dies, Jensen contends. The real “you” survives, sustained by your innate
feelings of love for life and reverence for nature.
Both writers argue that hope is a construct of modern
society and a control mechanism keeping us chained to a destructive political
and economic system. Hope is a secular way of keeping us in line. Enchained by
hope, we become puppets for politicians.
In a recent column entitled The Mendacity of Hope, George Monbiot of The Guardian echoed the concerns of Jensen and Kingsnorth that we
can be easily co-opted by hope. Writing during the Rio + 20 Conference in
Brazil in June, 2012, he describes how a series of abortive international meetings
since the success of the Rio Conference of 1992 have kept us hoping for
decisive action and positive environmental developments. Nothing changes from
one failed conference to the next – from Kyoto to Durban – but we never cease
hoping.
Governments, bankrolled by elites, keep promising and
the masses keep hoping, securely shackled by their naïve optimism. Society is
powerless to mobilize and initiate change because “we are endlessly seduced by
hope,” he writes. “Hope is the rope on which we hang.”
Shades of Benjamin Franklin, who exhorted his
colleagues at the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 to hang
together otherwise they would surely hang separately. To give the adage a
modern climate twist: unless we all hang together now, we will all surely hang
together ultimately.
Our only hope
It matters not that your passion for change may be driven
by negative feelings, such as fear, anger or despair, but it is important to
convert these sentiments into a positive activism rooted in compassion and
gratitude. Anchoring our aspirations in action must be the watchword of our
age.
Gratitude is our acknowledgement of the gift of birth
and the privilege of life. Georg Simmel, the German philosopher, described
gratitude as the moral memory of mankind. There can be no better expression of
gratitude – and morality – than a campaign to revitalize the divinity of the
trinity: air, water and soil. They constitute the source, soul and sustenance
of all life on earth.
The path of restoration and revitalization is not only
courageous but it is also ennobling because the benefits lie in the future, well
beyond the horizons of our generation. But it is our role and responsibility as
empathic trustees and guardians to ensure that our descendants inherit a
healthy planet. We must make our hopes a reality for them.
