Before the Deluge

The Natural World through the Eyes of the Ancients

            In an era of turbulence in the natural world, I found myself curious about how the ancient Greeks and Romans viewed and connected with nature, and turned to two didactic agricultural poems, Hesiod’s The Works and Days and Virgil’s The Georgics, to find out.  Hesiod’s work inspired Virgil’s, and the two works have much in common, as they begin with addresses to the Muses, observe the cycle of the year, and offer practical advice for farmers and men in general alongside a certain amount of superstition.

            One thing the two long poems take for granted is the stability of their natural world.  Though disasters can strike unexpectedly and ruin crops, and they acknowledge that a farmer’s lot can be a difficult one, they are deeply familiar with the turning of the seasons and the yearly the passage of the stars, and use observable phenomena in nature to mark the proper start and end times for certain activities, as is common with many ancient agricultural societies.  Hesiod writes,

At the time when you hear the cry of the crane

going over, that annual

voice from high in the clouds, you should take notice

 and make plans.

She brings the signal for the beginning of planting.

These cues are important to follow, and the hard work of farming, done properly, is the only way to reasonably expect a good life.  Hesiod advises his reader, and his brother, to whom the work is addressed, “It is best to do things / systematically, / since we are only human, and disorder / is our worst enemy.” 

Prayer, too, is important.  Without the blessing of the gods, all work may come to naught, so a wise farmer will make prayers and oblations a part of his practice, and hope for the best.  As much as Hesiod and Virgil’s listeners may labor to master their fields, there is never a sense that they are truly masters of the universe.  There is a humility to their enterprises that is generally lacking in our own.  Uncertainty accompanies them on their toils, and gratitude gushes forth when the crops endure to provide a rich harvest.

In Virgil especially, the earth and its flora are personified and endowed with action and feeling.  They are at times described as gods, of course, but even aside from that, his language gives life to a world that modern people too often see as an inert stockpile of objects whose sole purpose is exploitation.  In the springtime, Virgil writes,

The nurturing earth is pregnant; warmed by breezes

Of Zephyrus the fields unloose their bosoms.

Mild moisture is all-pervading, and unharmed

The grasses brave the unaccustomed suns;

Nor do the vine-shoots fear a southern gale,

Or northern rainstorms driving down the sky,

But put forth buds and all their leaves unfold.

Days such as these shone out and went their way,

I can well believe, at the dawn of the infant world. 

His sympathies extend to cattle, horses, and bees, who are endowed with thought and feeling in his poem and are treated with compassion.  The frolicking of young colts is described in charming detail, and as are the labors of bees.  Farmers are urged to feed their livestock with care and tenderness from a young age, and the slaughter of oxen, man’s fellow laborers, is lamented.  Beyond humanizing, Virgil suggests that the creatures of earth, and all living things upon it, are holy, even: “Some have affirmed that bees possess a share / Of the divine mind and drink ethereal draughts; / For God, they say, pervades the whole creation.”  What restraint would we show in our dealings with the earth if we viewed it this way, if we felt that every thing on earth touched the sublime?

Though The Works and Days is agricultural in nature, the advice it offers often breaks the confines of farming and addresses all men.  We may receive help two or three times without giving anything in return, Hesiod tells us, but not beyond that.  Learn to do things well, that you may be largely self-sufficient, and be generous, so that others will be generous to you in turn.  Both Hesiod and Virgil encourage the reader to shun greed and to be content with a life tilling the soil, in touch with the earth.  “No greedy profits,” warns Hesiod. 

Greedy profit is a kind of madness. . .

For when a man gives willingly, though he gives

a great thing

yet he has joy of his gift and satisfaction

in his heart,

while he who gives way to shameless greed and takes

from another,

even though the thing he takes is small,

yet it stiffens his heart. 

Virgil gives a sense that it is wonderful to be “far from the madding crowd,” ploughing one’s field, tending one’s goats, and nurturing one’s vines, not consumed by status and power and profit like the restless multitude in the cities.  Both he and Hesiod speak disparagingly of war, viewing it not as a glorious pageant but as a senseless and tragic contest “where men are wasted.”  It is far better, as Achilles says in Homer’s Odyssey, to live out one’s life as a farmer, not cut it short in battle.  “How lucky, if they know their happiness, / Are farmers,” says Virgil, “more than lucky, they for whom, / Far from the clash of arms, the earth herself, / Most fair in dealing, freely lavishes / An easy livelihood.”

Elsewhere in both poems, the work itself does not seem as easy as he portrays it here.  Both Hesiod and Virgil lament the passing of the legendary Golden Age under the god Saturn, when no wars were fought, no animals slaughtered, and the earth gave food for all without the need for cultivation.  In the harsher ages that have followed, life is now sustained by hard work, contention reigns supreme, and men grow decadent in cities and the halls of power.  But it is still better, Virgil insists, to be a farmer than to be consumed with strife and vanity and fleeting pleasures:

peace they have and a life of innocence

Rich in variety; they have for leisure

Their ample acres, caverns, living lakes

Cool Tempes; cattle low, and sleep is soft

Under a tree.  Coverts of game are there

And glades, a breed of youth inured to labour

And undemanding, worship of the gods

And reverence for the old.  Departing Justice

Left among these her latest earthly footprints.

If we, heeding Hesiod and Virgil thousands of years later, could find our way to observe the varied seasons and the yearly parade of the stars, to work in some way with the earth, and to revere the dignity and the divine that each element of it possesses, what riches might we find in the everyday?  Not searching for fame or power or wealth, would we discover something deeper, something simple, decent, and pure?  Every day in the modern news cycle is a bearer of signs that tell us: We have lost the way.  The ancient poets of simplicity and virtue, grounded in a love for the unfailing earth, can help us find it.

This summer, I finally read Thucydides’s The Peloponnesian War after years of intending to do so, ever since I read the first line on the back cover of the translation by Benjamin Jowett: “For twenty-seven bitter and heroic years the most intellectual civilization the world has ever seen was busily destroying itself.”  I thought instantly that there must be some parallels to our current self-imposed destruction of the planet, and that discovering them would be illuminating.  There were indeed some, but the rich ancient text chronicling the disastrous war between Athens and Sparta goes beyond whatever point we moderns attempt to press it to make for us, and I found the book to be an immensely moving, important, and universal text that is worth reading in full regardless of one’s agenda.

            For one, there are harrowing battle scenes that grip the reader as tightly as anything Hollywood produces.  One scene of soldiers on the shore, their hearts in their throats as they watch a naval battle unfolding, masterfully captures the dreadful feeling of suspense that readers can recognize from their own experiences with, if not battle, then certainly sports, or drama, or those pivotal moments in our lives where we await an as-yet-undetermined outcome with bated breath: While the naval engagement hung in the balance the two armies on shore had great trial and conflict of soul.  The Sicilian soldier was animated by the hope of increasing the glory which he had already won, while the invader was tormented by the fear that his fortunes might sink lower still.  The last chance of the Athenians lay in their ships, and their anxiety was dreadful.  The fortune of the battle varied; and it was not possible that the spectators on the shore should all receive the same impression of it.  Being quite close and having different points of view, they would some of them see their own ships victorious; their courage would then revive, and they would earnestly call upon the Gods not to take from them their hope of deliverance.  But others, who saw their ships worsted, cried and shrieked aloud, and were by the sight alone more utterly unnerved than the defeated combatants themselves.  Others, again, who had fixed their gaze on some part of the struggle which was undecided, were in a state of excitement still more terrible; they kept swaying their bodies to and fro in an agony of hope and fear as the stubborn conflict went on and on; for at every instant they were all but saved or all but lost.  And while the strife hung in the balance you might hear in the Athenian army at once lamentation, shouting, cries of victory or defeat, and all the various sounds which are wrung from a great host in extremity of danger.

            Though I initially thought my sympathies would be on the side of democratic, artistic Athens, the home of the famous Greek philosophers, poets, and playwrights, especially having enjoyed the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—all Athenians—I quickly found myself rooting for Sparta instead.  This was not due to any affinity for oligarchy, a military lifestyle, modern “Spartan” workout crazes, or the film The 300, but because, at least in Thucydides’s portrayal, the Athenians were high-handed imperialists espousing a “might makes right” attitude, demanding tribute from many of the other islands and cities in the Greek archipelago, and were prone to mercilessly slaughtering anyone who resisted, while the Spartans seemed, on some level, to be more merciful in their war-waging (most of the time), and to have less interest in subjugating other territories. 

That being said, I could not help but be moved at Thucydides’s portrayal of the final destruction of the Athenian army in its failed invasion of Sicily.  A last group of Athenian soldiers under the sympathetic general Nicias, whose offer to surrender was rejected because it was not unconditional, have been fleeing the Syracusan and Spartan forces allied against them, harassed endlessly with stones and darts and javelins, until maddened with thirst, while attempting to ford a river, they find themselves massacred: But no sooner did they reach the water than they lost all order and rushed in; every man was trying to cross first, and, the enemy pressing upon them at the same time, the passage of the river became hopeless.  Being compelled to keep close together they fell one upon another, and trampled each other underfoot: some at once perished, pierced by their own spears; others got entangled in the baggage and were carried down the stream.  The Syracusans stood upon the further bank of the river, which was steep, and hurled missiles from above on the Athenians, who were huddled together in the deep bed of the stream and for the most part were drinking greedily.  The Peloponnesians came down the bank and slaughtered them, falling chiefly upon those who were in the river.  Whereupon the water at once became foul, but was drunk all the same, although muddy and dyed with blood, and the crowd fought for it.

In the tale of clashing empires, there are heroes and villains and many figures in between; there are brilliant triumphs and torturous defeats; there are moments of sublime nobility and of remorseless cruelty; and there are lessons aplenty for the reader of any era.  Military leaders and politicians have reaped the benefits of studying it for centuries, and historians will never fail to find useful ways of applying it to their own times.  Having gone into the work with an environmental focus, looking for ways that the destruction of Greek civilization might parallel our own, I found much more to enjoy and to learn in the text than I was initially looking for.  I have read that many writers fall into the “Thucydides trap” of treating The Peloponnesian War as having the ability to exactly predict future events in a deterministic way, and of treating contemporary geopolitical parallels as if they are exact, and while I am conscious of trying to avoid that here, I would still offer the following general lessons about human nature and political realities from The Peloponnesian War as they relate to our environmental crisis.

Lying politicians and the manipulation of public affairs for private gain

            Thucydides has definitely made me more cynical about human nature (though that may seem surprising, given what may seem like misanthropy in other posts here).  Not that he’s convinced me that all people are bad, but that at most times and in most places, there are likely to be some bad actors, whose greed and thirst for power at public expense may be shocking to a person who is prone to give others the benefit of the doubt and to believe that most people are generally good.

            It sometimes seems hard to believe that there are fossil fuel executives still pushing to expand their operations and extend the use of fossil fuels, despite the undeniable damage they are doing to the planet, or that political candidates would allow themselves to be bought by these people to build their campaign funds for their next election.  Sometimes I’m tempted to think, They can’t really care so little about future generations, they can’t really be so consumed with their own profit that they would permanently endanger us all…  But Thucydides’s hand sternly bangs a gong to wake us sharply from our delusions.  He shows us, in stunning detail, the shifty Athenians Cleon and Alcibiades repeatedly manipulating the course of public affairs for their own private benefit, even if it meant pushing their own state into disaster, or needlessly causing the deaths of many at home or abroad.

            Their demagoguery can bring Trump to mind even if you’re not looking for parallels.  The blowhard Cleon, “the most violent of the citizens” in Athens, stirs up the masses with calls for the wanton execution of their captured enemies, gaining power as he stokes a thirst for blood.  He continues to promote war even when the Spartans send a peace embassy, which he dismisses; soon afterwards, when the Athenians have been told, accurately, that their forces are in a bad position against the Spartans and that their siege should be called off, Cleon perceives that he in a weak position.  Now, knowing the facts are stacked against him, he tries to cast suspicion upon these reported facts and get the generals to attack anyway.  He accuses the Athenian generals of incompetence and cowardice, and boasts that he would be a better commander than they are.  When the generals try to put him in charge of a naval fleet to call his bluff and have him prove his words, he starts backpedaling and doing all he can to get out of this commission.  He is forced into it, though, and somehow triumphs in the battle, which only furthers his period of power in Athens, and also keeps the war going, though it ultimately destroys Athens.

            Alcibiades comes to prominence as a young person “lawless in his personal habits,” someone hoping that “success would repair his private fortunes, and gain him money as well as glory.”  Thucydides adds, “He had a great position among the citizens and was devoted to horse racing and other pleasures which outran his means.  And in the end his wild courses went far to ruin the Athenian state.”  He was another who helped to continue the disastrous war out of personal motives.  At one point, he pushed to sustain hostilities with Sparta because they had attempted to negotiate a peace with representatives other than him, slighting the bond his ancestors had historically had with Sparta.  He later, hoping to receive a military appointment and profit by it, pushed Athens into fighting in the Sicilian Expedition against the Syracusans, which was disastrous for Athens and left it in a weakened state, ultimately allowing Sparta to triumph.

            He went on to betray every empire he worked for—he gave Athenian secrets to the Syracusans when he realized the Athenians were going to exile him, and went over to the Spartan side and worked to destroy Athens, telling lies about the Athenians and spurring the Spartans to aid the Syracusans against Athens. When the Spartans came to distrust him and ordered his death, he went over to the Persians, and schemed against the Spartans.  He presented himself as a close associate of the Persian king, and convinced the Athenians they would need to take him back if they wanted any assistance from the Persians.  Later, he schemed to replace the Athenian democracy with an oligarchy which he thought would be friendlier to himself.  At every step, he worked primarily with his own interests in mind, and was heedless of the trail of chaos and betrayal he left in his wake.

            When we see Republican politicians repeatedly making bad faith arguments about environmental initiatives, their smoke screens are easily fanned away, revealing the naked personal interest that drives them.  When they repeatedly make the same debunked claims about the Green New Deal, or when they suddenly show up to take a surprising interest in whale deaths in an attempt to falsely blame offshore wind and stop it in its tracks, thereby prolonging our dependence on the fossil fuels that bankroll their campaigns, we are seeing the likes of Cleon and Alcibiades at work.  People like them have been with mankind since the beginning, and are not going away—the best we can do is wise up to them.

Wise counsel and foresight ignored (and often slandered)

            In Thucydides’s presentation, the reader often encounters juxtaposed monologues, sometimes with one from a benevolent orator side-by-side with a slanted speech from Creon, Alcibiades, or other pro-war demagogues.  Men like King Archidamus of the Spartans counsel the people not to get involved in a war with a powerful enemy that will not be concluded quickly and will likely be passed on to their own children.  The Athenian general Nicias, who wants to retire from warfare while he has a good name and avoid ever bringing disgrace upon himself and his country, advises his fellow citizens not to get involved in matters in Sicily and to avoid the temptation to try to subjugate the island, which he says would be nearly impossible and would require vast sacrifices of blood, ships, and treasure.  Hermocrates in Sicily warns his people that the Athenians are coming in force, and must be resisted mightily from the start.

            The remarkable foresight of all of these wise leaders is in vain.  The leaders and masses appealed to rely instead on their own prejudices, greed, or bellicosity, or allow themselves to be swayed by deceptive speakers who steer them in precisely the wrong direction.  Time and again the advice that would avert catastrophe is ignored, and these civilizations commit themselves to paths that bring them pain and destruction.  Thucydides remarks that people would rather believe what they want to be true than to confront inconvenient truths.

            The cries of scientists and activists and scrupulous politicians for decades, which have yet to fully and effectively turn the tide against business interests and business as usual, are echoes of Archidamus, Nicias, and Hermocrates trying to turn their people away from the doom they seek.  Thucydides’s chronicle should spur us to ask ourselves how we can bring people to listen to the voices of the farseeing and the just, so that we do not regret ignoring their counsel until it is too late.

Big conflicts stemming from small issues

            Throughout Thucydides’s history, small conflicts involving one city against another, or the independence or subjugation of a single island, or internal conflicts within one region, end up drawing in disproportionate outside forces and leading empires to war with one another.  The chronicle begins with internal problems in a colony called Epidamnus, which ends up drawing in the island of Corcyra, which was its mother-city, and then the distant city of Corinth, which was the mother-city of Corcyra.  Ultimately the dispute comes to involve Athens and Sparta, and, with similar instances in other cities, helps to spark the Peloponnesian War, a conflict that rages for twenty-seven years, claims thousands of lives, and sees the complete destruction of many cities.

            Throughout the war, there are many times where peace is proposed, but the sides refuse to give ground on small points that have become matters of pride—“We can’t be asked to give up that city we just liberated!”  “We can’t agree to destroy the wall we erected!”—and so the war drags on needlessly, for decades.  The sides involved end up committing to massive conflicts instead of accepting a small loss.

In Russia’s ill-conceived and criminal invasion of Ukraine, we have seen a dictator refusing to deviate from his course despite the unexpected obstacles he has faced, as he continues to sacrifice tens of thousands of men and ravage an innocent country rather than wound his pride by making peace without achieving his objectives.  On the other side of the conflict, the Ukrainians have now affirmed their intention of driving Russia out of not just the area they invaded in 2022, but the area they seized in 2014, which makes the prolongation of the war seem much more likely.  Back at home, we see the two political parties taking hardline stances on a host of small issues that become cultural flashpoints and that neither side is willing to give ground on, while we suffer from a lack of a combined effort to combat climate change and other environmental issues, and lose the sense of being a united country with a working democracy.

Volatile, unreliable public opinion

Throughout the Peloponnesian War, several speakers in Athens and other democratic cities remark upon the flightiness of the masses, who are rarely seen to commit to any one person or course of action for very long.  Very often, the masses will elect a leader only to turn on him shortly afterwards, sometimes for not being successful enough, and sometimes for being too successful.  Alcibiades himself, the flightiest of them all, says to the Spartans, “Of course, like all sensible men, we knew only too well what democracy is, and I better than any one, who have so good a reason for abusing it.  The follies of democracy are universally admitted, and there is nothing new to be said about them.”  Several times in the chronicle, the people of Athens will be stirred up by a speaker and will vote (against the better advice of others) to pursue war, and then will be outraged when the tides of war turn against them, and will be “furious with the orators who had joined in promoting the expedition—as if they had not voted it themselves.”  The voting masses take no responsibility for their bad decisions and routinely rail against those they put in power.

It is no secret that midterm elections in the US often result in losses for the party in power, as the people who voted them in grow frustrated and decide to vote for the opposition (whom they may have previously voted for eight years prior, before turning against them in an election in between).  We vacillate between two political parties, neither of whom show signs of improving, and we watch environmental laws passed by one administration stripped away by the next.  There is little consistency and little responsibility taken, and we let the most urgent crises go unchecked.

Many of the worst actions in the Peloponnesian War are taken by leaders either trying to steer public opinion in a nefarious direction, or leaders bound to ride the waves of public opinion that they are afraid to challenge.  An exception is Pericles, the greatest orator and statesman of Athens, whom Thucydides marks out as different from the politicians driven by self-interest:  The reason of the difference was that he, deriving authority from his capacity and acknowledged worth, being also a man of transparent integrity, was able to control the multitude in a free spirit; he led them rather than was led by them; for, not seeking power by dishonest arts, he had no need to say pleasant things, but, on the strength of his own high character, could venture to oppose and even to anger them.  When he saw them unseasonably elated and arrogant, his words humbled and awed them; and, when they were depressed by groundless fears, he sought to reanimate their confidence.  Thus Athens, though still in name a democracy, was in fact ruled by her greatest citizen.  But his successors were more on an equality with one another, and, each struggling to be first himself, they were ready to sacrifice the whole conduct of affairs to the whims of the people.

And how did the Athenians treat Pericles?  When the tides of war were not going well, the people of Athens felt the need to fine him, but then, “with the usual fickleness of a multitude,” committed the charge of the war back to him anyway.  In a polarized democracy like ours, how well would we be able to recognize a leader with good intentions whose plans were actually producing good results?  We have become so jaded, so contentious, and so dissatisfied with government in general that it seems unlikely that even a good leader would retain public favor for long.

The lack of great oratory

            The many speeches Thucydides presents in the form of monologues are among the highlights of his narrative.  Thucydides tells the reader early on that the speeches are not verbatim transcripts of what was said, since neither he nor the others who may have been present can recall the speeches in their entirety, but instead are his constructions of what ought to have been said in that moment for that argument, as the speaker would have been likely to have expressed it, along the general idea of what was reported to have been said.  They are masterpieces of rhetoric, and frequently I would find myself completely swayed by the arguments of the first speaker, believing no counterargument would be possible, but then a second speaker would present a perfectly convincing, seemingly airtight argument that contradicted the first, and it would be extremely hard to choose who was “right.”

            Where are the orators like Pericles today?  Do we still have leaders with his alleged purity of intention and his willingness and ability to oppose and win over a crowd?  If we do, where would we even hear them?  Gone are the public squares where rival parties would come to discuss the issues of the day.  Granted, it was easier when the city was the basis of government, and the Athenians could conceivably converge on a single location to have these public discussions; on a national level in the United States, it is impossible.  We are left with televised debates every four years, and the last two rounds of them have been travesties.  In addition, when television is the only option, people have plenty of other things to watch.

            Donald Trump is the most successful orator in America today, which is a sorry state of affairs.  I don’t say the best orator or the most skillful orator—just the most successful.  He speaks with a child’s vocabulary, lies several times a minute, and is prone to digressive rants and tangents, but he is able to work his crowd and to command large audiences.  Acting with a good sense of what will connect with his audience’s sense of righteous anger (probably the easiest emotion to connect with), he taps into their fears and frustrations and paints himself as someone on their side, someone just as victimized and disgusted but who will ultimately lead them to a brighter America where the injustices that outrage them all will be overcome.  He is completely unable to win over his opposition through this oratory, but to be fair, the odds are deeply stacked against any speaker attempting to reach their opposition today.

            Imagine a leader whose words could dazzle us and uplift us with courage and decency and intelligence, someone who could point a way forward and get us on board and help us help ourselves to get there.  In some ways, it feels the time is ripe for the return of such a leader, but in other ways, it feels our fragmentation makes it impossible—but this, too, is something Thucydides was familiar with.

The dangers of factionalism

            One of the most persistent issues plaguing Greece throughout The Peloponnesian War is the division of the Greek people into factions.  On the one hand, the Greeks thought of themselves as “Hellenes” and of everyone else as “barbarians”—these are the two terms used throughout the chronicle.  This belief that there was something unique and enlightened about their civilization that set them apart from the rest of the world was not enough to unite Athens and Sparta and prevent them from tearing their shared civilization to shreds.  There are a few moments where the Spartans show mercy to their captives as fellow Greeks, and sometimes refuse to enslave them, but for the most part, there is little recognition of a shared identity, and the two sides commit staggering atrocities against one another.

            Not only were the two major Greek cities, heads of their respective “leagues,” divided from one another, but they were often faced with internal divisions.  In the opening conflict of the chronicle, the Epidamnians are attacked by former members of an unpopular oligarchy that they’ve ousted from the city, who come back with barbarians on their side.  The Epidamnians’ cries for help are ignored by the Corcyraeans, the people of their mother colony, until the Corinthians, their grandmother colony, decide to take part.  The Corcyraeans have drifted apart from the Corinthians they descended from, and have their own interests (much like the United States drifted apart from Great Britain), and they end up fighting one another, with the Corcyraeans drawing Athens to their side and the Corinthians drawing Sparta to theirs.

            The Corcyraeans later descend into a lawless civil war within their city, with a bloody revolution that unfolds like the French Revolution, with waves of slaughter and desperate struggles for power.  Father was pitted against son, and personal vendettas were acted upon under the guise of political cleansing: “The tie of party was stronger than the tie of blood, because a partisan was more ready to dare without asking why.  (For party associations are not based upon any established law, nor do they seek the public good; they are formed in defiance of the laws and from self-interest.)  The seal of good faith was not divine law, but fellowship in crime.”

            Power struggles also arise within the major strongholds of Athens and Sparta, sometimes out of legitimate disagreements about the course their empires should take, but often out of jealousy, as well, as successful generals find themselves acquiring enemies who work against them out of fear they will become too successful.  The bitter ones with less power are prone to factionalize, a lesson for all times.

            In the end, and much of this is actually chronicled in Xenophon’s Hellenica, which completes the story of The Peloponnesian War, which Thucydides never finished, Athens plunges into a fatal civil war.  After prolonging the war with Sparta for years, Athens is finally defeated, and has transitioned from a democracy to an oligarchy, and even then, without an external enemy in the Spartans anymore, the Athenians cannot stop fighting, as they turn their weapons on one another.  As with the Corcyraean violence, the contenders for power in Athens struggle treacherously against one another, with a group called the Thirty rising to the top, breaking laws and customs and slaying all who oppose them or might theoretically one day oppose them, and even those whose death might enrich them: “And now it was no longer a question of the so-called ‘criminals’ or of people whom one has never heard of.  Those arrested now were the people who, in the view of the Thirty, were the least likely to submit to being pushed out of politics and who could count on the greatest support if they chose to take action.”

            In the midst of the madness, a brave citizen named Cleocritus raises his voice in an attempt to bring his countrymen to their senses: In the name of the gods of our fathers and mothers, of the bonds of kinship and marriage and friendship, which are shared by so many of us on both sides, I beg you to feel some shame in front of gods and men and to give up this sin against your fatherland.  Do not give your obedience to those wicked men, the Thirty, who, just for their own private profit, have in eight months come close to killing more Athenians than all the Peloponnesians did in ten years of war.  These men, when there is nothing to prevent our living peaceably together in our city, have brought on us war among ourselves, and there can be nothing more shameful than this, nothing more unbearable, more unholy and more hateful to gods and men alike.

            The tide of public opinions turns swiftly against the Thirty after this, and they give up their authority, and after another final skirmish, the Spartans help to bring peace to the city, and the Athenians affirm their bonds with one another.

            Let it not come to this for us.  At the moment when we, as a nation, should be united in the face of the catastrophe of climate change that this summer has made clear to us, with wildfire smoke yellowing the northern states all the way to New York City, and Texas and other southern states facing weeks of unbroken 100-degree heat.  We cannot afford to be cutting one another’s throats while the world burns.  We are divided by political party, by animosity between rural and urban areas, by racial and gender identity politics, and this division is fatal.  We are divided as a nation, and the nations are divided from one another.  In lamenting the failure to unite in common action, Pericles himself says, in a speech that could be addressed to Congress or to the UN today, The confederacy is made up of many races; all their representatives have equal votes, and press their several interests.  There follows the usual result, that nothing is ever done properly.  For some are all anxiety to be revenged on an enemy, while others only want to get off with as little loss as possible.  The members of such a confederacy are slow to meet, and when they do meet, they give little time to the consideration of any common interest, and a great deal to schemes which further the interest of their particular state.  Every one fancies that his own neglect will do no harm, but that it is somebody else’s business to keep a lookout for him, and this idea, cherished alike by each, is the secret ruin of all.

            Let us pull together at last, so that one among us is not left writing the chronicle of a civilization “busily destroying itself,” but the story of a people who learned from the past and confronted their present with clear eyes and a united vision, and who achieved, together, a sane future.

I recently read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, both from a feeling that it was an American classic that I ought to have read, and from a desire to observe his persuasive technique to discover how he had managed to galvanize a divided nation into taking on a heavy, daunting, fearsome task which ultimately launched it into a prosperous future.  As I was reading, I was struck by how applicable much of the argument felt to the environmental crisis facing America today.  If you replace “the king” with “the fossil fuel industry” and add “from fossil fuels” after “independence,” Thomas Paine, writing nearly 250 years ago, cries out to us in bold, ringing tones to save ourselves from the corrupt power that wreaks havoc upon the globe and daily threatens our present security and our long-term future.  I have taken the liberty of making these edits, as well as necessary abridgements to confine the argument to material relevant to the present cause, while leaving the original orthography intact, and here present:

Common Sense

By Thomas Paine

[A Declaration of Independence from Fossil Fuels]

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.

It hath been reported of the late Mr. Pelham (who tho’ an able minister was not without his faults) that on his being attacked in the house of commons, on the score, that his measures were only of a temporary kind, replied “they will last my time.” Should a thought so fatal and unmanly possess the colonies in the present contest, the name of ancestors will be remembered by future generations with detestation.

The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. ’Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of … the habitable globe. ’Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed time of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.

As much hath been said of the advantages of reconciliation [with the fossil fuel industry], which, like an agreeable dream, hath passed away and left us as we were, it is but right, that we should examine the contrary side of the argument, and inquire into some of the many material injuries which these colonies sustain, and always will sustain, by being connected with, and dependant on [fossil fuels]. To examine that connexion and dependance, on the principles of nature and common sense, to see what we have to trust to, if separated, and what we are to expect, if dependant.

I have heard it asserted by some, that as America hath flourished under her former connexion with [fossil fuels], that the same connexion is necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty.

Alas, we have been long led away by ancient prejudices, and made large sacrifices to superstition.

I challenge the warmest advocate for reconciliation, to shew, a single advantage that this continent can reap, by being connected with [fossil fuels]. I repeat the challenge, not a single advantage is derived.

But the injuries and disadvantages we sustain by that connection, are without number; and our duty to mankind at large, as well as to ourselves, instruct us to renounce the alliance: Because, any submission to, or dependance on [fossil fuels], tends directly to involve this continent in … wars and quarrels; and sets us at variance with nations, who would otherwise seek our friendship, and against whom, we have neither anger nor complaint.

The authority of [fossil fuels] over this continent, is a form of government, which sooner or later must have an end: And a serious mind can draw no true pleasure by looking forward, under the painful and positive conviction, that what he calls “the present constitution” is merely temporary. As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight.

Though I would carefully avoid giving unnecessary offence, yet I am inclined to believe, that all those who espouse the doctrine of reconciliation, may be included within the following descriptions. Interested men, who are not to be trusted; weak men, who cannot see; prejudiced men, who will not see; and a certain set of moderate men, who think better of the [industry] than it deserves…

It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of sorrow; the evil is not sufficient brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all … property is possessed. But let our imaginations transport us for a few moments to [the latest natural disaster attributable to climate change], that seat of wretchedness will teach us wisdom, and instruct us for ever to renounce a power in whom we can have no trust. The inhabitants of that unfortunate city, who but a few months ago were in ease and affluence, have now, no other alternative than to stay and starve, or turn out to beg.

Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offences of [fossil fuels], and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, “Come, come, we shall be friends again, for all this.” But examine the passions and feelings of mankind, Bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me, whether you can hereafter love, honour, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you cannot do all these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your delay bringing ruin upon posterity. Your future connection with [the fossil fuel industry], whom you can neither love nor honour, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will in a little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and still can shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy of the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.

This is not inflaming or exaggerating matters, but trying them by those feelings and affections which nature justifies, and without which, we should be incapable of discharging the social duties of life, or enjoying the felicities of it. I mean not to exhibit horror for the purpose of provoking revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and unmanly slumbers, that we may pursue determinately some fixed object. It is not in the power of [fossil fuels] to conquer America, if she do not conquer herself by delay and timidity. The present winter is worth an age if rightly employed, but if lost or neglected, the whole continent will partake of the misfortune; and there is no punishment which that man will not deserve, be he who, or what, or where he will, that may be the means of sacrificing a season so precious and useful.

I am not induced by motives of pride, party, or resentment to espouse the doctrine of separation and independence [from fossil fuels]; I am clearly, positively, and conscientiously persuaded that it is the true interest of this continent to be so; that every thing short of that is mere patchwork, that it can afford no lasting felicity,—that it is leaving the sword to our children, and shrinking back at a time, when, a little more, a little farther, would have rendered this continent the glory of the earth.

But admitting that matters were now made up, what would be the event? I answer, the ruin of the continent. And that for several reasons.

First. The powers of governing still remaining in the hands of the [fossil fuel executive], he will have a negative over the whole legislation of this continent. And as he hath shewn himself such an inveterate enemy to liberty, and discovered such a thirst for arbitrary power; is he, or is he not, a proper man to say to these colonies, “You shall make no laws but what I please.” And is there any inhabitant in America so ignorant, as not to know, that according to what is called the present constitution, that this continent can make no laws but what the [executive] gives leave to; and is there any man so unwise, as not to see, that (considering what has happened) he will suffer no law to be made here, but such as suit his purpose… After matters are made up (as it is called) can there be any doubt, but the whole power of the [industry] will be exerted, to keep this continent as low and humble as possible? Instead of going forward we shall go backward, or be perpetually quarrelling or ridiculously petitioning.—We are already greater than the [executive] wishes us to be, and will he not hereafter endeavour to make us less? To bring the matter to one point. Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us? Whoever says No to this question is an independant, for independancy means no more, than, whether we shall make our own laws, or whether the [fossil fuel industry], the greatest enemy this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us “there shall be no laws but such as I like.”

In point of right and good order, there is something very ridiculous, that a [fossil fuel executive] (which hath often happened) shall say to several millions of people, older and wiser than himself, I forbid this or that act of yours to be law.

America is only a secondary object in the system of [the fossil fuel industry’s] politics; [she] consults the good of this country, no farther than it answers her own purpose. Wherefore, her own interest leads her to suppress the growth of ours in every case which doth not promote her advantage, or in the least interferes with it. A pretty state we should soon be in under such a second-hand government, considering what has happened! Men do not change from enemies to friends by the alteration of a name: And in order to shew that reconciliation now is a dangerous doctrine, I affirm, that it would be policy in the [fossil fuel executive] at this time, to [play along] for the sake of reinstating himself in the government of the provinces; in order, that he may accomplish by craft and subtilty, in the long run, what he cannot do by force and violence in the short one. Reconciliation and ruin are nearly related.

Thousands are already ruined by [the fossil fuel industry’s] barbarity; (thousands more will probably suffer the same fate) Those men have other feelings than us who have nothing suffered. All they now possess is liberty, what they before enjoyed is sacrificed to its service, and having nothing more to lose, they disdain submission… I have heard some men say, many of whom I believe spoke without thinking, that they dreaded an independence [from fossil fuels]. It is but seldom that our first thoughts are truly correct, and that is the case here; for there are ten times more to dread from a patched up connexion than from independance. I make the sufferers’ case my own, and I protest, that were I driven from house and home, my property destroyed, and my circumstances ruined, that as a man, sensible of injuries, I could never relish the doctrine of reconciliation, or consider myself bound thereby.

To talk of friendship with those in whom our reason forbids us to have faith, and our affections wounded through a thousand pores instruct us to detest, is madness and folly. Every day wears out the little remains of kindred between us and them, and can there be any reason to hope, that as the relationship expires, the affection will increase, or that we shall agree better, when we have ten times more and greater concerns to quarrel over than ever?

There are injuries which nature cannot forgive; she would cease to be nature if she did. As well can the lover forgive the ravisher of his mistress, as the continent forgive the murders of [the fossil fuel industry]. The Almighty hath implanted in us these unextinguishable feelings for good and wise purposes. They are the guardians of his image in our hearts. They distinguish us from the herd of common animals. The social compact would dissolve, and justice be extirpated the earth, or have only a casual existence were we callous to the touches of affection. The robber, and the murderer, would often escape unpunished, did not the injuries which our tempers sustain, provoke us into justice.

O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. [Justice] hath been hunted round the globe.

OF THE PRESENT ABILITY OF AMERICA,
WITH SOME MISCELLANEOUS REFLEXIONS.

I have never met with a man…who hath not confessed his opinion, that a separation between [our world and fossil fuels], would take place one time or other: And there is no instance, in which we have shewn less judgment, than in endeavouring to describe, what we call, the ripeness or fitness of the [globe] for independance.

As all men allow the measure, and vary only in their opinion of the time, let us, in order to remove mistakes, take a general survey of things, and endeavour, if possible, to find out the very time. But we need not go far, the inquiry ceases at once, for, the time hath found us. The general concurrence, the … union of all things prove the fact.

Debts we have… and whatever we may contract on this account will serve as a glorious memento of our virtue. Can we but leave posterity with a settled form of [life], an independant constitution of its own, the purchase at any price will be cheap. But to expend millions for the sake of getting a few vile acts repealed, and routing the present ministry only, is unworthy the charge, and is using posterity with the utmost cruelty; because it is leaving them the great work to do, and a debt upon their backs, from which they derive no advantage. Such a thought is unworthy a man of honor, and is the true characteristic of a narrow heart and a pedling politician.

The debt we may contract doth not deserve our regard if the work be but accomplished. No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond; and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance.

Some, perhaps, will say, that after we have made it up with [the fossil fuel industry], she will protect us… Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us. Conquest may be effected under the pretence of friendship; and ourselves, after a long and brave resistance, be at last cheated into slavery…

Our knowledge is hourly improving. Resolution is our inherent character, and courage hath never yet forsaken us. Wherefore, what is it that we want? Why is it that we hesitate? From [the fossil fuel industry] we can expect nothing but ruin. If she is once admitted to the government of America again, this Continent will not be worth living in.

In military numbers, the ancients far exceeded the moderns: and the reason is evident. For trade being the consequence of population, men become too much absorbed thereby to attend to anything else. Commerce diminishes the spirit, both of patriotism and military defence. And history sufficiently informs us, that the bravest achievements were always accomplished in the non-age of a nation. With the increase of commerce, [America] hath lost its spirit. The city of [New York], notwithstanding its numbers, submits to continued insults with the patience of a coward. The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture. The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a Spaniel.

Most nations have let slip the opportunity, and by that means have been compelled to receive laws from their conquerors, instead of making laws for themselves…. A set of instructions for the Delegates were put together [by the fossil fuel industry], which in point of sense and business would have dishonoured a schoolboy, and after being approved by a few, a very few without doors, were carried into the House, and there passed in behalf of the whole colony; whereas, did the whole colony know, with what ill-will that House hath entered on some necessary public measures, they would not hesitate a moment to think them unworthy of such a trust.

Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things. … When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember, that virtue is not hereditary.

To Conclude, however strange it may appear to some, or however unwilling they may be to think so, matters not, but many strong and striking reasons may be given, to shew, that nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration for independence [from fossil fuels].

These proceedings may at first appear strange and difficult; but, like all other steps which we have already passed over, will in a little time become familiar and agreeable; and, until an independance is declared, the Continent will feel itself like a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done, hates to set about it, wishes it over, and is continually haunted with the thoughts of its necessity.

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Ceremony, and even, silence, from whatever motive they may arise, have a hurtful tendency, when they give the least degree of countenance to base and wicked performances; wherefore, if this maxim be admitted, it naturally follows, that the [fossil fuel companies’ history of deception], as being a piece of finished villainy, deserved, and still deserves, a general execration both by the Congress and the people…[It] is nothing better than a wilful audacious libel against the truth, the common good, and the existence of mankind; and is a formal and pompous method of offering up human sacrifices to the pride of tyrants. But this general massacre of mankind, is one of the privileges, and the certain consequence of Kings; for as nature knows them not, they know not her, and although they are beings of our own creating, they know not us, and are become the gods of their creators.

However, it matters very little now, what the [fossil fuel executive] either says or does; he hath wickedly broken through every moral and human obligation, trampled nature and conscience beneath his feet; and by a steady and constitutional spirit of insolence and cruelty, procured for himself an universal hatred. It is now the interest of America to provide for herself. She hath already a large and young family, whom it is more her duty to take care of, than to be granting away her property, to support a power who is become a reproach to the names of men and Christians.

 But it is the independance of this country [from fossil fuels], which is now the main and only object worthy of contention, and which, like all other truths discovered by necessity, will appear clearer and stronger every day.

First. Because it will come to that one time or other.

Secondly. Because, the longer it is delayed the harder it will be to accomplish.

He who takes nature for his guide is not easily beaten out of his argument, and on that ground, I answer generally—That independance being a single simple line, contained within ourselves; and reconciliation, a matter exceedingly perplexed and complicated, and in which, a treacherous capricious court is to interfere, gives the answer without a doubt.

The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion… Our present condition, is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect Independance contending for dependance. The instance is without a precedent; the case never existed before; and who can tell what may be the event? The property of no man is secure in the present unbraced system of things. The mind of the multitude is left at random, and seeing no fixed object before them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion starts. Nothing is criminal; there is no such thing as treason; wherefore, every one thinks himself at liberty to act as he pleases.

Notwithstanding our wisdom, there is a visible feebleness in some of our proceedings which gives encouragement to dissensions. The Continental Belt is too loosely buckled. And if something is not done in time, it will be too late to do any thing, and we shall fall into a state, in which, neither Reconciliation nor Independance will be practicable. The [fossil fuel executive] and his worthless adherents are got at their old game of dividing the Continent, and there are not wanting among us, Printers, who will be busy in spreading specious falsehoods. The artful and hypocritical letter which appeared a few months ago in two of the New-York papers, and likewise in two others, is an evidence that there are men who want either judgment or honesty.

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all [the world] contains, are to receive their portion of freedom… The Reflexion is awful—and in this point of view, How trifling, how ridiculous, do the little, paltry cavellings, of a few weak or interested men appear, when weighed against the business of a world.

Should we neglect the present favorable and inviting period [for independence from fossil fuels]… we must charge the consequence to ourselves, or to those rather, whose narrow and prejudiced souls, are habitually opposing the measure, without either inquiring or reflecting. There are reasons to be given in support of Independance, which men should rather privately think of, than be publicly told of. We ought not now to be debating whether we shall be independant or not, but, anxious to accomplish it on a firm, secure, and honorable basis, and uneasy rather that it is not yet began upon. Every day convinces us of its necessity.

In short, Independance [from fossil fuels] is the only Bond that can tye and keep us together. We shall then see our object, and our ears will be legally shut against the schemes of an intriguing, as well, as a cruel enemy… It is our delaying it that encourages her to hope for conquest, and our backwardness tends only to prolong the war.

Wherefore, instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity; let each of us, hold out to his neighbour the hearty hand of friendship, and unite in drawing a line, which, like an act of oblivion shall bury in forgetfulness every former dissension. Let the names of Whig and Tory [or Republican and Democrat]be extinct; and let none other be heard among us, than those of a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the rights of mankind and of the FREE AND INDEPENDANT STATES OF AMERICA.

In November, Donald Trump officially notified the United Nations of his intent to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, which will take place one year from now.  It has been clear for two shameful years that this was his plan, and it comes as no surprise, but is a mere deepening of the brand of shame upon our nation, which will soon be the only country in the world outside of the agreement.  Though widely opposed by a majority of Americans, the president is single-mindedly pushing through with his agenda to please a narrow base and theoretical American manufacturing interests (many of whom have publicly condemned the withdrawal).

His act is not a historical anomaly, however; instead, it falls in line with America’s longstanding disregard for the environment and its prioritization of gallingly selfish business interests over all other concerns.  As documented in Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth, the United States has been responsible for weakening every major climate treaty since the practice of negotiating climate treaties began, and never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the predecessor to the Paris Agreement.  Though our departure from the Paris Agreement is tantamount to spitting in the face of the rest of the world—will they ever consider sanctioning us, I wonder?—and comes at a time when awareness of the destructive effects of climate change is growing daily, the roots of this behavior run deeper than Donald Trump and predate our disruption of international climate treaties.

The expansion of our nation was founded on genocide, the displacement and extermination of the Native Americans, who were viewed as a threat and an impediment to the divinely favored white settlers who claimed the land for their own, from sea to shining sea.  In doing so, we drove out a civilization that revered the earth, made a minimal impact on it, and sought to preserve it for future generations, replacing it with a culture that viewed itself as superior to all other forms of life, exploited the earth for maximum profit, and had no tradition of preserving the land it was just taking possession of.  (This attitude lingers.)

The ecological impacts of this were felt immediately.  After so depleting the beaver population of Europe that pelts were hard to come by, European nations began establishing outposts in North America to slaughter the beavers there and send the pelts home.  The fur trade played a large role in the early colonial history of the country, and predictably led to widespread destruction of the species, just as it had in Europe.  The beaver was hunted in staggering numbers, with no care for the survival of the species—not even a selfish concern to stabilize beaver numbers so that the trade could continue sustainably into the future.  They hunted whatever they could, took the profit, and pushed west to find more, keeping up that model until the beaver population had been almost entirely wiped out on the continent.  Though they have rebounded in the last century or so now that they are somewhat protected, the beaver population today is less than a tenth of what it originally was.

James Fenimore Cooper, often considered the first “American” novelist, who introduced the American backwoodsman to an international audience, decried a “slaughter of pigeons” in his 1823 novel The Pioneers, his first of five works featuring his hero, Natty Bumpo.  This slaughter he witnessed and catalogued was part of a century of the wanton destruction of the passenger pigeon, a bird that once numbered in the billions, which was driven extinct by the end of the 19^th century.  The buffalo was similarly hunted to near-extinction.  Both campaigns of mass slaughter were driven by a combination of immense indifference, greed on the part of hunters, and a view that these animals were disposable and were in some ways an obstacle to American interests.  The passenger pigeons were disliked by westward-moving farmers, who saw in them a threat to their crops.  The buffalo obstructed railroads and allowed the Native Americans to continue their traditional nomadic way of existence.  So both species were hunted ruthlessly, exterminated savagely, and driven to extinction and near-extinction, respectively, in spite of their unthinkable numbers.  The only thing more staggering than the numbers in which both species once existed on this continent are the concerted efforts Americans made to kill them.

These days, we are not hunting animals to extinction in this country, though species are going extinct here and around the world due to overdevelopment, pollution, and climate change.  Under the current administration, efforts to drill and mine every extractable resource have been promoted, while attempts to protect endangered animals, ecosystems, sacred lands, and water sources have come under attack.  The Endangered Species Act of 1970 was a remarkable American bill in that it called for the protection of endangered species regardless of the economic effects of doing so.  That is the very language in the bill that Trump’s administration has removed so that this anomalous blip in American policy can be scrubbed out and industry can be freed to ransack any bit of land it sets its sights on.  News of the changes brought consternation from environmental groups and a spate of critical news articles, and the average citizen probably didn’t like the sound of it, but the masses have not yet taken to the streets on behalf of the sage grouse.

Along with attacks on the Endangered Species Act, the Trump administration has also announced rollbacks of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and many other environmental regulations, and is opening up lands to drilling within protected areas like our national parks (including the Grand Canyon) and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  In doing so, the administration is resuming another longstanding American tradition—breaking treaties.  Just as it broke treaties with Native Americans for over a century, promising them land and then taking it away again, our government is now breaking treaties with the Earth, promising it protection and then taking it away again in order to let business interests invade and exploit whatever areas have not been exploited yet.  Manifest Destiny lingers on, and industry and the right wing won’t rest until they’ve drilled every ounce of oil, fracked every cubic inch of gas, and mined every last atom of uranium.  (On a side note, in the predatory global economy, American corporations have also expanded Manifest Destiny beyond our coastal borders–let’s get all of Africa in Nike shoes and shorts, made in our factories in Indonesia!)

As egregious as these new national environmental policies are, representing a resurgence in government negligence, they do not represent further environmental carelessness in the attitude of the average American.  But that attitude was bad enough already, and does not differ greatly from the attitude held by the first settlers to rip through the land in pursuit of their own profit.  We do not live our lives with future generations in mind.  We do not even live with the awareness of the impact our actions are having on the earth within our own lifetime.

Today we do not find ourselves shooting out of train windows at buffalo, but we continue to do thoughtless harm to the earth through our unsustainable consumerist way of life.  We drive everywhere, burning fossil fuels and burning up the planet, with no real end in sight.  Everything we buy is packaged in plastic, and we throw the bulk of it away.  We are born into a life of consumption, and with that consumption comes inevitable disposal, and we are rarely challenged to seriously question the process; if anything, we uphold the ability to buy and dispose recklessly as some sort of warped status symbol or celebration of our “freedom.”  And the madness has spread.  Like a cultural pandemic, we have exported this vaunted American way of life around the world, hand-in-hand with American goods.  Now here and around the world, we have mountains of waste as high as the towers of buffalo skulls that once haunted the prairies.  We choke our rivers with plastic (a substance first invented and widely adopted in America) and unleash it upon the oceans as an invasive species until there is no square mile of ocean floor that has not been touched with our presence.  The majesty of setting foot (or an ocean-exploring craft) on ground which no human being has seen before has been forever lost as that ground is already covered with our plastic.  There are uninhabited islands of the Pacific where the birds live on the landfills of humans who have never lived there.

The culture that began in this country with hunting its animals to extinction has culminated in a consumerist culture that displays, and to some extent is even predicated upon, an insatiable greed and an incredible lack of foresight.  To have any hope for a sane future, we will have to come to grips with our reckless past and recognize the way that it has continued to shape our practices today.  It will take a willful effort to transform our consciousness and our culture, reversing our focus on maximum short-term comfort and profit that drove and still drives the plundering of this country, and restoring the indigenous vision of this land as a shared good meant to be enjoyed with respect and passed down intact to generations who will follow us.

One of the reasons Americans are not more concerned about climate change, and don’t do more about it, is that there is a superabundance of entertainment available to take our minds off of it, and to give us something easier and more pleasurable to do than the hard work of saving ourselves and our planet in the face of the objections of industry and government.  For the most part, American culture is not an especially serious culture.  There are few deep traditions we are tied to, high art is enjoyed in small doses and by small segments of the population, and our discussions of “issues” are generally confined to the 24-hour or 7-day news cycles.  We elected a bombastic self-proclaimed reality-TV star for president.  We prefer to be entertained than to think, and when we must think about important issues, we prefer talk to action.

One way to force our society to get serious and demand immediate action at the national level would be a strike by the entertainment industry, which we could probably limit to the movie and TV industries here, though professional sports would also certainly have a major impact on people.  This would mean no new movies and no new television.  Think of the outcry there would have been if Avengers: Endgame had been whisked out of viewers’ grasps just a week before it was due to hit theaters.  Imagine HBO saying, “Okay, America—you want the finale to Game of Thrones?  Demand that something be done to save the planet.”  Granted, now that the finale has been aired, and it’s been generally agreed that it was a colossal disappointment, people probably would be happy to have it gone—but they would not have known that at the time, and would have been champing at the bit to learn the outcome of the battle for the future of that fantasy world.

Hollywood likes to position itself as the nation’s liberal conscience (something that has fueled conservative ire for decades), from its fairly predictable tropes in major films to often-political Oscar acceptance speeches.  There have been a number of films with massive budgets that earned billions of dollars that carried an environmental theme of greater or lesser obviousness (Avatar, Evan Almighty, Avengers: Endgame, etc.), but the cumulative effect of these special-effects extravaganzas on society has not been apparent.  If Hollywood really wants to get serious about environmental action, they could do more good by refusing to make (or release) movies than by making them.  The current model for most blockbusters is to set up an initial blockbuster, make the sequel or spin-off probability obvious to the viewer by the end, and then hype up the sequels with even more massive advertising campaigns than the original received.  All Hollywood would have to do is hype a number of sequels that promise to deliver more of the same, or provide answers to pressing fan questions, and then press pause on the release until the public demands action.

There are a number of guilds representing the different people needed to bring a film or TV series to completion: the Writers Guild of America (WGA), the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), the Directors Guild of America (DGA), the Producers Guild of America (PGA), and others.  A strike by any one could shut down production until demands were met.  The demands would not be related to the film and television industry, though, which could cause conflict.  A more unified, top-to-bottom approach would be better, but would be unlikely.  Previous entertainment-industry strikes have been motivated by financial self-interest, not an interest in a healthy planet.  But perhaps Hollywood could see its way to temporarily putting profits aside in order to walk the walk for a while.  If the powers that be at the top are in agreement, they could have the films and television shows made, pay the actors and crew, and hold off on delivering the final product to the public until the demanded actions were taken.

It would put the issue into the national spotlight in a way that a self-interested strike would not.  When fans learned that they would not be getting the latest Marvel film due to inaction over climate change, and not because of internal financial disagreements, the issue would be hotly debated in all corners.  Those on the right would again attack Hollywood for being sanctimonious in its liberal values, and a segment of the population would likely turn its anger at Hollywood for putting their entertainment on hold, but millions of people would be spurred to demand greater action from their government, even if it were just to get their entertainment back.  Perhaps, in the meantime, they could find something more meaningful to engage in than being a passive viewer, staring at a screen.  The more direction Hollywood could offer audiences for how to get involved, the better—whether it’s how to petition the government, how to find and work with local organizations, or how they can change their own habits to lessen their impact on the Earth.  It could be a teachable moment for the country and one that developed a more meaningful, less one-directional bond between producers and consumers of entertainment.  Both could use social media to correspond about progress on their efforts and could continue to stay in contact even after the strike to discuss important environmental issues and what could be done about them.  A return to film and television entertainment would hopefully not feel completely like business as usual again; there would be a sense of accomplishment, on the part of viewers and the film and television industry—a feeling like they had accomplished something, and had earned the right to enjoy themselves for a while, knowing that they were putting their government on the right track and providing more hope for their future.  Both sides might, in the end, might even be a little less consumed by the fate of fictional worlds at the cost of their own.

One approach to combatting climate change that would produce great results in a short time and leave an indelible impact in the public’s consciousness would be a sabbatical year for the Earth.  During this year, a massive labor force would be trained and engaged in building the nation’s new energy grid using all renewable energy.  For this labor force, and for the public who followed their efforts, this year would be like no other—it would form a break from the tedious routines that blur one year with the next, and would be a year that they would recall with pride in years to come, a year that cemented their place in history alongside the Greatest Generation as they worked to save the planet.  This labor force would come from two sources: members of the military who could be spared for the work, and all students of a certain age.

It is widely known that the United States spends more on defense than the next seven countries combined (in other years it has been more than the next ten or twelve).  Much of that money goes toward employing a bloated armed service, many of whom are stationed abroad in peaceful countries.  Many billions of dollars are also spent each year on expensive military equipment, much of which is unnecessary, and even at times startlingly inefficient (like the F-35 Join Strike Fighter).  Imagine what could be accomplished if this budget were to be maintained for this sabbatical year, but redirected towards a national green grid. 

The Army Corps of Engineers, a natural fit for this undertaking, would be requisitioned for it, and the members of the other armed services who can be spared from their duties for a year would work alongside them.  Engineers from each branch should be given leadership and planning roles so that the entire project is not dominated by the Army Corps of Engineers or any other single group.  Members with or without technical expertise can be trained according their capacity and given meaningful work to do in the year building the grid.

The money typically spent on multi-billion-dollar warships, aircraft, and ordnance would be used instead to purchase or manufacture the materials needed for a new green infrastructure.  The military may wish to create its own solar panel production facilities and the like, or if we insist on maintaining the current military-industrial complex with its handful of behemoth defense corporations who run billion-dollar industries manufacturing modern tools of destruction, the money can be given to those companies to produce these green energy technologies instead, with the additional hope that when the year is complete, these companies will continue to manufacture renewable energy tech in America rather than reverting 100% to military production.  There is also the preferable option of giving the money that would usually go to defense manufacturers to emerging American green technology companies, instead, helping to boost a more humane business sector and put our green tech companies into a position to produce large quantities of needed materials in future years.

The nation’s intelligence chiefs have long concluded, and have warned the administration many times, that climate change is a serious security threat, and one that needs to be addressed.  The most effective and just way the nation can begin to grapple with this security threat is by controlling our own emissions here at home.  A year of building our grid to help eliminate our reliance on climate-destabilizing fossil fuels is clearly within the mandate of defense.  Since 2001, we have spent nearly two decades fighting costly wars fighting Islamic terrorism, while doing little to mitigate the threat that has been at least partially responsible for Hurricanes Sandy, Harvey, and Maria, along with the rampant wildfires in California and the flooding that has shaken the Midwest and destroyed miles of crops along the Missouri River.  As the intelligence chiefs have demonstrated, the unchecked threat of climate change will continue to bring natural disasters of increased ferocity and destructive capacity, and the destabilization unleashed by droughts, sea level rise, and other disasters elsewhere will create waves of millions of refugees and eventually generate wars over increasingly scarce resources.  The sensible policy is to act now and act urgently.  A temporary reapplication of the military would go a long way.  In addition to building a new energy grid powered by renewable sources, much could be done to construct physical defenses against floods and sea-level rise.

The other untapped pool of resources for this project is the nation’s millions of students, all of whom will be affected by climate change in their future.  (Some of them are certainly being affected by it already, particularly if they live in areas hit by flooding or wildfires.)  Many among them are already starting to feel the specter of climate change coming between them and their futures.  The aptly named Extinction Rebellion captures the angst and foreboding of the younger generations as they watch the world unraveling before their eyes while their governments do little to address the crisis.  Their involvement in the year-long sabbatical for the Earth would make a tremendous impact in creating a green energy grid for the country, and would make them an active part in a better future that holds more promise for them.

During this sabbatical year, high school students (and possibly university students) would not go through a regular year of schooling, but would instead be involved in working directly to build the grids.  Students would continue to receive an education as they worked, and they would gain valuable real-world, hands-on experience, with much of their education taking place outdoors for the year.  Teachers would incorporate mathematics and engineering into the projects students worked on, and environmental science and engineering would be taught for the year.  History classes would include a history of environmental policy in the United States and elsewhere, teaching students how we have arrived at the critical situation we are now in, while English classes would include hallmarks of American environmental and civic writing like Thoreau’s Walden and “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” and would include opportunities for students to write to newspapers, legislators, and publish their own blogs.

There are precedents for both this massive mobilization and the incorporation of student work into the country’s efforts at saving itself.  In World War II, the economy was mobilized nearly overnight to produce war materials for the US’s efforts in Europe and the Pacific.  Whole industries were created and many women joined the labor force, while students helped in their own ways at school through donation drives and resource conservation initiatives.  The successful concerted effort the nation made in a time of war shows that we can do the same to combat an even greater threat, a dangerously destabilized planet.

In Japan, during World War II, students worked on a number of labor projects instead of continuing their normal path of education.  Students in Hiroshima were out trying to create firebreakswhen the atomic bomb was dropped.

In Nigeria, the Igbo population traditionally incorporated themselves into three-year “age groups,” where people between the ages of, say, 12-14, 15-18, and 19-21 were each treated as a group that performed vital community functions.  The group of 15-18 year olds might be assigned to, say, clear a path for a road, while an older group might have been in charge of organizing a community festival.  Each three-year age group within a village was a cohesive unit and would be given a project to work on together, so that vital work got done and everyone was able to contribute to the well-being of the village.

My own grandfather grew up on a farm in Maine, where he was exposed early to hard work and creative problem solving.  He then went to school with the Christian Brothers, where he and his fellow students actually helped to build the school they would learn in.  My grandfather, who was trusted by the school staff due to his extensive experience on the farm, was given control of land-leveling machinery, and even dynamite, and led his classmates in creating a baseball field, among other projects.  Students in suburban and urban America tend to be sheltered and kept away from outdoor work, heavy machinery, and real-world independent projects, but all that is required is the opportunity to engage in meaningful work for these habits to be reversed.  Just because they have not done anything like this yet, does not mean they are not capable of doing it.  Looking at the experiences of young people in other times and places shows that they are up to the challenge, and will thrive under it.

Rather than “losing” a year of school, these students will live what might be the most memorable and meaningful year of their young lives, in which they play a vital role in preserving their own future and the planet we all live on.  They will gain valuable skills, an appreciation of the crisis they face and the roles they can play in solving it, and a greatly expanded worldview.  The real-world, hands-on experience they will receive will only benefit them in the future when it comes time for college.  Imagine all that they will be able to put on their resumes.              

It will be said that these ideas are “impractical,” or politically unpopular.  But where have our practicality and our political popularity gotten us?  We have brought our planet to the brink of utter catastrophe by choosing to focus on business and maintain our quietly destructive routine, which we are now afraid to break.  An article in New York Magazine, David Wallace-Wells’s “The Cautious Case for Climate Optimism,” contained suggestions for a number of possible “long-shot” technological solutions to avert the worst possible effects of climate change. One of these “solutions” was to deliberately release prodigious quantities of sulfur into the atmosphere, clouding the entire earth, changing the color of the sky, and blocking much of the sun’s rays in order to prevent future warming.  The long-term effects of such a move, of course, are unknown, and could potentially result in extinction events to rival climate change itself.  Why are we more willing to engage in geoengineering, tampering with the laws of nature, which we have not written and will never fully comprehend, rather than social engineering, revising the laws made by man for the benefit of man, our ephemeral, intangible creations whose generation is recent and whose duration is uncertain?  Why do we feel as if it is the Earth that must change—and it is indeed changing for the worse right now, under our direction—rather than us?

It seems the problem of the climate crisis would be solved if more people—at least an overwhelming majority—were environmentalists.  If those in business and in government cared for the environment as much as the average environmentalist does, most of the problems environmentalists fight against would not exist in the first place.  But beyond that, assuming that there was a split in society, and the majority of the public were attentive, passionate, outspoken environmentalists, and politicians and business leaders were not, those same politicians and business leaders would presumably not commit the ecological crimes that they might like to, because public outcry would mean the end of their political career and the demise of their business.  There is a lot of presumption here, including the presumption that this majority would act on their feelings and their principles and not go along with something because it was expedient or because they had not found a way to carry on with their lives without it.  But let us carry forward with the idea that, if the bulk of the population were outspoken environmentalists, most of the problems we are contending with, such as climate change, would be rapidly resolved and would cease to be repeated.

It is obvious that the bulk of the public does not fit this description today, which means we are still dealing with a slew of environmental problems, and those problems are either not being resolved rapidly enough or are actually accelerating.  A more environmentally active and aware population would be the key to solving our problems, and is something to be desired.  We must ask ourselves a key question, then: What is keeping people from becoming environmentalists?

1) Disinformation.  At the extreme end of the spectrum, you have those who do not believe that climate change, the most pressing environmental issue of our time, is real.  These are people who have been misinformed by Republican talking points, pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and flawed studies, all promulgated initially by fossil fuel interests.  They break down into two groups.  One group comprises average, likable people who have been passively misled by their party of choice (or inheritance—I don’t believe “choice” indeed plays a role in every citizen’s political affiliations).  They may say things like “I don’t think all the science is in yet.”  They tend to adhere to the Republican line on other issues, but wouldn’t see themselves as actively “anti-environment.”  I have to think that a book like Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth would change their minds on the climate issue, unless they are in the fossil fuel industry and have a vested interest in denying the reality of climate change.  Then there are the really worrisome cases, often found trolling YouTube comment sections, the sort who modify their cars to belch more smoke.  There is an element of “I’m smarter than the mainstream” here (in the same way that many white supremacists feel “superior” even though they have little reason to).  They are convinced that global warming is a hoax and enjoy actively harming the environment and harming or maddening those who believe climate change is real.  These people are fortunately a minority, and a lost cause who will be damned by the future.  They seem to have no concept of being dependent upon the planet they live on.  One would like to exile them to space and see how they survive there.

Note that action on the environment and climate change was once bipartisan in the seventies and eighties.  Also note that Abbie Hoffman, never a darling of the right wing, was able to (while in disguise and in hiding from the FBI) assemble a coalition of environmentalists and conservatives who did not consider themselves environmentalists in order to protect the St. Lawrence River. So there’s always hope for bridging those areas of disagreement, or skirting around them to work on what’s important.

2) Environmentalism is seen as “anti-business.”  Some of this carries over from the preceding category.  Many people who condone rollbacks of environmental standards see themselves not as “anti-environment” but as “pro-business.”  They believe that business is being hamstrung by the environmental movement and that the nation is suffering as a result.  They neglect the fact that industrial business had a 150-year head start, trashing the earth for profit long before environmental standards were introduced.  They got used to business operating without hindrance and do not take seriously the painful legacy industrialization has left the planet.  They seem to believe that businesses would operate within reasonable limits on their own, with no serious damage being done to air, water, climate, people, plants, or animals, and that environmental legislation is unnecessary and damaging to the economy.  They are quick to dismiss the well-publicized environmental disasters of yesteryear as a thing of the past and often point out that “those companies employed a lot of people.”

3) Our lives are too busy.  From here on down, the reasons for people not being environmentalists have less to do with hostility towards environmentalism and more to do with lifestyle.  One obvious factor in today’s world that keeps people from becoming active environmentalists is a lack of time.  With a list of duties that include a full-time job, keeping a marriage going, raising children, maintaining a social life, taking care of the house, and any other things that make for a normal life, it can be hard to find time to commit oneself to following environmental issues, attending and organizing demonstrations, writing letters, signing petitions, participating in cleanups, and greening one’s life.  I imagine nearly everyone has some amount of free time in spite of the abovementioned duties, but active environmentalism is a time commitment, and there are other things clamoring for that time, not the least of which is R&R (more on that later).

4) Not enough social pressure.  I was going to write that views on YouTube for zero-waste lifestyle tutorials are completely dwarfed by makeup tutorials by someone like Olivia Jade or Kendall Jenner, but I found that wasn’t entirely the case.  While the average video featuring Kendall Jenner has about 4 million views, and there are a ton of videos featuring her (why?), there are some zero-waste videos featuring Lauren Singer, whose five years of trash fit in a mason jar, that are equally popular.  Does it help that they are both pretty?  Regardless, I’d argue that there are more people aspiring to look like Kendall Jenner than there are to live like Lauren Singer. 

There is more social pressure to dress nicely, look good, have a well-paying job, be dating or in a relationship, and to keep up with popular TV shows than there is to be an environmentalist.  Some of those pressures directly squelch environmentalist tendencies.  Dressing nicely means buying new and buying often; working that job may mean supporting a company whose environmental practices leave something to be desired; watching those TV shows means less time for the environment.  (I myself am looking forward to an episode of Breaking Bad after finishing work on this article for the night—I resisted the pressure to watch it when it was on, but somehow caved ten years later while planning a trip to New Mexico.)  If you don’t live in the city, there is social pressure to own a car and use it to get everywhere.  In the suburbs, you feel conspicuous when you bike or walk anywhere, like you aren’t “fitting in.”  Some of it may be pure, silly self-consciousness, but sometimes you’ll be actively hooted at by a group of adolescents in a car.  By contrast, nobody ever glares at you to get out of your car and find some other means of transport.  The same goes when you buck the average American diet.  Eat a chicken burrito and no one asks you anything.  Mention that you are vegan and you are immediately asked about your reasoning, your sources of protein, and your desire for bacon. 

There is little social pressure to cut down on waste, go vegan, or to attend environmental actions.  You are free to do those thing if you want to, but there is no expectation from anyone that you will.

5) Consumerism.  By its very nature, our consumerist culture and economy expect and encourage people to want more, more, more.  Advertisements hawk products you never knew you needed.  Companies track you online to solicit you more effectively.  Apple comes out with a new version of the iPhone every year and somehow people still want it.  A large segment of the population is employed by companies that contribute little to people’s actual well-being, and yet we laud those useless jobs and the useless companies that create them.  The free market is often free of social (and certainly environmental) purpose, but it’s what we have, and it is defended by the vast majority.  Because we don’t want to end up homeless and begging on the streets, we take our meaningless jobs and we thank the companies that give them to us, and we defend the consumerist system they are a part of. 

Consuming less (or, a nearly impossible ideal in America, consuming only what we need), buying used, repairing and reusing what you already own, and refusing to be led by the nose to the latest expensive corporate trough that has been laid out for the public, are all undesirable, in the eyes of business and the government it is wed to, and advertisement and the aforementioned social pressure unite to prevent most people from doing them.

6) The perception of environmentalism as a sacrifice.  In a consumerist culture, the idea of environmentalism seems to suggest to many a life of extreme sacrifice.  Part of this comes from having been overindulged and never asked to reckon what the impact of one’s life on the environment is.  It breeds, especially in America, a sort of knee-jerk reaction against the idea of “giving up” anything, whether that is meat, a gas-guzzling car, the practice of driving everywhere (no matter how short the distance), single-use bottles, plastic straws, or wanton electricity or heat usage.  Many refuse to contemplate giving up their “right” to buy and dispose of food and beverages in single-use plastic form, anywhere, although the simple step of using reusable water bottles, coffee mugs, bags, and containers for leftovers or bulk bin items would eliminate billions of single-use items that end up in the trash every year.  The requirement of foresight (“If I’m going to the store, I should bring a bag”; “If I’m going to get coffee on the way to work, I should bring a mug”) is something many Americans kick against, as if the Constitution guaranteed them freedom from the need for it.  News segments, YouTube videos, and public initiatives have been tackling the perception of environmentalism as requiring sacrifice, gently assuring their audience that they can make small, meaningful changes that will make a big difference.  Some people then settle for these small changes, like turning the lights off when they leave a room, and feel good about them, reassured that they are doing something and don’t have to go farther. 

Real lifestyle changes are a harder sell, and there is the perception that environmentalism means a life of deprivation.  “I would die if I went vegan” is something I’ve heard too many times.  People tend to overestimate the difficulty and disruption of lifestyle changes that would lessen their negative effect on the environment, and also fail to see the benefits that such changes bring.  A dietary change like veganism brings a wealth of health benefits, a much smaller ecological footprint, and a deepened connection to animal life.  “Now I can look at you in peace,” said Kafka to the fish at an aquarium he visited.  “I don’t eat you anymore.”  There is indeed a spiritual peace that comes with a deepening devotion to the earth.  Weaning yourself off the drug of consumerism, with its cry in the blood for more, more, more, brings with it a liberation from want.  Rather than pining for the latest gadget one has denied oneself, one realizes it was never needed in the first place.  You can turn an indifferent eye to advertising and the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses technological arms race and see the game for what it is.  Committing yourself to a cleanup brings with it the feeling of a day well spent; joining the fight for a sustainable future brings with it courage, self-confidence, and the intrinsic reward of fighting the good fight.

              7) Avoidance of depressing reality/A sense of powerlessness.  Most of the news today about the environment is bleak and utterly depressing, so it’s no surprise some choose to avoid it.  News that carbon dioxide levels are at the highest ever recorded, or that we have only ten to twelve years to get our act together, or that Paris just hit 108 degrees this summer and Greenland lost billions of tons of sea ice in a day, or that Donald Trump is still President and still rolling back emissions standards and endangered species protections while opening up nearly every last protected space in the country to fossil fuel interests, can ruin a whole day and haunt you for weeks on end.  It forces one to think about a future that is many times worse than the present.  It forces you to realize that we may fail, in large part because people with power are doing everything they can to oppose progress on climate change and are determined to continue “business as usual” with the fossil fuel companies, their idea of “business as usual” being business as it was circa the 1950s before any kind of environmental protections were put in place.

Couple that with a sense of powerlessness that comes from decisions being made on a global scale while you are just one out of several billion, and are without a seat in power, and you may end up deciding to avoid the issues.  Despair may overwhelm instead of forcing you to act, and you then turn to an escape just to try to stay sane.  Some people appear to have written off the future, assuming it will be terrible, and have decided to watch all the TV they can, while they can.

8) Entertainment narcotization.  Ours is an entertainment-driven culture.  One might almost say that in America, entertainment is the highest good.  We worship the stars of the entertainment industry more than people who are working to save lives.  Even Donald Trump was elected partially because the news media found him to be a source of entertainment.  This endless thirst for entertainment and diversion keeps us from thinking deeply about our lives, and what kind of life we would most like to lead, considering it from beginning to end.  It also certainly keeps us from doing much about the environment.  If we were forced to live without the benefit of entertainment (or at least were offered it in much smaller doses), the seriousness of the climate crisis would catch up to us and we would be driven to act on it.  As it is now, many people are so engrossed in entertainment that they know little about the ecological crises we are facing, or they know of the terrors we face and turn to entertainment to get away from thinking about them.  Entertainment is psychologically necessary, and I think if environmental activists and climate scientists never allowed themselves to have fun and to stop thinking about the perilous state of the environment for a while, they would probably die of stress and heartbreak.  A balance between meaningful engagement and R&R is what is needed, and it is sorely lacking in our culture.  Generally, when given free time, Americans elect to spend nearly all of it on one form of entertainment or another, while the planet deteriorates unseen in the background.

9) Not enough news coverage.  It seems to me that there has been an uptick in news about climate change, lately, due to increasing awareness and the increasing severity of its effects around the globe.  There could be more, and it is fighting for airtime with celebrity scandals (today it’s an old Sarah Silverman sketch featuring blackface), but at least it’s getting out there.  Most of the news doesn’t offer the public a constructive way to approach the issue, though.  We hear that things are getting bad, and are going to get worse.  We hear about the failure of leaders in the US, China, and elsewhere.  But due to the preponderance of national and international news, we seldom hear about local issues citizens could tackle to mitigate damage to the environment or reduce contributions to climate change in their area.  Our news is largely homogenous, and on television, most of the local news comes in the form of fires and sensationalistic crime scene footage.  The average citizen is unaware of new power plant construction projects in their state, for example, or what the state legislature is doing about the proposed plastic bag ban that was mentioned several months ago and then dropped.  We are exposed to more information than ever, but little of it is information we can act on or that has meaningful application to our lives.  To get involved in environmental issues at the local level, one generally has to seek out the news and local environmental groups themselves; there is little presentation of relevant information and activism opportunities that reaches the public.

10) Passive versus active environmentalism.  If any form of environmentalism is encouraged in America, it is the same three R’s I was taught in fourth grade: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  Environmentalism is seen as an affair of the home.  You should turn the lights off when you leave the room, bring a reusable bag to the store, and separate your recycling from your garbage.  I’ve heard a number of people state the single fact that they recycle as evidence that they care about the environment, as if that weren’t essentially mandatory or at least a basic expectation of everyone.  Those who are more serious may look into getting solar panels on their home, improving their home’s energy efficiency, or decide to eat more local or vegetarian/vegan.  Whatever steps people decide to take, environmentalism is treated as essentially a private matter.

There is little discussion of taking environmentalism into the public forum, of going from a “passive” stage of attempting to reduce one’s footprint in various ways to an “active” stage of getting involved in environmental issues.  No one is really taught this sort of environmentalism in school, and most Americans don’t really engage with politics outside of voting once a year, if that.  It’s a big jump to go from monitoring your own consumption to following environmental issues, attending rallies, writing letters, and calling leaders.  Even if you take the plunge and begin doing those things, spreading awareness to those around you is often another matter it may take some time to get comfortable with.  We Americans are uneasy about getting friends, family, and colleagues on board.  Many hardly see their neighbors, and seldom hold serious conversations when they do.  We don’t want to alienate people at work.  We don’t want to become one of “those people” on social media who end up having their friends unfollow them.  We don’t want to be seen as a “preachy vegan.”  We agree to disagree on politics with family and discuss it as little as possible.  The result is that we wage sometimes lonely battles and don’t bring the reinforcements to the fight that are desperately needed.  In any public arena, numbers are important.  When it comes to reducing our national footprint, numbers are needed.  We need to find ways to share our best practices, share our knowledge of what is being done to the earth, especially locally, and to share our sense of urgency in a way that grows the number of environmentalists and encourages new members to keep recruiting to the ranks.

Thinking about obstacles to an embrace of environmentalism is a first step.  Thinking of ways to overcome them is the next one.  Wherever you are on your journey, think about how you can go farther, and how you can bring others with you.  Then do it.