You Are Not Crazy. You Are Not Alone.

This week's newsletter is an important reminder for anyone who has felt isolated or alone when it comes to society's inaction on the climate emergency.

You are not alone. You are not crazy. What's happening is insane.

This is a passage from journalist Wen Stephenson's "What We're Fighting for Now is Each Other":

"The window in which to prevent the worst scenarios is closing before our eyes. And the fossil-fuel industry—which holds the fate of humanity in its carbon reserves—is doubling down, economically and politically, on all this destruction. We face an unprecedented situation—a radical situation. It demands a radical response. A serious response...

The question now is not whether we’re going to “stop global warming” or “solve the climate crisis”; it is whether humanity will act quickly and decisively enough to salvage civilization itself—in any form worth salvaging. Whether any kind of stable, humane, and just future—any kind of just society—is still possible.

We know that if the governments of the world actually wanted to address the situation in a serious way they could... 

Where does this leave us? What is the proper response? Remain calm, we’re told. No “scare tactics” or “hysterics,” please. Cooler heads will prevail. Enjoy the Earth Day festivities. 

I’m sorry, the cooler heads have not prevailed. It’s been a quarter-century since the alarm was sounded. The cooler heads have failed. 

If you want sweet, cool-headed reason, try this: masses of people—most of them young, a generation with little or nothing to lose—physically, nonviolently disrupting the fossil-fuel industry and the institutions that support it and abet it. Getting in the way of business as usual. Forcing the issue. Finally acting as if we accept what the science is telling us - and as though we actually care about our fellow human beings.

Isn't that a bit extreme?

Really? Extreme? Business as usual is extreme. Just ask a climate scientist. The building is burning. The innocents—the poor, the oppressed, the children, your own children—are inside. And the American petro state—which, under the "all of the above" energy policies of Barack Obama, has overtaken Saudi Arabia as the largest producer of oil and gas on the planet - is spraying fuel, not water, on the flames. That's more than extreme. It's homicidal. It's psychopathic. It's fucking insane."

I decided to share this today after listening to Amy Westervelt and Mary Anna?se Heglar's podcast, "Hot Take" where they quoted part of it. (Both the podcast and the book are 100% worth checking out, by the way.)

And I'm sharing it to make sure you know that you are not alone.

What is happening right now is absolutely insane. We're faced with an existential threat. Thousands have already died because of the climate crisis. Many millions more will in the coming decades (7 million people die every year already from air pollution alone). Civilization itself is threatened by the chaos and conflict that is inevitable.

Our response to this situation, or rather, lack thereof, is mind-blowing.

It's easy to feel isolated or crazy when nobody else seems to be worried about this.

But you are not alone. You are not the crazy one.

Sometimes I feel like I live in an alternate reality because the path we're on is incompatible with, well, everything we know and love.

This isn't easy. But please always remember...

There are millions of us in this movement. More are joining every day. We're in this together. We're starting to turn the tide. And even though we're still not moving fast enough, we are moving faster every day.

So keep going. I'm with you. Millions are with you even when it doesn't feel like it.

And, as always, please let me know if I can help you in any way.

Best,

Ryan

P.S. If you enjoyed reading this newsletter, please share it with a friend! This is about crowdsourcing sustainability after all. The more people working together towards solutions, the better off we'll all be.

And, if you'd like, you can sign up for my main sustainability newsletter here to get all of my work. Doing so also gives you access to join the Crowdsourcing Sustainability slack community where you can connect and collaborate with people around the world.

(This article was originally published here on Crowdsourcing Sustainability.)