Where does Change Begin?

 

Within the climate movement there is always a balancing act between personal change and structural change.   People always want to know what they can do about climate change.  There are many, many lifestyle changes we have to make – we can either embrace them or eventually they will be imposed upon us.  Depending upon how proactively we approach the change will determine how draconian it will eventually be.

There are people who say that we should never talk to people about anything other than structural change because otherwise we are indulging the fantasy that people can stop climate change by driving a Prius and changing their lightbulbs, and indeed, it is disturbing to me when people seem to feel quite satisfied and complete that this is what they are doing, implying “their part”.

Perhaps more moving is the words of Kathleen Dean Moore that the Fossil Fuel companies have exported their shame on to us.  They have made us feel that it is we who demand these fossil fuels and their products (never mind the decades of constructing suburbs or the constant drum beat of advertising creating demands in our brain) and therefore they have made us carry the shame and sense of responsibility which should be theirs.

So when I speak of things people can do, it is never my belief that we individually have created this situation.  It is certainly the case that we have collectively created it.  As the facts have come more and more to light of Exxon and Shell knowing since the 70’s the reality of climate change, and concealing it and intentionally running misinformation campaigns, they certainly hold heavy responsibility…the kind that if there was a hell, would get you sent there.

But the paradox is this.   If the governments of the world could actually unselfishly figure out what needs to happen and make a plan and carry it out….it still would need to be carried out at the local level.  And in the way that grassroot change happens it starts with ideas and actions of individuals that make movements and movements that move governments.  As Douglas said:  “Power concedes nothing without it a demand.  It never has, it never will”.   I have never known a government to make a significant change without a people’s movement pushing it.  A few women spoke to each other and thought of a woman’s march in response to their despair over Trump’s inauguration and they started putting it on FB and one of the biggest national marches of US history happened – not just once but for years afterwards.

And ironically the research on personal behavioral change shows the biggest impacts on our change behaviors is 1) famous people but 2) people we know personally.  Once there are 4 to 5 solar panels visible in a several block area, the sales in that area take off while not on the other side of town.  We are influenced by the collective.

Neale Donald Walsch says, speaking about this same spiritual dilemma:

“It is precisely because massive collective consciousness can overcome individual consciousness and individual awareness that collective consciousness is so important,  and why raising the collective consciousness of humanity is so vital. …the way to raise the collective consciousness of humanity is, of course, to raise individual consciousness of human beings.   …The question is whether the Divine Gift of Personal creation given to all human beings can be used to alleviate such immense suffering.”  P. 187

Thus on the spiritual level as well as the political movement building level – we have only ourselves to start with.  But not as the solution, but as part of the motion that creates a much larger change.  We must see our change as part of a much larger change.

So what comes first: the movement, or the change.   The changes or the movement?  I don’t spend to much time on this koan.  I just do the work.  Throughout this book you will hear me trying to change my own anti-Earth habits, trying to decolonize my mind, and also working to build systemic change, to end colonization.  Start where ever it makes sense to you to start.