A Bright Green Crisis of Faith

I find myself in a momentary crisis of faith.  I don’t speak of this in terms of religious faith, and maybe it’s not faith at all.  Perhaps a “deficit of optimism” would be a better way to describe it.  Last weekend it rolled in via the blasting of Coal River Mountain, and poll numbers indicating that 20% fewer Americans believe in climate change this year than last year.

I tell myself that I shouldn’t be surprised by these things.  After all, only 39% of Americans believe in evolution.  But the fact is that I was astonished.  Perhaps it takes me by surprise because I get lulled into a false sense of security, thinking that we’re all on the same page.  But then I talk to someone who doesn’t believe in public education, or who believes that climate change exists, but thinks that somehow the United States can find a unilateral solution to a problem that is fundamentally an international crisis, and I remember that we’re not all on the same page.  (And yes, I understand that these two examples actually lie very close to each other on the global spectrum of understanding fundamental truths.)

It becomes an issue for me because I take it one step further.  When I feel that not only are we not all on the same page, but that maybe no one is on our page.  Maybe we are just a small and vocal minority, shouting into the abyss, praying someone will hear us.  And what if we’re not even as vocal as we think we are?  All the other small, vocal minorities seem so much bigger and louder.  Maybe we’re small and they’re big!  Maybe no one is listening.  You can see how this quickly devolves into a very counterproductive internal monologue.

Which is why it throws me off even more when I find something like this article from Worldchanging.com.  The problem is that I agree with it.  I agree with Alex Steffen’s assertion that the level of world-saving change required will take more than just small, personal changes.  That we face a global crisis on a scale never before witnessed by our species, and that our salvation lies in an equally unprecedented solution.

And no matter how many arguments I could make about macro level results being the aggregate result of micro level changes, how can my kitchen garden seem anything but a hollow answer to his call for a 95% reduction in human impact?

The truly massive shifts Steffen discusses – I don’t know what they look like.  As he says, no one does, because they will look like nothing we have seen in the past.  But more than that, I don’t even know how to take the first step.  What does it look like “to be people who are tackling the most important systems around us?”  And what tools are available to us to change these systems “quickly, and at great scale?”

This was discouraging for me.  Because Steffen and I are on the same page.  We are speaking the same language.  And I have no answers for him.  I don’t even know how to begin.

I know how to make changes in my own life.  I know how to live according to my own values.  And I know how to talk and write about the things I believe.  I can be a strong advocate for those values on an interpersonal level.

But if that is not enough, where do we go from here?  If what I know how to do is not enough, and if we do not have a model in history for moving forward, where do we start?

I think that herein lies the key:

It will involve needing to be more connected to global networks of people working towards change, more committed to seeking understanding and transparency in complexity, more engaged with systems that make us feel small — because we are small, and the world is complex, and we can’t do this alone.

But on days that I am already feeling very alone, it is hard to abide the idea that the small changes I am making are futile.  On those days, I find myself caught in a crisis of faith.