Standing Up on Climate Action

Standing up can be hard in normal circumstances, but standing up to take climate action is extremely challenging for many reasons. First, climate science as a field is constantly expanding and refining what we know about how the Earth’s systems work and how it is changing. As this knowledge grows, so too do new innovations about how to reduce emissions and adapt to living in a warming atmosphere. However, the choices we need to make also involve understandings about economics, power, and privilege. In this modern world of information overload, increasing climate impacts, and tense political contexts, it seems difficult to make choices to act.

And those who do choose to act, are increasingly bullied by others - because they made choices different from those the bullies would make themselves. This bullying behavior is not civil debate about choices but instead it is meant to shame or stop the target and often instills fear in the bystanders about actions they may be considering. In this tense social context, it takes bravery to stand up, push back, and speak out.?

The sad reality of our current situation is that many of us have become bystanders to the climate challenges all around us, uncertain or afraid about what to do. But be clear, bystanding is a choice; and you need to make a different one.

Starting Where We Care

To find our way into meaningful climate action, we each need to start with the people, places, or activities that matter most to us. So, in sharing about my concerns of bystanding on climate action, I will begin with a short story about one of my children.

When my son was eight years old, we became aware that he was the focus of a well-coordinated effort of bullying that left him isolated and unsupported by his peers at school. We had no idea this was happening because he was a well-adjusted and happy kid at home; and he didn’t tell us.?

When asked why he hadn’t told us, he explained that he was just playing by himself and that was okay. He was sad though for the kids who were constantly choosing not to play with him because they were missing out on his friendship.?

While we were proud of his internal self-worth, he was experiencing negative consequences. For example, the constantly ridiculing by a small group of kids at school was causing him to be isolated from other kids who didn’t want to go against the bullies. His absence of fear and continued positive outlook in the face of these actions was causing the bullies to escalate their attempts to get a reaction from him. Bullying can have many negative immediate and long term impacts on children.

As his parents, we wanted him to have meaningful childhood friendships and also to learn the life skills needed to handle situations where he might feel powerless. We worked together, as a family, to show him how to stand up, push back, and speak out. We stood in solidarity with him in doing this. My son is now a member of the military and will never stand by when someone is marginalized or diminished by others. I am so proud to say that he will always choose to stand up and defend others.

However, my son was not the only one impacted by this situation, or the only one who had something to learn about healthy relationships and community building. In any bullying situation there are three groups involved: the bully(ies), the target(s), and the bystander(s). This is commonly referred to as the bullying triangle. In my son's situation, he was the target and the students who were ridiculing him and isolating him from other students were the bullies. The bystanders involved included: other students, the school staff and administration, the bullies’ parents, and us as a family. Each bystander had choices they could make that aligned them with the bullies or the target. There is no neutral ground in bullying. Taking no action as a bystander is a passive choice to align yourself with bullies. The role of bystanders within the bullying triangle reminds us all that individual actions are connected to our collective values as a community.?

Bystanding

I carry forward the lessons I learned from my son’s experiences, from our collective experiences to other choices we make in life elsewhere. Most of us would choose not to by stand if we saw a community member experiencing violence, nor would we by stand if someone we loved was told by a stranger that they were stupid. We would stand up, push back, and speak out because we would feel protective of these folks.?

In past decades, as the impacts of climate change are becoming more obvious to folks in all parts of the world and the compounding injustices of historical inequities are amplified by these impacts, we see more and more people choosing to by stand when bullies are present. I see damage to our community fabric, our social cohesion, caused by leaders of all political stripes telling us to trust these people but not those folks; to fear some and idolize others. There is no civil debate about options we can take to grow a better future for us all; instead, there just seems to be a lot of identity politics happening. It all just seems to be about who has the most power, who gets to dominate others, just like school yard bullies.?

And so many of us are bystanding this situation.?

We could be bystanding by living in parallel to those exhibiting bullying behaviors or being targeted, like the other students in my son’s situation. When we hear people get put down for taking particular climate actions, or we see them targeted for taking political stances that support climate actions, we by stand when we don’t actively demand civil debate and discourse, don’t expect and require the rule of law to be equally enforced, and don’t treat each other with the respect with which we would like to be treated. But many of us are conflict adverse and don’t want to get involved, don’t want to become the target. But think bigger, more than just about you. Do you really want to live in a society where you can be singled out? Where fear rules? Where bullies define and redefine how things will be instead of our long-established democratic norms? Learn how to:

• talk about climate related issues with those around you;?
• understand the mental health aspects of climate inaction; and?
• educate yourself and others around local issues of climate that matter to you.

Or we could be bystanding as elected officials, supervisors, influencers, thought leaders, corporate executives, spiritual guides, or community organizers, like the school staff and administrators. As leaders, people look to us to speak out, and they often follow our lead. Will we be respected as leaders if we stay silent in the face of bullying behaviors? Leadership is an earned role; are we earning it? Good leaders are both authentic and empathetic, how are we showing up in these ways? To grow as leaders, we need to connect to leadership networks in our sectors and find others to support our understandings of climate issues. We need to access leadership development resources on how to foster civil discourse on complex issues and do the needed work to truly be great leaders.

Or we could be bystanding as family - like the parents, siblings, or loved ones of either a bully or a target. It can be so hard to really see how the behavior of family members is hurting people, us as families, and us as a community. But in the context of climate change, we cannot avoid these conversations; they are an initial step in climate action.?We need to call it out, name that we love them but really don’t like how they are dominating the discussion or not being invited into the discussion by others. Folks have created some terrific?resources for talking climate in tense family settings, do some internet searches and find what you need to start into such talk with those around you. I find framing these conversations in civil discourse to make more informed and thoughtful choices in all areas of our collective life can help a lot.

Standing Up

In my many conversations with people in all walks of life, and from research that has come out in the past few years, many feel immobilized and overwhelmed when we think about climate impacts: fires, hurricane related flooding, heat waves, intense wind damage, etc. We feel fear, anxiety, worry, panic and most critically, we feel powerlessness. We are often unsure of what our responsibilities are for any part of the shifting climate conditions. We are bystanding on climate change.

We have power, each one of us. There are different types and degrees of power but all of us have some form of power. Don’t give it up by doing nothing. Flex it and it will grow. There are some great resources to think about how to flex your climate action power:

• What If We Got It Right?
• The Climate Action Handbook
• The Future We Choose
• Saving Us
• There Is No Planet B
• Climate Justice Alliance

I have been taught that the learnings shared with us are responsibilities to carry in the world. For me, these responsibilities take the form of finding ways to translate my learnings from one context to another; from one sector to another; and across places and regions in the world.?Consider how you might open your mind to new learning about climate change, justice, and action. Then choose how you will take that learning into the world based on how you see your responsibilities.

Civil Choices

It takes effort to work collaboratively with people who have values, knowledges, and ways of being that are different from our own. It takes effort to step forward when we see the law broken and no justice served. It takes bravery to go against those with whom you might otherwise be aligned, because you don’t think what they are doing in each moment is right. Because this is hard, many of us choose to live in echo chambers that reinforce our way of viewing the world. But echo chambers are dangerous in reinforcing limited and narrow ideas about how we can live in the world and, frankly, life is so much richer when we get to be in relationship with folks who are not all the same.?Innovation, something much needed in our current shifting climate context, is best fostered when we are exposed to varied new skills and ways of being in respectful relationship with each other.?

So, a few questions to ask yourself to work towards a better tomorrow given our shifting climate:

• How can we lean into our democratic principles and listen to and learn from each other?
• How do we decide who to trust and how to hold them accountable to that trust?
• How do we begin to understand the complex and intersecting issues of scientific reliability, climate change, climate justice, and climate action in ways that matter to our everyday?
• Why should we care about all of this?

Consider these questions not in general ways but specifically in relation to your own community, family, places and communities. Start where you care. Stop bystanding.

Starting

This blog space is going to tackle the question: How do I START taking climate action?

It is going to chip away at this question, one bit at a time, not necessarily in any order, but hopefully in a way that can help us listen and learn from each other to make needed changes at a community level.

I don't want to play the game that I hear in national politics, the frenzy of bullying that seems to just hurt everyday folks in communities across the two nations to which I belong. I choose to change the rules, to help as many folks as I can learn from each other in new ways, to see value in different knowledge systems and ways of doing things.

I want to help others move past the stress, anger, and worry so many feel in dealing with our current climate context and move into a place of innovation and action. I don't need to dictate that action; I'm hardly going to be the best to know how any given individual should get moving on climate. That is for them to decide. But what I can do is help folks find some starting points and potentially some navigational aids on this path.

I see the world as a deeply interweaving system, that can be looked at in different scales (home, community, region, electoral area, nation, etc), which includes all things social, ecological, engineering, political, geochemical, physical, spiritual, and economic. The world fills me with wonder and makes me curious.

I am choosing to not be a bystander but instead to stand up for climate action and, hopefully, to help others do so too.