Discuss: Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist

Very compelling. Looking forward to more from you.

Thank you so much for this compelling article. Beautiful, sad and true.

I hear you. Kudos for so beautifully saying some ugly truths out loud. But I don’t agree with your conclusion, to walk away.

What can that mean, anyway?

First of all, I don’t think you can. There is no away. As McKibben says (as *you* say), there is now only Eaarth.

These ugly truths are truths that we must live with. To “walk away” from them is just as much to collude with them and, ultimately, to give up on human life.

Is that what you are advocating: that humankind dies off, and nature can again thrive?

I only have to look at my daughter, who is six. How could I make that decision for her? It is my human *nature* to keep on fighting for her.

(My fight is in Transition work, i.e., “darning socks” and “growing carrots”).

Thanks Paul. It needs to be said…

Kaat… I don’t think he means that kind of walking away. He means walking away from “this civilization” and evolving something else as we walk. And that is what I think we need to do, if those children are to have a livable future.

the concept of “environmentalism” was a baby step on the way to a global understanding of the unity of life that will be the work of this century.

“everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics” - charles peguy, perhaps describes your growth pattern relating to the term.

the next step awaits.

A beautiful and intelligent article. If there is a better refutation of the pragmatic hypocrisies of sustainable development, I’d like to see it.

As an idealistic young person, much of what you’ve described in your life’s course resonates with my own feelings now. But my desire to help make things better often switches to a despair that things will ever change, and a wariness of the reduction of the many human abuses of life on earth to the single doom of “global warming”.

Part of me looks forward to a time when civilisation has stalled, and when life returns to a more ecocentric balance. That said, there are key innovations I hope we can carry with us - such as basic medicine, for example, or social liberalism - into that new “dark age”. I’m also concerned at the number of deaths that the end of civilisation would bring. I do not wish anybody dead, but it seems that a holocaust is coming either way - be it of humankind, or the nonhuman.

I guess it’s not up to me. All I can do is prepare myself, and protect that which I love.

Quote: “But my desire to help make things better often switches to a despair that things will ever change…”

Do you remember the dude in the story walking along the shore tossing sea creatures back into the sea so that they could survive at least a while? Even though it is a small act that is swallowed up in the entirety of the sea and of time, it still defines that individual and tells us where he stands.

What we choose to do matters because what will remain after this world is forgotten will remain with us. We show ourselves and others what we want and are willing to work toward.

The cynic will say that change must come from nationwide or worldwide permanent change or it comes to nothing. I say, we all still remember Anne Frank. She did little but stood for all of us, and stands for all humanity as we say that this is where we stand and this is what defines us.

Then, just go convince one person at a time until you’ve changed everybody. It is ALL in the individual. All of space and time and eternity is inside the human heart, and the human heart will remain after all else is a whisp of memory.

So, what do you stand for? Let your actions speak for you. THAT will echo forever.

a beautifully written expose of the dynamics of despair~

we all need renewal.

and none of us really have the option of walking away. where do we walk to or from? rather we nourish ourselves and return to the heartbreak of it all. and then renew ourselves once again. have your read “coming back to life” by joanna macy? one of the best and realistic approaches for those of us who love so much~