How to be a climate menace
(And NOT a climate terrorist)
Can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but my dad is building an apocalypse farm. It’s got ATVs, guns, crossbows, a bunker – everything you might need when the zombie horde arrives. He’s even got a canning operation going for all the vegetables he’s growing. And rumor has it, next year, he might even get some goats. (Cute! …apocalyptically cute?)
Luckily for me, with forty acres of rolling hills and woods, it’s still a beautiful place to visit. In fact, when I drove eight hours to see it this summer, it didn’t feel like the apocalypse at all. We sat outside every night, watching the sunset around a crackling bonfire, listening to crickets singing in the grass.
He’s not entirely clear what kind of apocalypse he’s preparing for, by the way, though he wants some kind of garden-variety messianic hidey hole. Still, watching him prepare for universal doom has given me an opportunity to think about society – what it means, what it’s for, and why we might want to preserve it. And somehow, hopefully, I’ll be able to connect that all to climate action. So, join me in the bunker, friends, we’re going underground.
The pencil question
Just a few weeks ago – as I’ll surely write about in an upcoming post – I was taking a machine sewing class. In case you’re in Chicago like me, I went to Sew Crafty in New Center, and I can’t recommend their classes enough. I may or may not have been the only weird old dude with a beard, but everyone was very welcoming.
Part of my motivation, of course, was to up my mending game. Our world has a major textile pollution problem – amongst all the other horrors to discuss in future posts – and I’ve been trying to add more years to my garments. A bit of slow fashion, if you will. So far, I’ve managed to keep some very dubious pants going with hand mending, but my stitches aren’t exactly…uniform.
However, looking at the sewing machine in front of me, I realized what I was really looking at: Civilization. This was a feat of human engineering, a machine that can bind cloth together! This Bad Jackson was even digital, allowing me to make hundreds of different stitches despite being a dummy (you can see the stitch menu on the right). It might seem simple, but that’s only because we take it for granted.
Look at the gif below[1]. When you sew by hand, you have to pass the thread back and forth through the cloth, making a bunch of little stitches. When you use a sewing machine, though, all you have is the one needle. How the heck does that work?! Well, my friends, it has two threads! Combining the needle with a “bobbin” the sewing machine creates a lock stitch, basically tying the cloth together on an extremely tiny scale.
Using this magnificent mechanical marvel – something I could never begin to understand or make myself – I thought of Milton Friedman’s pencil. You can watch him explain it himself here, but basically, he uses your standard #2 pencil as a useful thought experiment. It might seem like the simplest of objects, but no single person could make a pencil by themselves. Wood, rubber, graphite, metal – all of those components are actually incredibly complex and require cooperation across an entire economy’s-worth of people.
Friedman, for those who don’t know him, was a very influential economist, but he was also a bit of a free market mad lad. (And we know all too well now where his and Regan’s goal of ZERO regulations got us…) Still, he has a point. The modern economy is an incredible machine. And while it’s important to point out the flaws in our current hyper-capitalist iteration, it’s usually not the innovation and efficiency people have a problem with; it’s the externalities and abuses.
What we crave is a sustainable economy: Abundant energy sources that don’t poison the air and drive climate change. A market that’s actually free – compared to the rampant monopoly power we have now. Income equality and labor rights – and enough free time to stop ordering so much plastic garbage off the internet. We like civilization. Heck, we love sewing machines!
Imagination in the fight for a better world
So, what does this have to do with climate action? Well, recently, I went to a conference for Citizens Climate and attended a session on climate art. Specifically, we were going to be collaging. There were dozens of magazines and old picture books spread out on the table – and enough glue sticks to fix a tear in the spacetime continuum.
Even though I try to practice climate positivity in my climate fiction and my advocacy work, I was immediately absorbed by trying to cut out the most apocalyptic images possible for my collage. But why? What dark prisms are lurking in my artistic psyche?
Thankfully, before we could begin, the moderator had us watch a table-setting video. It was about envisioning a successful, hopeful climate future. You can watch a short clip of this thought experiment, but you can also ask yourself some of these questions. In the future, when we’ve done the work and solved climate change, ask yourself:
What do you see out the window when you wake up? Do you see plants, animals, people?
What’s outside your door? What do the streets look like? What’s in your driveway?
Where are your loved ones? Do you have more time to see them?
What does the world smell like? What does the air feel like?
This way of thinking is crucial. As we take climate action, we need to think not only about how to transform our world, but also about what we want to preserve from it. I’d hazard a guess that we will still want modern medicine and mechanical wonders. We still want art and freedom and the better angels of humanity. We just want a world where our children can inherit a livable planet. A world where blind consumerism doesn’t turn our planet into a Wall-E-esque landfill. A world where we aren’t causing the sixth great extinction and super hurricanes.
(And here’s my collage, by the way.)
The temptation of terrorism
That’s why we need to start this conversation with hope. Motivation decides action. The ends do not justify the means. And you know what? Being a climate advocate is frustrating. It’s hard to be part of a world that seems like it doesn’t care, a world that refuses to change when we already have the technology at our fingertips.
Some thinkers like Andreas Malm, the author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, would tell you the only answer is mass non-peaceful disruption. However, if you look historically, any successful movement for permanent, durable change went the opposite direction. MLK transformed our nation by powerfully – and peacefully – holding America to its own unfulfilled promises. I fear to choose the opposite is to guarantee backlash, recrimination, and less change not more. Just think about democracy as an example. If we want to live in a norms-driven, peaceful, and free society, how could something like an assassination ever lower the temperature?
And here’s the thing. We humans are good. It doesn’t always seem that way, but we are. It’s easy to choose nihilism. It’s easy to want to burn it all down. But that’s why we choose to have an energy transition and not an annihilation. It will be slow – painfully slow at times – but we’re turning the titanic. We’re trying to change this great human experiment so that there’s good things left when we’re done.
Of course, that DOES NOT mean we can do nothing. We must take action. But what can an individual do? Well, for one, you can act like less of an individual. I see your climate terrorist and I raise you…the climate menace.
A menace isn’t menacING
Maybe it’s selfish to want to take climate actions that allow me to keep my job – though I invest a lot of my blood money in home electrification, cleantech startups, and climate non-profits. Still, I think it’s more than that. I genuinely believe in this hope thing. After all, we’re all just normal folks trying to get by. And I think hope can remind us that we all have a role to play.
Whatever your sphere of influence is, you can tell your fellow humans about the need for action. You can call your Congress person (and join CCL’s mailing list for tips on when important climate bills are up for a vote!). You can join Climate Cafes and other events that create climate community. You can eat less beef – and tell a friend about it. You can pipe up at work when they talk about making the office more sustainable. You can be that person. You are the menace of democracy working against the oil industrial complex.
But most importantly, you can use the power of peace and hope to transform your intransigent neighbors. You can ask open-ended questions of people who have climate doubts. You can create space for their internal transformation. You can donate money to people hit by hurricanes even in states where the government officially bars the free discussion of climate change. A climate opportunity could be anywhere.
How to begin (at the beginning)
Just recently, my friend Candice Ammori at Climate Vine – who we’ve talked about before for her excellent work bringing together climate entrepreneurs – had an event on this very topic. Her speaker put together a great chart of how we can take climate action (using Candice’s face lol, though you can imagine your own in the center!).
Just look at all the ways a single human – networked with other humans – can make an impact. The fossil fuel industry is already working on the cultural and political spheres, so we can too!
Still looking for inspo? Here are a couple random things I did this month:
Call, write, send a postcard
This year is an election year (obviously lol), and my chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby teamed up with the Environmental Voter Project to send postcards to environmental voters. Believe it or not, there are ten MILLION environmentally-friendly people in this nation who don’t even vote! Our chapter sent a thousand postcards, joining groups across the country. We also met at breweries so we could drink while we did it…
We’re done for the year – the election is freakishly soon – but you can still act. You can VOTE.
Who doesn’t love a random yard sign?
I’ve electrified a lot of things in my house, but I can’t hide that fact under the proverbial bushel basket! I made this nifty sign on Canva and slammed it into the ground by the train tracks – it even links to federal resources that will pay you to electrify!
I live near a middle school, so approximately 8 trillion parents walk by every day with their kids. Maybe one will take the bait!
Letters to the void
Despite the brilliant cosmopolitan density of Chicago, my neighborhood has a weird amount of giant abandoned parking lots. The Burger King near me, for example, has about 500 parking spaces for a business that probably has three people in it a year. I made these flyers to see if they might put in some EV chargers.
Are they good looking? No. Will this work? Unlikely! But I’ve sent twenty so far, and it only takes one (at a time) to make massive change. That’s what being a climate menace is all about!
Not sure if you knew this, but I’m a social media influencer… (I’m not)
Some of you follow me on social media, where I talk about books and such. But I also talk about climate! I made this gnarly post about my electric stove that got around 700 views. And this bad boy about my heat pump. Again, all it takes is one person, so use your voice y’all!
I don’t have all the answers, friends, but that’s the point! We all have different skills and perspectives. We also have different communities and spheres of influence. It doesn’t matter what you do, just do something. I promise it feels better than watching the hurricanes roll in with dread. We can solve climate change; we have the technology. Now, we just need the will. And when we’re done, we might even have a civilization worth sewing in.
*Art by Alfred H. Smith, Shaker Hand Loom, c. 1937, National Gallery of Art
*Email header art by Karl Nilsson (sigvardnilsson on instagram), includes portions of Beck's Castle Ruins by László Mednyánszky Denbigh Castle, Wales by Edward Dayes & Paysage de la Grand Chartreuse attributed to Jean Lubin Vauzelle
[1] Wikimedia Commons, Lockstitch.gif, user: NikolayS, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/