We started trekking at 2am. The stars were glorious. But we still couldn’t see beyond our headlamps, trained a step ahead of our heavy boots.
We walked for hours until it was time to swap the boots for crampons, pick, helmet. As we ascended the volcano’s icy face on hands and knees, I was way out of my comfort zone. I hate heights. This was more than I’d signed up for.
One pick hold at a time we crawled, then summited at sunrise. The air was thin and sharp but (for me) thick with relief.
Then the descent. On the way up we could see only a stride at a time. But now we could see with awe the way we had come, all we had passed, brilliant and unfamiliar in the daylight. The park’s valley sprawled before us for leagues. Chimborazo shone in the distance.
Trekking metaphors are cliché but here I go.
We could make it up Carihuairazo because we had just enough light to go by, the right gear, companions (including a new friend and a tagalong dog), and a guide who knew the land. It didn’t require me knowing the way to the summit; just trust and the ability to walk.
Over the past year I often pondered the nature of hope. One of my guides through that landscape is Rebecca Solnit. In the bleak early days of the invasion and energy crisis, she wrote a piece on the world’s unpredictability: “The world we live in today was utterly unforeseen and unimaginable on many counts, the world that is coming is something we can work toward but not something we can foresee…in that uncertainty is room to act, to try to shape a future that will be determined by what we do in the present.”
She ends with: “We see no farther than the little halo of our lanterns, but we can travel all night by that light.”
Solnit has no time for resignation or false certitude; only walking with resolve through the night of uncertainty.
This year I want to live more into that resolve, plus the climb’s other lessons:
Follow guides who know the landscape;
Expect to be outside the comfort zone;
Discern when to rest vs push and how to pace;
Use gear suited for the terrain;
Enjoy time in beauty with people, new and old;
Remember that though the future is uncertain, possibility and perspective await.
The only way is forward.
First posted on Instagram, here I’m trying to make meaning of a climb in Ecuador last year. I’ve reflected on the experience often over the last eightish months. The turn into 2023 seemed the right time to put it into words.
Over the past month, I’ve been finishing projects and catching up on reading. Read on for some articles and actions you might also find worthwhile.
2022-2023
Among the many 2022 reflections and 2023 projections on the state of the planet, here’s a succinct (if somewhat bullish) 2022 retrospective and a more measured 2023 preview.
As we start 2023, things are very much not alright (terrible drought in the Horn of Africa, atmospheric rivers in California, etc.). At the same time, there is previously unseen momentum on public will, policy, and the price of renewables. No one can be sure what 2023 will hold. But “in that uncertainty there is room to act.”
In this vein: a few months back, David Wallace-Wells put out a long, expansive piece revisiting likely long-term scenarios: neither total catastrophe, nor crisis averted, but something rockier, more difficult, and yet less cataclysmic than once feared. This is partly the author updating his mental models—a vital 21st century skill—in public:
“For me, the last few years provide arguments for both buoyant optimism and abject despair. They have made me more mindful of the inescapable challenge of uncertainty when it comes to projecting the future, and the necessity of nevertheless operating within it.”
The COPs. My last newsletter went out before COP27, the UN’s annual climate conference. In brief: at COP7, held in Egypt, there was a major breakthrough on paying loss and damage for disasters in frontline nations. Yet there was little progress on confronting the biggest cause—fossil fuels. A few big reasons: too many fossil fuel lobbyists, too few women in leadership roles. (The UAE just appointing a male oil CEO to run COP28, over its climate minister, a woman, does not bode well.)
You may have heard there was a separate Conference of the Parties (COP) on biodiversity, held in Montreal about a month later. It ended in surprising good news(!), an ambitious conservation agreement to protect 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030.
Two articles on why this matters:
The short case: We Can’t Have a Stable Climate If We Keep Destroying Nature
A visually powerful look at biodiversity loss: Animals Are Running Out of Places to Live
Of course, pledges have to be implemented. But last week’s report that the ozone layer continues to recover was a reminder of how powerful international diplomacy can be for tackling grave environmental challenges and phasing out harmful pollutants. This global effort started with a multilateral convention—also in Montreal, the biodiversity conference host—in 1987.
Bonus: this video on whales, and why their thriving is good for our own. (Thanks to my sister, the only other member of our early-90s Save the Whales Club, for sharing.)
Faith and climate action
Late in the year, Pew Research came out with a report on religious Americans’ environmental views. It was illuminating and encouraging on a few fronts, but overall, not pretty. Only about 8% of all Americans are both highly religious and very concerned about climate change. If you suspect this might have something to do with the uniquely American way climate is politicized, you’re correct.
These trends are part of why I’ve continued to write articles for fellow people of faith. Here are two:
In this Sojourners piece, I try to argue that young women’s voices change the world, or at least announce change is on the way, so let’s actively listen to the young women who are currently leading with vision, courage, and moral clarity—like Mary does in the Christmas story.
In this post on Faithward, I talk about the connections between creation care and Advent—which marks the turning into a new church year. This was the last of a four-part series.
Psychological barriers to acting
The Pew study is a reminder that the stories we live by, our habits of thought, and the people around us, all influence how we do or don’t act during the climate emergency—regular themes of this newsletter.
Two more pieces on psychological barriers to acting:
‘Thinkwashing’ Keeps People From Taking Action in Times of Crisis. This Wired piece from mid-2022 discusses the tendency to over-complexify action by requiring perfection, leading to no action at all, termed “thinkwashing.” Though it’s a corporate trend (like greenwashing), it can also be a pitfall for individuals. I have thinkwashed often. Knowing this is a pattern helps me to move through it. The antidote to thinkwashing is coming to terms with both the difficulty and the necessity of acting, and just doing the thing—however imperfectly.
The second is on “normalcy bias.” I’ve talked before about how risk is socially determined: we may think we are free-thinking, rational actors, but more than we’d like to admit, we take most of our cues about what’s normal and safe from others’ behaviors. This piece discusses the documented trend where many folks go passive in emergencies, not wanting to risk being an over-reactor. You can see why this cognitive bias does not match up well with a massive collective action problem. With the author, I don’t know if seeing and naming normalcy bias is enough to motivate more of us to go from passive bystander to active upstander. But it may. What do you think?
As we climb upward through the 2020s, I submit we can leave these two mindsets behind. Like gear that no longer suits the terrain.
‘What Can I Do?’
Many of us are ready to respond in this time of crisis. But we face a different challenge: how to respond? Just what can I do with my finite time, energy, and resources?
That’s why, over eight or so weeks, I created an Instagram series on this question. It details specific ways people can find their feet on their own climate action journey (here’s the background). You can see the full series, with links to the Instagram posts and further resources, here.
In this series, I tried to hold together the individual-collective action debate (“be the change” versus “change the system”). It’s clear we need systems level change (more on this below). And that individuals are part of systems, our behaviors affect one another and cultural norms, and just doing something in our personal lives often builds momentum for further, more collective engagement. The goal is creating systemic change with others, using the opportunities one’s own little life affords. These are just 16 entry points, if you will.
Over the next year I know I will be checking in on these action areas and asking, ‘what can I do next?’
But what about you? What moves can you make?
It’s not your fault
Even as we step more fully into our own agency and self-efficacy, guilt and shame can be common mental barriers. So it’s important to not lose the plot: none of us should be in this situation. People with power could have taken preventative action a long time ago. And they should now be held accountable.
I’m referring to the latest of the ongoing Big Oil revelations.
A new study uncovered just how much ExxonMobil knew in the late ‘70s about what their products would do to the climate. Their models were very good. They accurately predicted the trajectory of planetary heating through today. Did they alert the public and transition into a renewable energy company, as they could have? Nope. They doubled down on drilling and engaged in long term efforts to deceive the public about climate science. (The Drilled podcast reports on this.)
In case you need it, this is a reminder that individual guilt over climate change is a PR achievement of the fossil fuel industry, who’s gaslit us for a long time. We learn more all the time. This industry remains a barrier to be overcome.
Visions of a prosperous clean energy world
Another mental and practical barrier: fossil fuels have made parts of the world extremely rich and have helped raise living standards for many. We have never lived so comfortably without them. This has meant that, for a long time, it’s been difficult for most people to imagine a clean energy future they actually wanted to live in. But now there are better alternatives. A few sources explore this from various angles:
A national example. An article that got a lot of attention in late 2022 was: What Does Sustainable Living Look Like? Maybe Like Uruguay. It takes up the question of how to balance the need to get off fossil fuels with the need to maintain the human wellbeing that, until recently, has been tied to harnessing them:
“The problem of the future is how to create a 19th-century carbon footprint without backsliding into a 19th-century standard of living…The greatest crisis in human history may require imagining ways of living — not just of energy production but of daily habit — that we have never seen before. How do we begin to imagine such a household?”
The next resources also address this question (“how do we begin to imagine such a household?”) but this one points to an understated South American country: Uruguay, "a country in which the possibilities of living well and living without ruin overlap." A fascinating read.
A planetary framework. I just read Kate Raworth’s 2015 book Doughnut Economics. It offers a paradigm-shifting economic framework for imagining a human household that meets everyone’s basic needs while respecting within this finite planet’s limits. Accessible, pragmatic, hopeful, I strongly recommend it for an alternative to economic mindsets that no longer serve. Here’s my mini-review.
Among its contributions, the book questions what an economy is for, and whether growth is a worthy goal:
“The twentieth century bequeathed to us economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive, and we are now living through the social and ecological fallout of that inheritance. Twenty-first century economists, especially those in today’s high-income countries, now face a challenge that their predecessors did not have to contemplate: to create economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow.”
In this way, Raworth’s doughnut economy is growth-agnostic. There is fierce debate between ‘degrowth’ on the one hand, and ‘green growth’ proponents on the other. I’ve absorbed my fair share of both sides’ arguments. Doughnut Economics, I think, offers a visionary framework that cuts through it all. And a visual worth more than thousands of words:
A (new) story. As Raworth’s work shows, the stories we believe have tremendous influence. Stories “can give power – or they can take it away,” writes Rebecca Solnit in a thrilling new piece about the environmental stories that are out of date, and the new ones that are coming into view. Among the trends and theories of change she discusses, she notes:
“Early on, we heard that renewables were very expensive – this was part of the austerity narrative, or an excuse for not making the transition. But improvements in design and economies of scale are among the factors making them the cheapest form of electricity almost everywhere on earth. There’s no reason to think the innovations of design and economic improvements are all behind us; I suspect they’re mostly ahead of us.”
“The old story was that we couldn’t afford to do what the climate emergency required. The new one is that it would not only be ecologically devastating, but more expensive not to.”
In short: “Twenty years ago we did not have constructive ways to leave the age of fossil fuel behind. Now we do. And the solutions keep getting better.”
A household application. Solnit’s focus is global, but her insights on clean energy solutions play out on the level of town and household.
Take, for example: cooking appliances.
Wisdom would perhaps dictate I leave alone the gas stove fracas that combusted in the public’s face last week and was so dumb on several levels. (International readers: yes, this is a thing in the U.S.) So I won’t get much into the debate. But among my takeaways is how many of us have yet to see compelling alternatives to what we’ve known. Better visions are needed.
That’s why, before things heated up on this front, I was planning to share a product an acquaintance helped create: a new type of induction stove—not only electric, but beautiful and innovative. How so? It features a battery so it can work with a standard electric hookup—saving the cost of installing a higher-voltage hookup. Along the way, the piece makes a strong case for considering an induction when it’s time for your next purchase (so does Consumer Reports).
Copper’s stove is expensive for now, but expect induction prices to drop in years ahead. If you just want to try out induction, you can get a portable cooktop for ~$50-100.
My point: good alternatives exist, and will get even better. Our homes do not need to be where the pipeline ends.
Moreover, now that it’s 2023, tax incentives are available for certain clean energy installs for U.S. residents (upfront rebates will be available later this year). Check out this calculator to see what you qualify for, or this short breakdown.
Taken altogether, these pieces highlight to me how, though we live in systems that make it difficult to live differently, better ways are possible. Better tech and incentives help create better alternatives, but so do better examples, better economic paradigms, and better stories.
Reaching a prosperous clean energy future won’t be easy or without inconvenience. For one, prosperity can longer mean profligate consumption. But it can look like enough and even better—for the many, not just the few—while remaining within planetary limits and preserving the biodiverse web of life on which we all rely. Despite the real challenges of reaching this kind of a regenerative future, we now have guides, gear, and favorable footing for this climb like we’ve never had before.
Well now that I’m back to the trekking imagery, check out this comic by Madeleine Jubilee Saito:
These roots suggest to me not only conduits of life but also paths up a mountain.
Here’s to walking forward and taking life-giving paths within the dark uncertainty of the year(s) ahead.
Thanks for reading. If you have reflections to share, I’m here for them. If we haven’t met or it’s been awhile, always feel free to drop me a note. I’d love to hear about you and your interests.
P.S. I’m currently taking on new projects even as I’m continuing my career transition into full time environmental work. If you or your org could use project support or personal action mapping, you can find out more here or just reply to this email.