Culture of We Can

In How do we end the Planetary End Game, Terry Glavin calls for an all-out war on global warming; a massive mobilization of people and resources to fight to eradicate this threat from our lives and the entire world. He's right in what he's saying, but his messaging is not quite there.

We can declare war on global warming. We can mobilize the way we did for world war two, as a nation utilizing every resource. Everyone did their part. We had victory gardens and Rosie the riveter, as well as brave men in uniform. We saw a massive government expansion which was handled very well with almost no corruption. And we invented some really cool technologies and vastly improved a lot of existing ones. Sound like a good start to global warming solutions? You bet it does, sign me up.

However, a 'war' is an ugly thing that we neither have nor want. Excluding (or not) other poorly framed 'wars' like the war on drugs and the war on poverty, a war is a violent and disruptive process, and also one that requires massive centralizations of power. Who are the people that cause global warming? We are, and while we cannot be considered guilty, we can start to hold ourselves responsible, and then the war turns against us. I have many deep struggles to figure out myself, but I don't think framing those as battles, with the world against me is going to make it any easier or more pleasant.

Here's another way of looking at our current transformation that is much less combative, not to mention even more far reaching. The economic transformation that has occurred all over the world since the rise of modern capitalism has re-shaped the entire face of the earth and empowered billions of people to pursue lifestyles that they wanted. Was there a negative aspect to all that? Yes, there was. Can we choose to take the best parts of that revolution in human thinking and move on? Yes, we can.

This is why I was heartened by Lester Brown's essay, Cutting Carbon Emissions, on how many opportunities we have to switch to an entirely renewable energy sector. He gives us lots of examples of deep and far-reaching gains that can be made in the switch to an efficient and clean economy. He also says that we can cut carbon emissions in half by 2015. That sounds pretty good to me. I'm ready to start working on building a better world. Vince Lombardi said, “those who say it can't be done, should get out of the way of those who are going to do it.”