Climate denialism is back!
In Donald Trump’s second term the conversation around global warming have been turned upside down and at the centre of US power the climate crisis is now framed as a green hoax . Of course the laws of physics care nothing about narrative, and the burning of fossilized carbon continues to add heat to oceans and atmosphere.
It should come as no surprise that the countries leading the fight to whitewash the climate crisis are those that have the most to gain through continuing with carbon intensive economies.
Narratives organize our thinking into cohesive frames that act like operating software. As social mammals humans are uniquely susceptible to herd thinking. In fact it’s our capacity for shared belief that allows us to form societies and pull in the same direction. Mythologies are the unquestioned beliefs that underpin narrative. Beliefs like “ growth in the economy is always desirable ” are cast in language that goes uncontested. Along with a world of abstracted financial assumptions like “ time is money” “everybody has their price” or ”you get what you pay for. ”
The way we think about the world matters. It defines the event horizon of what’s deemed possible, desirable and meaningful to pursue.
This morning I listened to a podcast conversation between Xiye Bastida and Nate Hagens. Xiye is a 23 year old indigenous climate activist from Mexico, and she said something that had me pause, smile, and open a door to another way of seeing, more real than my own. She said “The wealthiest communities are those that live closest to the land” She was talking about the community where she grew up in Mexico. People harvested foods and grasses for baskets, and sat on the earth for the shared Temazcal ( sweat lodge ) ceremony. Wealth in that world was measured in wellbeing and distributed among people living together and in connection to the earth, the elements, and the animals that shared that place. That is why when we travel from rich modern countries to less developed parts of the world, we see more genuine smiles, less stress and more human to human connection.
At aged 66 I am working two and a half days a week with clients, and my wife and I talk about the financial reality of retirement. Within the economic thinking predominant in Canada people of my age need to have planned and saved so that they can live off financial assets, digital bits of information that miraculously transfer purchasing power into bank accounts. Our financial narrative is designed around debt, scarcity and the perception that there is never “enough”. In fact, we must work harder to get more.Young people have come of age in a system that has normalized both scarcity and gross inequality
I live on 150 acres shared with 10 other families. It’s a neighbourhood, not an intentional community, but we help each other with firewood, we garden together at times, and care for each others animals. I have lived here for 29 years, built my home, and put roots down into the soil. I live surrounded by a 23,000 hectare wilderness area and I walk out the door everyday into relationship with the forested mountainside. The wild water I drink, the meadows where I grow food, and the trees of the temperate rain forrest that take in the carbon I exhale and give off oxygen in exchange. I feel grateful for all the non-financial wealth that comes from this connection to place.
For most of our evolutionary history we lived in cooperative bands connected to nature. Both heathy social connection, and time spent in Nature help regulate the nervous system. Hospital patients with a window that allows them to see trees outside get better more quickly. Those of us living in dense urban settings can still find access to a sunny café courtyard, a neighbourhood park, or an apartment balcony where green plants, open sky and fresh air are accessible. In the moments we notice the touch of warm sun on the skin, or the smell of rain in the air, something settles inside us. We come into deeper self-connection and calm. Nature is resourcing at the nervous system level. Not resource like bushels of wheat or stacks of lumber, but Re-Source: A field of connection that brings us back to ourselves in such a way that thinking recedes and we get to experience the basic goodness of life.The craziness of the world recedes as we are once again participants in the living world and beneficiaries of its abundance and wealth.
