A Message To The Environmental & Climate Movement

Everyone says that the rotten dinosaur (aka fossil fuel) industry is the criminal and flagitious culprit here, and nobody who has even the tiniest smidgen of an understanding of the climate and ecological crisis disputes this, but have we ever wondered why have we been failing and so ineffective in changing our civilizational trajectory?

I understand how much effort and time, and how many sacrifices and attempts were made to save our beauteous planet, and those heroic and valiant actions utterly appreciated, even if they did not yield the desired (and needed) result in the end.

However, it ought to be asked by a Gen Z’ier: Does our current mode and way of thinking fall short of what is needed to countervail the prominent and avariciously self-serving, self-aggrandizing juggernauts ruling over our world?

We’d rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.

So, I hereby would like to venture to pose the following ones:

Have we attempted to question why we continue to perpetuate and espouse an ineffectual approach?

Why do we seem to like to faff and fumble around?

Why do we muck around doing what we think will induce the change that is required if life as we know it lingers on for a long time?

Perhaps the answer, no matter how prickly it might be, could lie in our natural and innate desire to feel like we’re doing or contributing something regardless of whether it is actually the best and most effective way or not, in other words, perhaps we just wanna ‘do’ something, with no due consideration or strategic deliberation over its auspiciousness or how propitious it is.

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Allow me to share an excerpt from one of Denzel Washington’s commencement speeches,

“Don’t confuse movement with progress. Yeah, you could run in place all the time and never get anywhere”

Furthermore, I shudder to think that this might be true, however, it seems that the environmental movement seems to have descended down the abyss of the dreaded

Einstellung effect, which is “when the first idea that comes to mind, triggered by familiar features of a problem, prevents a better solution from being found.”

It seems that we are ‘stuck’ in a narrow, parochial and limited way of thinking, and that has stifled and inhibited our minds from thinking of alternative (and in many cases, very salient and obvious) solutions. I’m afraid that this might be a case of ‘martyring’ ourselves; a game that is the oldest trick in the book, and one that, certainly, will be unravelled and disentangled by future generations. They will be able to see through its appalling inefficiencies and shortfalls, and wonder in utter chagrin and anguish how in the world were we so imprudent, unwise, limited, myopic, naive and even insane.

After all, as Albert Einstein reminds us “Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. This there and then, says it all. (If anyone disagrees with this, please do feel free to put forth your objection or dissension, but first please do ascertain that you at the very least suspect that you’re smarter than Einstein as to vindicate your opinion. Thanks.)

The signs are ominous, the minacious threats are looming, entire ecosystems are collapsing, the fossil fuel industry is raking in the highest profits, virtually since forever, and for 53 years all we have done is sparse marching, (piteous, paltry, beggarly and exiguous) lobbying, courageous striking, sacrificially blocking roads, righteously vandalising places, disrupting public life, pelting tasty soup on exquisite paintings (and thereby depriving our fellow human beings from feasting their eyes on artistic masterpieces), and rightfully pillorying, berating and haranguing our proverbial leaders, over their ostensibly immutable inertia and recalcitrance towards real change, and throughout this entire period since the advent and rise of the environmental movement, our heroic and selfless efforts have unfortunately bore little fruit, not even enough fruit to feed a smattering of our African brothers! Hitherto, our futile and desperate attempts are nothing short of abortive and unpropitious, and are therefore, becoming conspicuously untenable.

I am staunchly convinced that it is up to us, not the blinded and rapacious world elite, to save our fantabulous and precious planet. We can do this! Or to borrow Mr. Obama’s motto “Yes We Can!”. But we gotta stop this insanity (Einstein’s word definition, not mine) ASAP. We gotta embark on a new and promising journey that is efficacious and auspicious, through excogitating a new way forward to change-making, a sort of our version of ‘The New Deal’, if you will. Revamping and sweepingly overhauling our entire structure and approach! (I understand that this sounds scary to our limbic brain, which dreads change in all forms, let alone sweeping changes, so I accept that some will initially think I’m crazy, but that’s ok, I show understanding and espouse the concept of ‘radical acceptance’, so it should be all fine.)

As Stephen Hawking reminded us,

“We are all time travellers, journeying together into the future. Let us all work together to make that future a place we want to visit”

We can do it! We are all one. Let’s stop blaming it all on the Joker and put on our Batsuit, hop into our batmobile and zoom off and deliver Climate Justice, Social Justice and Racial Justice, and subsequently transform our future world into one that we truly would want ..  to visit.