Climate Action and the Spirit of 1776
Let’s Get Inspired
As we celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence 243 years ago, on July 4th, 1776, let’s consider the colonial leaders and revolutionary participants — many of whom were educated, healthy, and not just comfortable, but wealthy. At the time, the colonists were generally prosperous compared to the rest of the world, even compared to Europeans. Yet, they decided to put their own lives on the line, risking everything for noble causes (and we should note, as Howard Zinn and others emphasize, for ignoble reasons too) in their Declaration. Yet, risk it all they did — on a war with a mighty empire, that would not end for seven more years.
Let’s reflect on what meaning their actions, might have for us this July 4th.
Inspiration for Today?
Today, with global warming, we face an oppression, a crisis, an emergency, so great, that the consequences could be felt, not for hundreds of years, but for thousands of years. The climate emergency was largely produced in actions spanning just a few generations, and today the crisis must be solved within a single generation. To fail in this effort is to not just steal from our children’s and grandchildren’s health, liberty and prosperity, but steal it from possibly thousands of generations, at a cost, as David Wallace-Wells describes in The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, that is almost unfathomable.
At the just concluded NAPHN19: Build The World We Want, conference, Jacob Deva Racusin, of New Frameworks Natural Design/Build, leading the closing plenary, noted that the goal must be systemic change — that truly addressing the climate crisis requires us to change our thinking from a narrow view to a broad, interconnected view.
In revolutionary fashion, Jacob implored the audience to become the leaders that they want to see — in their company, in their community and their industry — to not be satisfied with following, but that each must lead, at every level. (We might add, like the Sons of Liberty, the Minutemen and signers of the Declaration of Independence.)
Revolutionaries or Consumers? (or perhaps Revolutionaries AND Consumers?!)
Yet we typically aren’t ready for “systems thinking” and instead internalize it as how to simply modify our lives, as consumers, in the economic construct handed to us. We try to be a conscientious consumer. We try to pick sustainable materials and products, consume less and recycle more. We try to make more sustainable decisions — with the desire to “vote with our wallets” and promote “green industry”. At the immediate level, there are tremendous benefits to making healthy, low-energy, robust buildings — for the construction workers, occupants and owners. It’s important to make the best consumer choices possible in all our consumption.
Mike Berners-Lee’s makes the case in his book, THERE IS NO PLANET B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years, for better choices. It’s a great compendium of practical advice to make choices and align personal and corporate behavior with effective climate action. Yet he concludes that while such individual actions are important, we will fail if we don’t fundamentally revolutionize the narrative of what’s valued and why and how. He writes: “To sum up, we need a radical overhaul of human growth aspirations. We need to grow in our maturity, awareness and compassion. We need to grow in our capacity to appreciate what we have and what is around us. This is not in any way the end of ambition, but is a shift in its nature.”
