Conversation

Rebecca Solnit (@RebeccaSolnit) suggests we need a large-scale change in perspective...
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"What if climate change meant not doom — but abundance?"

Much of the reluctance to do what climate change requires comes from the assumption that it means trading abundance for austerity, and trading all our stuff and conveniences for less stuff, less convenience.

But what if it meant giving up things that we are well rid of, from deadly emissions to nagging feelings of doom, and complicity in destruction? What if the austerity is how we live NOW — and the abundance could be what is to come?

Look closely, and you can see that by measures other than goods and money, we are impoverished. Even the affluent live in a world where confidence in the future, and in the society and institutions around us, is fading — and where a sense of security, social connectedness, mental and physical health, and other measures of well-being are often dismal.

This is the world we live in *with* fossil fuels — the burning of which makes us poorer in many ways. We know that the fossil fuel industry corrodes our politics. We know that worldwide, breathing air contaminated by fossil fuel kills more than 8 million people a year and damages many more, particularly babies and children. And we know that as fossil fuel fills the upper atmosphere with carbon dioxide that destabilizes temperature and weather, it increases despair and anxiety.

What if we imagined “wealth” consisting not of the money we stuff into banks or the fossil-fuel-derived goods we pile up, but of joy, beauty, friendship, community, closeness to flourishing nature, to good food produced without abuse of labor? What if we were to think of wealth as security in our environments and societies, and as confidence in a viable future?
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FULL ESSAY -- https://archive.is/XUUg7#selection-259.0-259.54

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual