https://archive.md/mRRIh
"A monastic once told me renunciation can be great if it means giving up things
that make you miserable.
This vision, I think, is what has been missing when we talk about the climate
crisis — and how we should respond to it.
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 we’re 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 fuel — 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.
All of this has particularly affected the young, who are justified in their
fury and grief. But in truth, we’re dealing with a broader sense of
helplessness and even guilt — the impact on the psyche of witnessing or feeling
complicit in something wrong.
This is moral injury, and many of us suffer from it. Or we try to avoid seeing
and thinking about it, and adopt a numbing, willful obliviousness.
Such numbing breeds inaction, when this crisis demands specific action: a swift
transition toward renewables, improved designs for the built environment,
better care for the natural world in all the ways we interact with it.
The good news is, the knowledge that we are not separate from nature but
dependent on it is already far more present than it was a few decades ago.
Everywhere, I see people rethinking how they work and live, turning this
knowledge into reality."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-global-malaria-lgbtq-warriors-river-albania/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
