Destination #3: Sustainability
It's Change or Die but changing is hard, so can we walk this path together please?
Dear Humans of Planet Earth,
Allow me to introduce myself: I’m a regular citizen plagued by climate anxiety for the past five years. From the personal to the political, I want to transform my climate anxiety and existential angst into positive energy, into action that encourages and inspires.
I’m going to get straight to the point:
We humans are on a journey together.
Here are our likely destinations:
1) Humans may be swallowed by the Sixth Extinction. Our planet’s climate may become uninhabitable for our species. This could occur within my lifetime. I’m forty-seven.
2) Humans may survive - but with the complex, interconnected web of our technological civilisation mostly unable to function. Life will be short, nasty and brutal.
3) Humans will embrace new systems built around sustainability.
The question is, how do we get to Destination #3?
(Now if you’re questioning destinations 1 and 2, I refer you to David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth. He managed to put that together without losing hope himself but it’s not for the faint-hearted).
If you’re interested in Destination #3, sign up for this newsletter and we’ll explore the journey together.
Either way, get your hands on Kate Raworth’s Doughut Economics if you haven’t read it yet. It sets out an inspirational framework for Destination #3.
Photo by Adonyi Gábor on Unsplash
What I’m Not
I’m not an expert on climate, policy-making, planning and development, green energy, engineering, climate engineering, politics or economics. In fact, I’m not an expert on anything, much like most of my fellow humans on planet earth. As I said, I’m a regular citizen.
What I Feel
I feel anger at the absence of a collaborative and urgent framework from governments internationally; at politician’s lack of moral courage to tell the truth to their citizens; at their cowardly demonising of pressure groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain.
I feel grief when I think of the dying coral reefs, the diminished number of insects and the starving polar bears.
I feel despair at our casual ignorance and care as we order ten blouses online, only to return nine the next day – nine that will go to landfill, while we waste precious electricity following Heard vs Depp or Boris Johnson’s Partygate.
But my anger, grief and despair do nothing more than feed my anxiety.
It’s true we need system change and our individual actions won’t save us.
Yet our individual actions do matter. Because we’re social creatures. What we do influences others. Some people even say it influences markets and government policy.
I say we need to reform markets radically and we need politicians and leaders willing to lead on that.
Anyway, by now I know you’re getting my drift.
Here’s what I’ll be writing to you about in this newsletter:
Sustainability: what I’m doing and learning, what I’ve found that’s inspiring and encouraging. I’ll link you to material by experts and folks walking the talk. I’m not leading on radical change. As I said, I’m just a citizen. But I want to lock arms with you and march towards Destination #3, because it won’t be easy to get there. And I need all the company and solidarity I can get.
I won’t be writing to you often. Once a week most weeks, occasionally a little more often, sometimes a little less.
I write to you from Croydon, London.
With Love,
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Radical
Croydon, London, on the part of the earth known as The United Kingdom,
May 2022.
PS some links: