A New Climate Narrative

Photo by Parker Johnson on Unsplash

Driving north along Chuckanut Drive on Friday, I noticed evidence of multiple recent landslides across the pavement—dirt still freshly gouged from the hillside on my right, and piles of raw damp soil on the left. Despite the breathtaking sun setting pink and orange behind the madrone trees and over the still waters of the Salish Sea, a thought slithered through my attention: “I could get squished right now by a landslide.”  

I carry internal angst and personal grief about the effects of climate change, especially when I witness them in my day-to-day life. This past month, Whatcom County has been experiencing major flooding. Last week the sun was out and the temperatures were balmy. Although the warmth was delightful, I could not slip fully into the pleasure, as I knew it resulted from a huge cost.

I track these costs in online newspapers and on the radio, shifting between four or five newspapers a day, my curiosity keeping me abreast with the changes of the times. I like comparing perspectives, finding nuanced (or blatant) differences between different newspapers. Although the details shift, I still read at least one article a day about some effects of climate change—wildfires, floods, mud slides, and draughts, tsunamis; just yesterday, a story of dramatic melting in Antarctica. I also readabout the USA’s current president rolling back environmental regulations, pulling away from the Paris climate agreements, and moving the political targets away from focusing on transforming our relationship to climate change. My angst comes from a feeling that no one else is noticing and it’s just too late. Beneath it all lies a story that I am alone in this disaster.

Then this morning an article in the Washington Post read, ‘From afterthought to emergency: Climate change now a key issue for Democratic voters’. Whoo! My heart sang. The article (I encourage you to read it here) discusses how climate change is beginning to be one of the main conversations in the Democratic presidential primary, right up there with healthcare (the two are directly linked—the more disasters and destabilization, the more need for healing). 

The article quotes Steyer speaking some good truth: “Environmental justice and racial justice and economic justice are inseparable. They are one thing. …[T]his is a human issue. And there’s a gigantic racial undertone to that human issue.” 

The article also tells about Nathaniel Stinnett, and his efforts in Nevada:

Nevada is one of a dozen states where Nathaniel Stinnett’s Boston-based group, the Environmental Voter Project, is using data analytics to identify people who care deeply about environmental issues but have not voted in the past. The group doesn’t endorse candidates; it just tries to persuade people to go to the polls. The rest, Stinnett believes, will take care of itself.

To read an article where people beyond my liberal Bellingham bubble are responding to climate change—on massive scales—with action and passion helped to prove my scarcity-mindset wrong.

I vascilate between despair and possibility, and I am so grateful for this article this morning. This, I believe, is the power of story—helping readers to know that we are not alone. People are acting, leading, making choices in this country (let alone around the globe…Hello Greta Thunberg, hello 9+ million people marching…). We have a responsibility to keep this new narrative alive.  

In these incredibly turbulent political times into which doom and gloom is easy to slip, I encourage you to have conversations with people and focus on the question, “What else is possible?” Even if you don’t know much, start a conversation with friends or colleagues and bumble through. Gather information and facts, figure out the complexities together, like untangling a large ball of yarn. Challenge your expectations. Examine your internal stories of scarcity. While holding realities in one hand, keep a narrative of possibility alive in the other.

And as you stumble and bumble through, I also encourage you to VOTE. Vote vote vote. I encourage you to encourage your friends to vote, your neighbors, your cashiers, your car mechanics, your parents, your barista, your housecleaner, your doctor, everyone. Environmental justice is racial, is economic, is social, is political, is spiritual. We are all impacted, we are all connected, and we can help to make changes. 

Then, what about pointing your work towards climate change in some way? This past year I made a commitment that, as a developmental editor, I prioritize clients writing about environmental conservation and social justice. I am amplifying these stories through how I choose to spend my time.

My slithering snake of scarcity mindset is something I try to let go to the weeds. I tell myself and others that we are not alone. The counterbalance to the overwhelm and grief is a new narrative, spurred on by visible, indisputable action. To vote and then to act alongside people, to make public choices in small and big ways keeps a new story alive that we can change at a faster pace than the climate itself.