Hey thank you for this. I have been deep in it with research about community agency in food system change relate to climate for the last few years and while I can't necessarily generalise the findings from the community I studied as a case, I'll share some observations from the research that's out there:
You don't have to be an 'activist' in the sense of joining a new group to make a difference; a great place to start is wherever you are in your life already, particularly in social settings. Specifically, your household, your church, your workplace - wherever your sphere of influence is (kind of like you did here, bringing up conversation in your sphere, the blog). Use the tools in front of you to see how you and the people also in that space can work together to shift things. Make sustainability a priority and support each other to take on a new challenges with systematic regularity, if you can (this week, get the book club, household, choir group, whatever, to learn to compost - somebody probably already has a sister who knows how to do it and can help, or just YouTube and trial and error to start....).
Leadership is important here. If you have any responsibility in your organisation, push the boundaries wherever you can. Make sustainability a part of the by-laws -make it official and part of accountability and evaluation, regardless of how relevant it seems to what your organisation does. Take risks that won't be liked by every person but absolutely prioritise equity and accessibility when considering any changes.
Informal leadership matters too - you don't have official responsibility in whatever groups you are a part of? Take initiative to try new things and share them. Be the one to volunteer to set up composting (or organise bike-to-work days, or whathaveyou). Each tiny effort is insignificant but that's not entirely the point - to address climate change, we have to change the climate of our work and play and family spaces to hard-out prioritise it. Covid has made this harder in some ways, but conversations and learning can start even for those in lockdown.
It is really hard for one person to make a difference but groups and communities really can, and when families, small businesses, business chains, churches, marae, etc make system change for themselves, its contagious to others. Even by trying at the community level, greater awareness and buy-in is developed among peers and even the reluctant, bigger, stakeholding parties (governance, big industry) will have to change faster to keep up.
Challenges people face as individuals - affordability, accessibility, availability, time - these can more easily be overcome with collective effort and a bit of risk-taking.
Finally, and sorry for the dissertation, much as I'm a huge fan of dystopian books and movies and totally get the comparisons in the media between them and the anthropocene, the vision we need is a more utopian one. I think we need to share stories of communities doing great work, of any wins, and things to aspire to (and how to get there), and help each other live out a hopeful and forward-looking narrative for ourselves and our kids.
A few years ago I read “Uninhabitable Earth”. Incredibly depressing. I always thought the end of humanity would happen in a couple hundred years, not when I reached retirement age.
People need to realize that climate change can no longer be averted. We’ve now reached a stage of “how bad do you want it to be”.
Unfortunately, it isn’t just rising temperatures and ocean levels in our future. It’s our soil being destroyed and crops only providing 50% of the nutrients that they used to. It’s wars over what little natural resources that the earth has left.
The US can’t handle the border crisis that it has now, in a couple of decades that border crisis will seem quaint as climate refugees from Central America head north because climate change is going to bring genocide to countries along the equator. The pandemic that we are facing now will also seem quaint as the permafrost melts and releases viruses that human beings have no immunity to because they’ve been frozen in the ground for thousands of years. And a lot of people won’t realize how bad it is until it is literally in their backyards.
I totally agree with the author of this piece in regards to the news media. If the news media truly reported on what an existential threat that climate change is, and made the issue a front page one instead of burying it several pages in, or reporting about it only during the summer, people would realize the threat. We’d have protests every day in the streets.
And the CEOs of major oil companies would be charged with crimes against humanity.
We’ve known what CO2 does to the climate for at least a century now. The oil companies have known since the mid-century that climate change was an impending threat to humanity.
People in power destroyed this earth because of greed.
I’m normally an optimist, but I can’t help being a pessimist about the climate. I still have some hope though. Things have changed in the few years since I read “Uninhabitable Earth”. Trump is no longer President (saying that sentence brings my blood pressure down several points. It should be my mantra). Earlier this week a judge blocked a massive drilling project in Alaska because of climate change. There’s now a plan for mass roll out of electric vehicles and updating our infrastructure to mitigate the effects of climate change. Carbon capture seems like a real possibility. Republicans aren’t denying climate change like they used to, though they’re still not doing much if anything about it - but hey, it’s something.
For those of you who live in the United States and need a convenient way to contact your congresspeople, try out resistbot. You can send a letter or fax via text and it takes a few seconds. I’ve done it and I’ve actually received responses from my Senators and Representative. It’s so easy, you can do it while you’re sitting on the toilet 🚽.
Powerless and part of the problem is exactly how I feel. That with every basic and often necessary purchase I'm stealing seconds from my kid's lives and there is no genuine alternative. Being the hysteric in the room met with indifference and scorn creates shame, righteousness and exhaustion, but no sustainable change. If only climate change were like sex, easily monetised and attractive to most. A wealth cap is the very least we should do. And by we, I mean some mythical person or entity, because how am I, or the New Zealand government supposed to stop Bezos and his ilk? Adapt or die is where we're at and we all seem to be comparing the quality of our coffins.
Thank you for this work. It is something. It reminds me to vote daily with my dollar for the least worst option if nothing else. I'll hit those links later. Maybe writing will help if it's to people who believe that their economic situation relies on actually doing something because they won't be voted for if they don't.
Thank you for this. I definitely struggle with that feeling of having a lack of agency. I think it’s important to acknowledge that all the small / safe changes available to us just aren’t going to cut it on their own.
Thanks for this Josh - it expresses very eloquently what so many of us feel every day. My own trivial effort is to have spent regular amounts of time over the last 15 years trying to persuade Hamilton City Council to make it safe to cross major roads as a pedestrian (or a cyclist), to very little avail. The focus from local governments and national bodies like Waka Kotahi is primarily on making life convenient for car and truck drivers, despite what is staring them in the face in terms of our future, and despite what they frequently say. Consequently, one of the simple solutions to making city life much less of a contributor to global warming is reliably denied as 'silly' or 'impractical' (I really hate that one!) - and it's not safe or in any way attractive to make short journeys on foot or by bike. Yes, we do all need to become activists, despite it being a discouraging activity that is currently reminiscent of banging your head on a particularly unpleasant brick wall. One of the immediate ways that any citizen over the age of 18 can do this without risk of bodily harm is to vote. Take the time to suss out exactly what your local council candidates, and national election candidates, stand for - and that means turning up at 'meet the candidate' meetings and grilling them until you get answers if necessary. Then vote only for the ones who express genuine concern for the things that matter (those determining the planet's wellbeing, and all the associated aspects of social wellbeing it controls) and hold them to it if they get elected. Politicians do what gets them votes. We need to change what that is. At the moment, the turnout, particularly for local body elections, is abysmally low - about 30% in many cases. The people who reliably do vote are often the ones who want to protect the status quo - businessmen and the wealthy, who are very aware of the real power of a vote in the right place. Apathy, or not voting as a protest, is providing direct support for those people. We need to change that, as soon as possible.
As one of those 'boomer' vegan types that had protested this stuff - big oil pollution, air pollution, box and drift net fishing, mining in all its forms, nuclear everything - for nearly 50 yrs, believe me when I say I feel all that same anxiety and seething anger and sense of helplessness. I've just felt it for much longer than most. Mine was the first generation to face these issues.... And more of us than you realise are still fighting. Many of us at the expense of our health, some of us at the expense of our lives. I've known many who have invented and created climate protecting hydro and alternative heating and transport options and have sold their patents with great confidence that it will change the world. Only to find that their solutions have effectively disappeared. Dead and buried. Some of those people have disappeared, like a man I once met in the Bay of Plenty.... His entire family are gone. Who knows where. His solution would have truly changed the balance of power on the entire planet. Probably why the disappearance.... Leaving many people bereft, quietly terrified, and with a permanent sense of helplessness and growing anxiety. We are exhausted... And we quietly and personally do everything we humanly can. But you are both right.... Until this becomes big news, daily news, an entire generational necessity kind of news.... When we are the majority not the minority and when our dollar means business.....I fear for our future generations. And it is also why I hope I will never be a grandparent. I would hate to die knowing the misery the next generation face. 😭
I've been working away at climate things for 4 years now - which is a blip compared to the people I've met. (shameless plug - google "Imagine my relief")
At first, I felt like a voice in the wilderness, and while it's always hard to hold anyone's attention for long on the internet, I now believe there are countless people working on this problem, one way or another. They don't always see it that way themselves, but we're all chipping away at the same machine.
I used to worry about how long it would take to become real to everyone. I now worry about how they will behave when it does.
I'm encouraged by this piece because of these things.
Anther great piece, thank you. What clever friends you have David. You know you writers play an important role in all this. I feel that all my confused, ambivalent, angry and angts ridden thoughts on climate change have been gathered, sorted, reworked and read back to me so as to make actual sense. Helping others to make sense and gain some clarity around this monumental head fuck is a hugely important job, so thank you. I'm sure you've seen it but this Jonathan Pie piece makes some similar points and is also bloody funny. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=feeFO_LHOu8
From one Josh to another, thank you for your words. I really relate to the incredible feeling of despair and nihilism, and sadly, I know I do less than I can because I am a defeatist... But it's inspiring (or maybe not inspiring but just providing a sliver of hope) to hear other people feeling that way and not accepting it. So thank you for that.
Surely there will continue to be the activism we have seen, but I have to think that it will start to become violent with lack of action from companies and governments and people continuing to feel scared and helpless.
There is an economist Richard D. Wolff that runs a website called Democracy at Work and has a YouTube channel with regular updates. Mainly focusing on capitalism in the US but provides some good analysis on how we have got to the state we are in. One particular episode talks about the system and food production. Link below. Talks of how even when we try to have healthier and more organic food the system works to disincentive us to eat it as it's more expensive than junk food.
One really easy thing people can do, if they have KiwiSaver, is switch providers to an ethical provider that is not investing in fossil fuels and is actively investing in green technologies.
I switched to Pathfinder, which was so easy, but you can find all kinds of ethical options at mindfulmoney.nz
This isn’t sponsored! I just wish I’d switched sooner. So many New Zealanders have at least some money in KiwiSaver and probably don’t realise they’re inadvertently investing in fossil fuels.
It is frustrating, knowing that this is a global thing but not enough to be global news on a daily basis as you say. I believe every country has their climate activists, hopefully growing by the day, but it is difficult to steady the growth when each country has their own set of shit to deal with. I cannot speak for every country of course, but specifically in my country - one of our foremost battles is our government murdering its own people, as if human rights isn't a thing. Obviously that is a whole other discussion, but when we are fighting just to stay alive, the climate crisis becomes less of a priority if we can't stay alive today fearing for our lives. I hope this does not sound selfish, of course the climate crisis is important, but it's a complicated thing where people are taking things day by day which makes the future almost impossible to envision.
This was a really intense piece to write, but I'm stoked to be able to do it here. So yeah, thanks for the opportunity, David.
I'll lurk in the comments - I'm happy to chat if anyone has any specific comments or questions for me.
Hi all - hope your weekend is going well. The comments here are really thoughtful - they always are - but today even moreso. It's a giant topic. Huge.
I am reading and digesting.
Thanks so much for writing this, Josh. Hope I didn't butcher your words when I read them.
Stay safe all - and talk soon,
david
Hey thank you for this. I have been deep in it with research about community agency in food system change relate to climate for the last few years and while I can't necessarily generalise the findings from the community I studied as a case, I'll share some observations from the research that's out there:
You don't have to be an 'activist' in the sense of joining a new group to make a difference; a great place to start is wherever you are in your life already, particularly in social settings. Specifically, your household, your church, your workplace - wherever your sphere of influence is (kind of like you did here, bringing up conversation in your sphere, the blog). Use the tools in front of you to see how you and the people also in that space can work together to shift things. Make sustainability a priority and support each other to take on a new challenges with systematic regularity, if you can (this week, get the book club, household, choir group, whatever, to learn to compost - somebody probably already has a sister who knows how to do it and can help, or just YouTube and trial and error to start....).
Leadership is important here. If you have any responsibility in your organisation, push the boundaries wherever you can. Make sustainability a part of the by-laws -make it official and part of accountability and evaluation, regardless of how relevant it seems to what your organisation does. Take risks that won't be liked by every person but absolutely prioritise equity and accessibility when considering any changes.
Informal leadership matters too - you don't have official responsibility in whatever groups you are a part of? Take initiative to try new things and share them. Be the one to volunteer to set up composting (or organise bike-to-work days, or whathaveyou). Each tiny effort is insignificant but that's not entirely the point - to address climate change, we have to change the climate of our work and play and family spaces to hard-out prioritise it. Covid has made this harder in some ways, but conversations and learning can start even for those in lockdown.
It is really hard for one person to make a difference but groups and communities really can, and when families, small businesses, business chains, churches, marae, etc make system change for themselves, its contagious to others. Even by trying at the community level, greater awareness and buy-in is developed among peers and even the reluctant, bigger, stakeholding parties (governance, big industry) will have to change faster to keep up.
Challenges people face as individuals - affordability, accessibility, availability, time - these can more easily be overcome with collective effort and a bit of risk-taking.
Finally, and sorry for the dissertation, much as I'm a huge fan of dystopian books and movies and totally get the comparisons in the media between them and the anthropocene, the vision we need is a more utopian one. I think we need to share stories of communities doing great work, of any wins, and things to aspire to (and how to get there), and help each other live out a hopeful and forward-looking narrative for ourselves and our kids.
On that note, if anyone
A few years ago I read “Uninhabitable Earth”. Incredibly depressing. I always thought the end of humanity would happen in a couple hundred years, not when I reached retirement age.
People need to realize that climate change can no longer be averted. We’ve now reached a stage of “how bad do you want it to be”.
Unfortunately, it isn’t just rising temperatures and ocean levels in our future. It’s our soil being destroyed and crops only providing 50% of the nutrients that they used to. It’s wars over what little natural resources that the earth has left.
The US can’t handle the border crisis that it has now, in a couple of decades that border crisis will seem quaint as climate refugees from Central America head north because climate change is going to bring genocide to countries along the equator. The pandemic that we are facing now will also seem quaint as the permafrost melts and releases viruses that human beings have no immunity to because they’ve been frozen in the ground for thousands of years. And a lot of people won’t realize how bad it is until it is literally in their backyards.
I totally agree with the author of this piece in regards to the news media. If the news media truly reported on what an existential threat that climate change is, and made the issue a front page one instead of burying it several pages in, or reporting about it only during the summer, people would realize the threat. We’d have protests every day in the streets.
And the CEOs of major oil companies would be charged with crimes against humanity.
We’ve known what CO2 does to the climate for at least a century now. The oil companies have known since the mid-century that climate change was an impending threat to humanity.
People in power destroyed this earth because of greed.
I’m normally an optimist, but I can’t help being a pessimist about the climate. I still have some hope though. Things have changed in the few years since I read “Uninhabitable Earth”. Trump is no longer President (saying that sentence brings my blood pressure down several points. It should be my mantra). Earlier this week a judge blocked a massive drilling project in Alaska because of climate change. There’s now a plan for mass roll out of electric vehicles and updating our infrastructure to mitigate the effects of climate change. Carbon capture seems like a real possibility. Republicans aren’t denying climate change like they used to, though they’re still not doing much if anything about it - but hey, it’s something.
For those of you who live in the United States and need a convenient way to contact your congresspeople, try out resistbot. You can send a letter or fax via text and it takes a few seconds. I’ve done it and I’ve actually received responses from my Senators and Representative. It’s so easy, you can do it while you’re sitting on the toilet 🚽.
Powerless and part of the problem is exactly how I feel. That with every basic and often necessary purchase I'm stealing seconds from my kid's lives and there is no genuine alternative. Being the hysteric in the room met with indifference and scorn creates shame, righteousness and exhaustion, but no sustainable change. If only climate change were like sex, easily monetised and attractive to most. A wealth cap is the very least we should do. And by we, I mean some mythical person or entity, because how am I, or the New Zealand government supposed to stop Bezos and his ilk? Adapt or die is where we're at and we all seem to be comparing the quality of our coffins.
Thank you for this work. It is something. It reminds me to vote daily with my dollar for the least worst option if nothing else. I'll hit those links later. Maybe writing will help if it's to people who believe that their economic situation relies on actually doing something because they won't be voted for if they don't.
Thank you for this. I definitely struggle with that feeling of having a lack of agency. I think it’s important to acknowledge that all the small / safe changes available to us just aren’t going to cut it on their own.
Thanks for this Josh - it expresses very eloquently what so many of us feel every day. My own trivial effort is to have spent regular amounts of time over the last 15 years trying to persuade Hamilton City Council to make it safe to cross major roads as a pedestrian (or a cyclist), to very little avail. The focus from local governments and national bodies like Waka Kotahi is primarily on making life convenient for car and truck drivers, despite what is staring them in the face in terms of our future, and despite what they frequently say. Consequently, one of the simple solutions to making city life much less of a contributor to global warming is reliably denied as 'silly' or 'impractical' (I really hate that one!) - and it's not safe or in any way attractive to make short journeys on foot or by bike. Yes, we do all need to become activists, despite it being a discouraging activity that is currently reminiscent of banging your head on a particularly unpleasant brick wall. One of the immediate ways that any citizen over the age of 18 can do this without risk of bodily harm is to vote. Take the time to suss out exactly what your local council candidates, and national election candidates, stand for - and that means turning up at 'meet the candidate' meetings and grilling them until you get answers if necessary. Then vote only for the ones who express genuine concern for the things that matter (those determining the planet's wellbeing, and all the associated aspects of social wellbeing it controls) and hold them to it if they get elected. Politicians do what gets them votes. We need to change what that is. At the moment, the turnout, particularly for local body elections, is abysmally low - about 30% in many cases. The people who reliably do vote are often the ones who want to protect the status quo - businessmen and the wealthy, who are very aware of the real power of a vote in the right place. Apathy, or not voting as a protest, is providing direct support for those people. We need to change that, as soon as possible.
As one of those 'boomer' vegan types that had protested this stuff - big oil pollution, air pollution, box and drift net fishing, mining in all its forms, nuclear everything - for nearly 50 yrs, believe me when I say I feel all that same anxiety and seething anger and sense of helplessness. I've just felt it for much longer than most. Mine was the first generation to face these issues.... And more of us than you realise are still fighting. Many of us at the expense of our health, some of us at the expense of our lives. I've known many who have invented and created climate protecting hydro and alternative heating and transport options and have sold their patents with great confidence that it will change the world. Only to find that their solutions have effectively disappeared. Dead and buried. Some of those people have disappeared, like a man I once met in the Bay of Plenty.... His entire family are gone. Who knows where. His solution would have truly changed the balance of power on the entire planet. Probably why the disappearance.... Leaving many people bereft, quietly terrified, and with a permanent sense of helplessness and growing anxiety. We are exhausted... And we quietly and personally do everything we humanly can. But you are both right.... Until this becomes big news, daily news, an entire generational necessity kind of news.... When we are the majority not the minority and when our dollar means business.....I fear for our future generations. And it is also why I hope I will never be a grandparent. I would hate to die knowing the misery the next generation face. 😭
The feeling of helplessness is too real. My thanks to you both for writing this.
I've been working away at climate things for 4 years now - which is a blip compared to the people I've met. (shameless plug - google "Imagine my relief")
At first, I felt like a voice in the wilderness, and while it's always hard to hold anyone's attention for long on the internet, I now believe there are countless people working on this problem, one way or another. They don't always see it that way themselves, but we're all chipping away at the same machine.
I used to worry about how long it would take to become real to everyone. I now worry about how they will behave when it does.
I'm encouraged by this piece because of these things.
Anther great piece, thank you. What clever friends you have David. You know you writers play an important role in all this. I feel that all my confused, ambivalent, angry and angts ridden thoughts on climate change have been gathered, sorted, reworked and read back to me so as to make actual sense. Helping others to make sense and gain some clarity around this monumental head fuck is a hugely important job, so thank you. I'm sure you've seen it but this Jonathan Pie piece makes some similar points and is also bloody funny. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=feeFO_LHOu8
From one Josh to another, thank you for your words. I really relate to the incredible feeling of despair and nihilism, and sadly, I know I do less than I can because I am a defeatist... But it's inspiring (or maybe not inspiring but just providing a sliver of hope) to hear other people feeling that way and not accepting it. So thank you for that.
Surely there will continue to be the activism we have seen, but I have to think that it will start to become violent with lack of action from companies and governments and people continuing to feel scared and helpless.
There is an economist Richard D. Wolff that runs a website called Democracy at Work and has a YouTube channel with regular updates. Mainly focusing on capitalism in the US but provides some good analysis on how we have got to the state we are in. One particular episode talks about the system and food production. Link below. Talks of how even when we try to have healthier and more organic food the system works to disincentive us to eat it as it's more expensive than junk food.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlaOTJxB52w
Really interesting channel to get an analysis on how the current state of capitalism was evitable
One really easy thing people can do, if they have KiwiSaver, is switch providers to an ethical provider that is not investing in fossil fuels and is actively investing in green technologies.
I switched to Pathfinder, which was so easy, but you can find all kinds of ethical options at mindfulmoney.nz
This isn’t sponsored! I just wish I’d switched sooner. So many New Zealanders have at least some money in KiwiSaver and probably don’t realise they’re inadvertently investing in fossil fuels.
It is frustrating, knowing that this is a global thing but not enough to be global news on a daily basis as you say. I believe every country has their climate activists, hopefully growing by the day, but it is difficult to steady the growth when each country has their own set of shit to deal with. I cannot speak for every country of course, but specifically in my country - one of our foremost battles is our government murdering its own people, as if human rights isn't a thing. Obviously that is a whole other discussion, but when we are fighting just to stay alive, the climate crisis becomes less of a priority if we can't stay alive today fearing for our lives. I hope this does not sound selfish, of course the climate crisis is important, but it's a complicated thing where people are taking things day by day which makes the future almost impossible to envision.