A Solemn, Cordial Letter To The Environmental & Climate Movement

Dear peers, friends, and allies from all generations, who wish to have a positive impact on the world while they're still here,

                  I am here to convey a message of hope, faith in ourselves, and a realization to provide clarity to our thought processes.. I intend this message to be just that...

Allow me to start by inviting us all reflect on our current situation, and identify the problems we're facing and their roots, too.. shall we?

It certainly feels like that it is now becoming ever harder to ignore the painful, but truthful, reality that our movements have stalled and not bore the fruit we hoped they would.

Let us imagine if someone was running on a treadmill and then they called us on the phone complaining how they ran for 2 hours on the treadmill and then checked their location using their phone only to find out that their location hadn't budged.

Or if someone griped to us about how they were rocking in their rocking chair for hours on end, but ultimately found out they were still in the same place or location afterwards.

That's where we are as a movement; we are technically doing some things, i.e. protests, civil disobedience, petitions etc.. which are all laudable, courageous and worthy, except that they didn't seem to work.

To quote the legendary actor, Denzel Washington,

“Just because you're doing a lot more, doesn't mean you're getting a lot more done. Don’t confuse movement with progress. You could run in place all the time and never get anywhere.”

There's a saying I stumbled upon recently, "Progress has a lot less to do with speed, and a lot more to do with direction."

I'm afraid this is our biggest problem. We're like this ship that has some admirably valiant people onboard, and all the bells and whistles and all sorts of luxuries on deck, but lacks a compass, and thus doesn't know where it's going.

Warren Buffet depicts this eloquently:

“You’ll never get where you want to go if you can’t describe where it is.”

So maybe it isn't that our ladder is against the wrong wall, but rather that it is simply too short and flimsy for us to use to get to the other side; a side where equity, social justice, racial justice, peace, harmony, kindness and climate justice abound; a world we dream of.

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Nothing will change unless we change.

The first rule and step of change-making is being conscious of our own shortcomings, failings, blunders; such as our lack of synergy, deep coordination, liaison and unity with other disciplines and movements; and then assessing them to determine:

• What has gone wrong,

• Why it has been this way,

• Recognize why we might've been unwilling to confront these answers head-on,

• And thus, understand why we haven't achieved what we set out to achieve.

  
  

Remember: If we fail, its our own doing; if we succeed, its our own doing.

Jay Shetty eloquently reflects on this:

“Have you ever found it that similar situations keep coming into your life and actually nothing ever goes away until it teaches you what you needed to learn. So, when we don’t extrapolate lessons from situations we have to take that test again. We almost have to learn that lesson again. And therefore, simultaneous or repetitive situations keep approaching us.”

I'm afraid that this will be the achilles' heel of our movement. That we continue with inadequate measures when our house is on fire; throwing a bucket of water onto our burning house; it will quench some flames, but it distracts us from the fact that it will take a lot more than one bucket to stop the raging inferno destroying our house. It seems unwise for us to believe in things that won't succeed in time. This crisis requires something bigger.

So I hereby speak to you all, from the bottom of my heart, as a young lad.

And as a member of #GenZ, I too feel responsible for the future of our civilization and life as we know it, but I feel I may not always be here to help or support everyone who wishes to have a positive impact on the lives of others. I may not always be here to hold the lamp and illuminate the path for others to follow.

I am most convinced and strongly feel that people from my generation, as well as our younger siblings from #GenA, have got the most to lose and thus, we bear the moral authority. We wield the most power and have the biggest say in how we save the future, because, it is our future at the end of the day. We hold the highest stake in this mess, we have the most skin in the game, yet whilst being the least responsible for it.

Just like the person with the highest amount of stock can have the greatest say concerning the direction of a company, and may even have veto power if they possess more than 51% of the stock, similarly, we are the majority stakeholder in this muddle.

Future generations are counting on us. They're watching us right now and wondering why we have done what we will have done.

There's a saying "We don't plan to fail, we fail to plan". We have failed to plan this ill-thought-out experiment that we've been carrying out for the last 53 years and that is the saddening truth, and it would not be wise of us to expect it to change based on whether or not we're mature enough to face it.

But there is still hope, and with faith in ourselves, we can turn this around. As Maya Angelou once wisely remarked:

"History cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again."

They say that being stuck on our past will not improve our future. We may need to understand who our audience is and communicate our message in a way that will then resonate with them and make the message go viral.

I'm not afraid that our current approach is wrong, but rather that it is simply incomplete. It seems to treat change-making not as the multitudinous and multi-faceted undertaking it is, but as a one-dimensional endeavor, tractable and solvable merely by means of protesting and marching—which, don't get me wrong, are important, but are simply insufficient on their own.

And it's not just me who's saying this..

Experts and environmentalists alike have been sounding the alarm bells about the banal, unimaginatively myopic and jejune approach of the movement for quite a while.

I had read a paper once not so long ago and stumbled upon the following shocking but veracious statements:

"The methods and style of today’s environmentalism are not wrongheaded, just far, far too restricted as an overall approach. The problem has been the absence of a huge, complementary investment of time, energy, and money in other, deeper approaches to change. Our failure to execute a dramatic mid-course correction when circumstances changed can be seen in hindsight as a major blunder. These characteristics are closely allied to a tendency to deal with effects rather than underlying causes. And here, the leading environmental organizations must be faulted for not doing nearly enough to ensure these investments were made.

We have run a (53)-year experiment on whether this mainstream environmentalism can succeed, and the results are now in. The full burden of managing accumulating environmental threats has fallen to the environmental community, both those in government and outside. But that burden is too great. The system of modern capitalism as it operates today will continue to grow in size and complexity and will generate ever-larger environmental consequences, outstripping efforts to cope with them. Indeed, the system will seek to undermine those efforts and constrain them within narrow limits. Working only within the system will, in the end, not succeed — what is needed is transformative change in the system itself.

It is up to citizens, acting mainly through government, to inject values of fairness and sustainability into the system. But this effort commonly fails because progressive politics are too enfeebled and governments are increasingly in the hands of powerful corporate interests and concentrations of great wealth. The best hope for real change in the world is a fusion of those concerned about environment, social justice, and strong democracy into one powerful progressive force.

Our environmental discourse has thus far been dominated by lawyers, scientists, and economists. Now, we need to hear a lot more from the poets, preachers, philosophers, and psychologists. It is unfortunate but true that stronger alliances are still needed to overcome the “silo effect” that separates the environmental community from those working on domestic political reforms, a progressive social agenda, human rights, international peace, consumer issues, world health and population concerns, and world poverty and underdevelopment. If there is a model within memory for what must be done, it is the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. It had grievances, it knew what was causing them, and it also knew that the existing order had no legitimacy and that, acting together, people could redress those grievances. It was confrontational and disobedient, but it was nonviolent. It had a dream. And it had Martin Luther King Jr."

But we gotta make this change in a snap and ASAP.

Oftentimes I’ve been reminded of an anecdote about the Buddha. One day a man approached him and asked "What's the biggest mistake we make in life?"

The Buddha, rather serenely replied "The biggest mistake is you think you have time."

These valiant and fearless acts of protesting, marching and and all kinds of civil disobedience, are highly laudable and valuable. We should be wary to not negate the fact that we need these actions to put pressure on governments, businesses and the elite echelon of society to act on climate, amongst other issues we face.

These actions are an integral and crucial piece in the climate puzzle, but simply put, they're not the entire thing. In other words, we cannot succeed without them, yet, we also cannot succeed by solely relying on them.

To quote Fritjof Capra, in his book "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision",

“As the twenty-first century unfolds, it is becoming more and more evident that the major problems of our time – energy, the environment, climate change, food security, financial security – cannot be understood in isolation.”

These are systemic problems, which means that they are all interconnected and interdependent. Ultimately, these problems must be seen as just different facets of one single crisis, which is largely a crisis of perception. It derives from the fact that most people in our modern society, and especially our large social institutions, subscribe to the concepts of an outdated worldview, a perception of reality inadequate for dealing with our overpopulated, globally interconnected world.

Even David Suzuki sees this: "Overall I feel like a failure, being part of a movement that has failed," he lamented.

So the octillion-dollar question before us is: For how much longer are we gonna continue to fool ourselves? Who are we kidding?

Does any of us genuinely foresee these acts of civil disobedience blowing up like crazy and some kind of miracle taking place, with the people in power suddenly going like "Ah! We gotta act on climate, it's too much!" ?

Does anyone foresee that happening? At least anytime soon? Reasonably possibly, within the next few years?

George Monbiot reflects on this by noting:

"Our demands are – and have to be – more complex than any that have gone before. While I believe that taking out pipelines, refineries, abattoirs, coal plants and SUVs is morally justified, do we really imagine we can bring down the Earth-eating machine this way? Can we really hope that government, industry, oligarchs and those they employ or influence will conclude, “Because we cannot tolerate the sabotage, we will surrender the economic system?” If you are holding a virtual gun to someone’s head, you need to know exactly what you are demanding and whether they can deliver it."

Dr. Peter Kalmus concurs,

"I really don’t think marches are going to do it though. The people in power are sociopaths and don't care. We've had 26 COPs so far, year after year the power elite meet. And the science has been known that whole time and is happening now just like predicted. And still NOTHING, less than nothing, they're calling for MORE fossil fuel! Marches feel good but this is why they don't work.”

And I'm afraid he seems to be right, they seem to have developed some kind of immunity towards acts of civil disobedience, akin to a pest or a virus over time developing a latent immunity towards antibiotics. They have learned how to 'navigate' the movement, and its acts of civil disobedience, and so the question we may be facing is, isn't it high time that we, for once, learn to 'navigate' them?

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These are questions that are almost never asked or contemplated in the movement.

Oftentimes in life, no matter how hard one works, whatever work ethic one embraces, or even how virtuous, pure and altruistic one's intentions are, it just sometimes comes down to cold, hard facts.

Tamara Pearson, in an article I had read some time ago, wrote and she said

"We are capable of being bold and of coordinating, but movements are also fragmented, small, disconnected from the most vulnerable sectors of society, or arising from them but isolated, unsure how to go beyond marches, forums, and symbolic strikes. There is a lack of preparedness for bigger actions that challenge the power structures promoting environmental destruction."

But, let me be emphatically clear here, I am in no way professing that I've got all the answers, nor am I contending that I am, in any way, an expert on such matters or that I have the panacea to all of our problems. I don't have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of past and present generations. I don't think any one person ever did, does or ever will. Nonetheless, I am simply making a dramatic plea in a desperate but heartfelt manner to communicate the following truths:

• Firstly, that protests and marches can only represent an arrow in the quiver; a diverse quiver that has many other arrows, forming together the set of arrows in that quiver, and that, similarly, we are faced with an exigent need to diversify our portfolio and realize that no more can civil disobedience be our sole bread-and-butter.

• Secondly, that it seems that it could be very wise of us to need to recognise that this approach is ineffective and insufficient, and that the best chance we may have as a people is to supplement our current tactics with other tactics so that all of them act in concert with each other, and constitute a new out-of-the-box, overarching, holistically sound, interdisciplinarily coherent, and highly effective approach.

  
  

And, again, don’t take it from me, take it from Dr. Kalmus:

“We’re on the right side of history, but it feels like we’re losing badly. We need reinforcements. Civil disobedients and others. And for every action where, say 8 people risk arrest, there can be hundreds of people in support roles. The low-risk support is crucial. There's a role for everyone. I really don't think marches are going to do it though. The people in power are sociopaths and they don't care."

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change, what I can say is that we must change if they are to get better. One of my favourite aphorisms or metaphors is that 'a scream beneath the water will make no noise', and I love that cuz it so beautifully and artistically captures how we need to evolve beyond just protests and strikes; we need to rise to the surface and continue to scream at the top of our lungs there, so we can actually make some real noise.

An Unfortunate Naming Scheme ..

The problem with the current form and state of the environmental movement starts from the moment we even mention it or utter its name, cuz you see, it is the "environmental” movement, as if it was only for 'environment' nerds and 'treehuggers'.

And therein lies the issue: The second we say that, we have already declared to everyone else in the room that this is a movement for people who are passionate about the environment, nature and animals. It's all subconscious, and deep at the psychological level.

As if it was a hermetic movement akin to something like the tech community, or the car enthusiast community or some other esoteric community of some specialized interest.

And the real issue is that when we do that, it's mostly only people with a passionate interest in nature or the environment that will actively join in. That's how we brilliantly, even if unwittingly, sadly shot ourselves in the foot and alienated more than 90% of the global populace.

It seems that by identifying and thus portraying our movement as a movement for the "environment", (which is sadly enough, something that most people have been conditioned to not prioritize), we create a some sort of bubble or niche and then nestle the movement snugly inside of it.

And then we wonder why it still hasn't spread its wings and gone mainstream..

As Peter Kalmus eloquently framed it,

"It's not about 'the environment.' Stop using this phrase. It's about whether life on Earth collapses into a shadow of its former magnificence. It's about whether humankind thrives and evolves, or descends into a long and brutal dark age on a less habitable planet."

My peer Sophia Kianni, from the incredibles over at Climate Cardinal, put it very eloquently:

"We are not going to change the world alone - we need to engage and challenge people of influence to do better, their audiences are not going to disappear overnight. We can either work with them or lose out on the opportunity to push for system change"

And truth to tell, I don't think I could've said it any better really.

The climate and ecological crisis is merely a crisis of perception; a crisis of mindset; a crisis of the way we view, and therefore treat, our planet and everything on it.

I learned throughout my journey, and came to slowly realize that political failure, is at heart, a failure of imagination; Social failure, in essence, is a failure of heart; Economic failure, is at its core, a failure of mindset; And educational failure, is fundamentally, a failure of vision”

All those failures have their roots in our perception; that is why the climate and ecological crisis is a crisis of perception, for how we perceive things determines how we treat it.

As David Suzuki perfectly depicts it, “The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore.. if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity --then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.”

Another concurring voice came from the illustrious and revered founder of Project InsideOut, Dr. Renee Lertzman when she wrote,

"The most effective way to make action happen at scale and across the “ambivalent middle or silent majority” is actually by changing the way we show up. It’s by being more of a guide and less of an educator, cheerleader preacher, and prosecutor. This takes skill"

I believe Gus Speth, put it in clearer terms when he said,

 "I used to think that the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation, and we scientists don't know how to do that."

And that's precisely why we as a movement may need to re-identify and redefine ourselves, and to transcend those psychological borders that keep most of humanity out of the climate discussion as passive consumers instead of active citizens.

How we go about doing that could, and perhaps should, be a topic of discussion.

Sun Ra beautifully once said “The possible has been tried and failed: now I wanna try the impossible.”

And so, it seems that we need to take a shot at undertaking what no one before us could even imagine attempting: we need to try the impossible.

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Remember Newton's Third Law of Motion?

Another point is that, and this is every bit as true in socio-psychological realms as it is in conventional physics: Force creates resistance.

Instead of 'forcing' climate action onto politicians like it's some kind of burden that they have to deal with, wouldn't it be much wiser if we employed psychological techniques, emotional intelligence tactics and knowledge of neuroscience to navigate politicians more effectively? Making them want to act on climate-related issues, all by their own will? Wouldn't it be more promising and effective if we strategically nudged politicians towards changing their ways and their policies?

It is said that you can usher a horse into a body of water, but you can't make it drink from it. However, you can put salt in his hay, and make him thirsty.

It certainly seems that politicians (and people in general, actually) can be likened to that horse; we may not be able to control politicians, but we can choose to create and contrive the conditions in which they would do what we want them to do without us having to do much work or convincing at all. This is the premise of what Sigmund Freud called "The Engineering of Consent".

Therefore, by choosing to start becoming strategic instead of simply scramblingly pecking at all the buttons and hope that one of them works, we significantly boost our chances of success.

Denzel Washington puts it,

“Just because you’re doing a lot more, doesn't mean you’re getting a lot more done. Don't confuse movement with progress. You can run in place all day and never get anywhere.”

The main premise here is grounded in the art of negotiation; getting the other side to say or do what you want to persuade them to do or believe, and to have them, as Chris Voss framed it "present you with your deal, only they thought it was their idea [all along]".

Engineering the consent within politicians—generating an inner desire in them for doing the right thing and acting on climate—getting them to do our work for us; and act responsibly with adequate measures.

If we succeed in this, the need for any other form of call-to-action may even plummet, cuz if we can figure out how politicians work, then, we can work politicians, and thus, they'll be doing what we want them to do, but they'll be propelled into action by their own self, their own interests and desires, and yes, their own constituents as well.

Instead of being that nagging mother who hounds her child about doing their chores, we should become the other type of mother: the one who puts salt into the hay, and contrives an inner, engineered desire in her child for doing their chores.

It would be truly wise of us all to realise that we are at a crossroads; we have the power to choose to either upgrade our strategy stack and arm ourselves with newer and more effective ways of thinking and action, or not to.

The choice is ours. I trust we make the one we believe is best.

So where does all of this leave us?

We may have to make the decision to reform and rethink what we do, through constant and relentless pursuit of learning, growth and improvement. Because no one else will do it for us.

As Max Depree puts it "We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are." To gain something we never had, we must do something we never did.

As Albert Einstein once sagely said:

"We must be willing to give up what we are in order to become what we will be'.'

Being stuck on our past will not improve our future. If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’. We just cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking we used when they were created.

Or as Simon Bailey teaches us: "It's not who we are that holds us back from brilliant success, it's who we think we're not that holds us back."

It would be highly beneficial and wise for us to consequently evolve our movement by employing a wide-ranging and effective set of ingenious, effective strategies and tactics to form a new approach to change making.

To paraphrase a timely quote made by a senior reporter, Max Cherney,

"We are faced with a choice, we could keep our head in the sand, or, we could acknowledge the fact that we have to do something different".

The choice, is once more, in our hands.

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Final Thoughts..

Creig Crippen had a wonderful and very truthful piece of writing that I think would be apt to close with:

"You are being presented with a choice: evolve or remain. If you choose to remain unchanged, you will be presented with the same challenges, the same routine, the same storms, the same situations, until you learn from them, until you love yourself enough to say "no more", until you choose change. If you choose to evolve, you will connect with the strength within you, you will explore what lies outside of the comfort zone, you will awaken to love, you will become, you will be. You have everything you need. Choose to evolve. Choose love."

The fossil fuel industry by the day, is continuing to up the ante at our expense. And we must up our game, too, to level the playing field if we are ever to wield enough influence and thus have a potent or powerful enough say in how the world goes about climate and environmental matters.

I would like to take this moment to invite us all pause and reflect on our current state and use our past to meaningfully extrapolate our current predicted trajectory as a movement and as a civilization as things stand right now.

Then draw a trajectory for the common future we are envisioning; and subsequently compare that with our current extrapolated trajectory, and judge it for ourselves; are we on the right track? Or does something have to change?

That is a question for each one of us to answer. And I believe in each of our abilities and keen senses of judgment to answer this question.

We’ll never get to take down or subdue those who seek to steal our future, until we learn to see things from a new perspective, a different point of view. When we learn to start using our minds, and especially our hearts, we might not even need strikes and creative signs. When we learn to quiet our minds and listen to our hearts, then nothing can stop us.

Civil disobedience was our cradle, but one cannot live in a cradle forever, it's about time we learn to change, grow and evolve.

We should never forget that yesterday's thinking is unlikely to solve tomorrow's problems. And equally true, spending today complaining about yesterday won't make tomorrow any better. So, let us stop arguing, and start acting. Because the clock… is ticking.

We are being offered another chance, and I believe in each and every single one of us, as well as trust in our collective and brilliant astuteness and prudence, to not blow it.

What happens henceforth is only and only up to us, and is undoubtedly our choice, and I trust in us all to make the right one.

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This has been Yusuf Kemal, and I invite us all… to Re-consider.

Thank you and have a splendiferous day!

Original date of entry: 10/13/2022

First Edited on: 5/29/2023

Second Edit (Refinements only): 3/10/2024

Third Edit (Refinements only): 7/11/2025