A Guilt-Free Conversation on Saving the Planet

Hope. That enigmatic little word that captured our audacious American spirit (and our vernacular) via Obama. Hope. Theupbeat little sense we carry around that something good and right could indeed happen. Hope. We define ourselves as half empty or half full types, both monikers depend on how much hope we do (or do not) have.

And even among the most hope-less, there is a cultural spirit of hope that still prevails in many circles, albeit often misguided, it still exists. Americans live in a constant state of frenetic activity, spurred on by hope, even in the darkest of times there is a glimmer of light that flickers in the mind of most Americans.

Hope. It’s sort of what we do.

We hope that the economic crisis will reverse itself, that climate change will be tamed, that poverty will diminish, that “golden parachutes” will land in court rooms, that our educational system will improve, we hope that we will overcome whatever proverbial odds are before us.

Maybe even win the lottery.

But lately I have been wondering, is hope a wasted effort, an overplayed emotion? When it comes to the future I dream for my children I balk at those who suggest all is hopeless. I’m a mom. Hope is what I do. For me, there is no other global issue that blitzes and tackles my hope like our current climate crisis. The little cracks of light I bask my hope in seem to consistently land in the shadows.

From lackluster talks in Copenhagen to local ordinances against composting, from clear cutting Amazonian rainforests to my own failures to curb consumption, it seems lately there are more reasons to lose hope than to keep it. And I do wonder if all my daily attempts to help the planet even matter. Do my canvas bags make a dent? So what if my heat is on low. Does that little effort at energy saving matter? I carpool or walk to school. I drink fair trade coffee. Does any of that support my children’s future? really. honestly. does it?

Even if I downsize my home and sell my car, will it matter? Heck, I just wrote a book on why all of this does matter, but then I also learned today that our oceans are being destroyed at a rate that is estimated to be twice the pace of our forests. So what if I skip out on seafood tonight. Where’s the hope in it all?

I found another mom asking the same questions this afternoon, she’s here in a column on Grist: http://www.grist.org/article/2010-02-03-on-talking-to-our-kids-about-the-future/#comments

It seems that hope is indeed running thin in a few places. She tells the story of a poet at an event she hosted who ended his time with the community by saying, basically, that when it comes to the environment, things are hopeless.

bummer.

But like this mom (Nadia Herman Colburn), I wonder what to tell my kids. And I do not mean lying to them by saying there is hope when we have none. Seriously, what do I believe about all of this and what do I tell my kids? I’m also a person of faith, so I believe that God is involved in this whole conversation. But I am theologically savvy enough to know that God is not in the business of just swooping in and making our lives all happy and shiny.

We can hope in God and trust in justice, but to think that God will just put a big band aid on our mess because we need our kids to go to hiking someday is more than a little naive and misguided.

So what do I tell my kids then? The truth. That I am not entirely sure how it will all play out. Or perhaps that their canvas bags do matter. That their prayers are heard. And that this world could get uglier by the time they are running it, and that I am sorry for that because it is partly my fault.

But also, that they are wildly creative little beings with sharp minds and a sliver of light in their souls (that yes, God placed there). And that if there is any hope at all, it lies in the mind and the body of my sticky, messy kids. And whatever I can do to bolster in them the integrity, intelligence, and confidence to make a difference, I will do.

I will tell them there is hope because they are my hope. It all matters. Every effort counts. Not because fewer plastic bags can change the trajectory of the world, but because hope itself is a powerful and mysterious thing that can bounce us back on track. It cannot be underestimated. Stunted perhaps, but never stopped. Especially when it lies in the hearts of our children.

How many times have you felt like this? I remember one Sunday when my hubby headed out to the grocery store for us. We had been bickering that day about a which one of us was right about something, so the tension was already high at the moment. He was stepping out to pick up some groceries and I said to him (in a nagging voice) “now don’t forget the reusable bags!”

To which he wheeled around and said (jokingly) “Not only am I not brining those bags, I am going to tell them to double bag everything!” Of course he came home with groceries in the perfectly reusable totes we own. But all kidding aside, I’ve been on both sides of the law here! And you?

Audi Super Bowl Commerical – You Tube

This time of year I find myself humming the Olympic anthem throughout the day. The Vancouver games run February 12-28, it is time to start dreaming of mogul runs and bobsled victories. For some reason I hum the familiar tune associated with the games on my way to and from errands. As if hauling my three children around was an olympic event in and of itself.  I confess that my humming, on occasion, crosses over into the Star Wars theme music. Also fitting for errands with kids, makes sense as John Williams wrote them both.

Just like the five colored rings that symbolize the games are all over everything from our Visa cards to the McDonald’s drive through, attempts at greening up corporate America are everywhere to be found today as well. Most recently, Coca-Cola’s efforts to green up the Vancouver games.

Not every corporate attempt can be trusted, but so far, kudos to Coca-Cola and their efforts. From hybrid delivery trucks, and biodegradable beverage containers to furniture made from reclaimed Pine Beetle infested wood, Coca-Cola seems to be making a truthful attempt at greening up the games that hopefully will serve as an outstanding example for such a global stage.

You can catch a good article on these efforts here:

http://www.plasticsnews.com/headlines2.html?id=17733&channel=260

Coke has gone to great lengths to bring sustainability to the games. From bringing in recycling containers to reworking clothing options for the athletes carrying the torch, an undertaking like this is not without logistical challenges. For example, the goal was to have the athletes carrying the torch wear clothing made from recycled bottles, but the temperatures in Vancouver in the winter were lower than what the original clothing could manage, so the system had to be reworked. The same with their desire to use hybrid heavy-duty trucks, which it turned out were hard to get enough of for the games.

Coke also had to work with the City of Vancouver to rework the waste stream so that the biodegradable materials actually end up in places where they will become compost material. The issues Coke faces in Vancouver, granted on a large scale, are not all that different than the challenges many of us ever greening folks find each day. We are seeing with Coke the sort of system management and conflict that happens in a million ways each day for many of us.

For example, there is currently an ordinance in my community against composting. A few years ago a misguided neighbor started adding meat refuse to his compost pile. It went rancid and drew pests so the city put a ban on composting. In other places there are not recycling systems in place to haul away recyclable products. At our church, we hoped to brew fair trade coffee throughout the building but the coffee equipment is owned by an outside company that will only allow us to brew their blend. To make a simply tweak like brewing fair coffee means revamping an entire system (where, in a church like mine that sees 2000+ people each week, comes with a price tag of over $30,000 – just to change the system).

So, it will be interesting to keep an eye on Coke’s progress at these games. And if they were indeed able to rework the system to meet their greening desires, then how can we do the same at home, in our communities, and on the smaller scales we work with each day. Keep a watch and learn!

I visited one of the most fabulous friends today for an afternoon of playing with our children, six between the two of us. It was a visit complete with dangling costume jewelry and Darth Vader capes. An excellent afternoon of adventure if you ask me.

My friend lives about 30 minutes from our house so it was a little road trip with tollway driving in Chicago to get there. Those of you who live in big cities can relate. You sail along at a safe but respectable above the speed limit pace. Fast enough to feel like you are making good time but slow enough to not be nabbed by your nearest highway patrol person. As you cruise along you wince every time you see red brake lights ahead. You wonder, “is this a merely a slow poke changing lanes or am I about to hit traffic that will rob me of the next two years of my life?”

Thirty minutes and sans traffic jams we pulled off at my friend’s exit. Just a few blocks from her house we passed a new strip mall called Brookside Marketplace. A spacious parking lot filled with a few box stores, drive-thrus and chain restaurants. Nothing notable. What attracted my eye was the sign. “Brookside Marketplace.” This sign came complete with a metal sculpture of three children on their tip-toes, arms out to the sides, balancing on a log. It was designed to look as though three children were gingerly crossing a brook to find adventure on the other side.

It was a gorgeous piece of art actually.

Sitting at a stoplight I stared at it wondering where the inspiration came from. As the light changed and my engine moved us forward I saw a small brook that hugged the backside of the mall. A deep groove in the ground with ridges of ice and snow mixed with brown grass ran parallel to the backside of a big box store. I mumbled to myself, “this must be the brook.”

With my kids in the car I wondered if they would ever dabble in creeks and brooks the way the children in that sculpture did. You see, we live in the suburbs of the third largest city in the nation. With over 8 million people in the Chicago metropolitan area, we can find a strip mall in a blink. A brook with a log to teeter across? Not so much.

The irony slapped me in the face. To sell me on the fact that I should shop at this mall the designers used a whimsical little statue to lure me in. Never mind the fact that the brook itself was shoved to the back, out of sight, and fenced in to keep out any intruders (like playful children).

And it is easy to act all superior here, like I am above the Brookside Marketplace, until I realize that even in my ever-greening life, I still shop at a few of those stores. They sell cheap toothpaste and diapers and I can get a birthday gift for someone in less than ten minutes. My own desires for convenience, combined with millions of others, make the marketplace more desirable than the brook.

So I was reminded again today of how very important it is to shop locally whenever and however possible. If I shop local, I can walk to the store, I can support a local business owner, and the building that houses that store (at least in my town) is usually 100 or so years old. No strip mall, granted, no brook either, and no one making me feel like I can hop a stream on my way to a fast food joint.

So I ask myself again, as I do all the time, can I really see the valley from the Valley View Center? Can I really hop a creek at the Creek Side Plaza? Is there even a mountain in sight at the Mountain Vista Mart? Probably not. Shop local when you can and if possible, don’t shop at all. Instead, take a day to hop a few creeks, take in the views, and spend the day outside in the real places.

I have had two images thrashing about in my mind this past week. As a woman, daughter, and a mother, one of these images will likely stalk my memory forever. It is the picture of a young child in Haiti cuddling up to the dead body of her mother.

Her mother’s body is one of thousands like it lying in an open field. The life crushed out of it by falling debris and piles of rubble. The child is asleep alongside her parent, the one responsible for caring and calming her. Lost, confused, and snuggling tightly to the one place she knows to go for solace. The body of her mom.

Haiti, as we are well aware, has captured the hopes, prayers, and philanthropic efforts of the world. I’ve found myself crying during BBC reports and an hour later shutting off all the news and shooing my children away from the television. I explain that the images they might see are too graphic for a child their agee to understand. Ironic really because the tragedy involves the lives of children their ages.

The other image is closer to home. Of looming mudslides in Southern California. As unseasonably strong rain beats the landscape scarred last year by fire, mudslides threaten homes and lives. Turns out the vegetation that earlier wildfires gobbled up in smoke is necessary to keep the earth connected to itself. Without foliage to keep it all in place, without root systems, fallen logs and greenery to keep the mud in place, it will slide and take out homes and people in its murky wake.

I imagine my daughter’s frilly pink bedroom sliding forever into a muddy hillside.

Haiti and California have more than just the fear of earthquakes in common. The threat of disaster from eroding landscapes currently stalks them both. Aftershocks in Haiti are a way of life for a while, but rescue workers have shared another disaster that threatens their efforts, mudslides.

Haiti is one of the most environmentally impoverished countries on the planet. E&E reporter Nathanial Gronewold reports, shockingly, that only 2% of Haiti’s forests remain. 98% have been destroyed to meet energy and development needs. The result is a nation of naked hillsides where Matthew Marek of the American Red Cross says that “Haiti has experienced natural disaster-related fatalities regularly.”

And unlike California, Port Au Prince and other areas of Haiti lack virtually any infrastructure to aid in relief efforts. So the fear of mudslides and other disasters as people seek to pull one another from the disaster of an earthquake is frightening. Mark Ashton from the Yale School of Forestry reports that these slides can slow down relief efforts when they occur.

It is also a reminder of what an intricate world we live in. Who knew that as hillsides were deforested that it would eventually complicate some of the relief efforts from an earthquake unparalleled in the lifetime of our Haitian brothers and sisters. It is also a reminder that responsible care for the earth is about more than reusable bags and recycling. It is about preserving the very land, the earth itself, that was designed to protect and help all people.

Without roots and trees, whether destroyed by wildfires or by human hands, we cannot hope to rebuild a thing. Whether the threat of losing million dollar homes in the San Gabriel mountains, or the threat of losing more lives and rescue workers in Haiti, we need to care for the land so that the land can take care of us. It is a partnership that cannot be upset. The balance must be maintained for today, and to hold us safe for the future. In Haiti, as we scramble to save, to hope, to pray, to love, to help, let us do so hoping to partner in the rebuilding both the lives of the Haitian people and the land that sustains them,