Hi, young person worried about climate change. Sorry for the click-baitey title. I want to talk to you and it's hard to get people to listen to you on the internet. I think we might be able to help each other.
Like you, I'm profoundly worried about the changing climate. Like you I've read the opinions of the scientific community and seen the charts and heard the predictions. Like you, I've seen how the world for the most part has completely and utterly failed to deal with that information in a rational way and adjust their path accordingly. We are, based on our current course, utterly, completely screwed. The world we're heading for is a corporate feudalist hellscape of scarce resources, violent conflict over habitable land, a collapsed biosphere and quite probably the near-term extinction of the human race.
The powerful people of the world- both in private sectors and governments- are aware of this, and they have reacted to it in the worst possible ways. Exxon knew about climate change as early as 1977 and deliberately endorsed climate skepticism for decades thereafter. Want to stop supporting oil companies? Buy an electric car, made with the help of child slave labor. But don't worry, 195 countries signed the Paris Agreement, even if that agreement is woefully inadequate to keep warming to sustainable levels. And the US is pulling out of it. And it was all entirely non-binding to begin with. The 1% have looked at the facts and decided they'll be dead when their actions bear real consequences and even if they aren't they're rich enough to insulate themselves anyway. As long as they're making money, nothing else matters, so go on with business as usual. If anything, we're probably so screwed that we may as well destroy the world even faster, cuz YOLO amirite?
So, yeah. We're pretty fucked.
But if you're aware of all this and you're still doing what you're doing, you have made a conscious choice not to give up. Like our grandparents who went to war against fascism, you have encountered a mortal threat to the things that you value in life and you are going to fight it to the bitter end, no matter the odds. You have given your life over to a purpose greater than yourself because you have rationally concluded that to do nothing is to accept death or, at best, a worthless life for yourself and those you love.
So anyways. You're probably wondering who the hell the people in the photo are, and this is where they become relevant.
The woman's name is Winnie Byanyima. She is Uganda's first female aeuronautical engineer, but that's probably the least interesting thing about her. She was a freedom fighter, for one thing, fighting in the Ugandan Civil War alongside Yoweri Museveni to institute a democratic government that respected human rights. When Museveni eventually proved to be just as intent on being a dictator as his predecessors, she and her husband became dissidents. She became executive director of OXFAM from 2013 to 2019, and is now executive director of UNAIDS. She's particularly notable to me for telling the 1% to pay their fucking taxes, which you can watch her do here at the World Economic Forum if you want to see room full of suits get very, very triggered.
Her husband is Kizza Besigye, a doctor, politician and former military officer. Like her he fought in the civil war to support Museveni and is now his primary opposition. He is now the leader of Uganda's main opposition party and regularly runs against Museveni in presidential elections that are notoriously rigged. He runs in these elections not because he thinks he can win (because he can't) but rather because it provides him a platform to publicly criticize the president while also honoring the democratic process. He is also distinguished as one of the only politicians in Uganda to publicly oppose the criminalization of homosexuality, a pretty radical position in a country that is 96% anti-gay. You can watch him explain his story to the Oxford Union here.
I wanted to mention these two individuals because, well, I think they're really cool and more people should know about them. But more than that, they embody the sort of attitude we desperately need. They fight ethically and at great personal risk, with direct action towards the problem they need to address.
Where the climate is concerned, it is in the unspoken things where the problem festers. Activism has often looked to me too much like a salve for a tender conscience than an actual effort to change the world for the better. We have to be realistic- any participation in the economy that has a net carbon output is part of the problem. If you operate a cash register selling goods made and transported using non-renewable energy, you're part of the problem. If you're purchasing goods made and transported using non-renewable energy, you're part of the problem. If you're eating food (or perhaps food that was fed other food) grown with soluble nitrogen fertilizer leading to algal blooms and ocean acidification, you're part of the problem. If you're using an electronic device plugged into a municipal power supply to read this... well, you get the picture. And I'd add that if you're hoping to convince a bunch of fatalist sociopaths with ten digit bank balances to stop destroying the world by asking them to, well, your grandparents tried that in the '60s. We still ended up here.
I'm not criticizing you. I drive a car that runs on gas, I eat food that was grown on farms, I check my phone way more than I should. And I donate money to Bernie Sanders hoping he'll make it all okay. Heck, I personally get into a huge diesel-guzzling 133HP John Deere tractor and plow fields in the spring. I do it because I need to make a living and I don't have the money to start a farm where I can do things differently.
But one day I will. And that's the point. I'm making the change, in my own life, to whatever degree I'm able, every single day. I'm playing for keeps because the stakes don't get any higher than this.
You need to make a living. But you need to make a living doing something that makes the problem better instead of making it worse. Now the problem isn't just fossil fuel emissions- it's soooooo much bigger than that, and I'll write more about that later. But we have two challenges:
1) We have to make money to live, but also to increase our influence, because unfortunately that's the world we live in.
2) Money is a tool to do good, but doing good has to be the vehicle for making money. I don't accept the logic of do a little harm now to do a lot of good later.
But what are our ethics, and how do we make money with them? Well... let's figure that out together, shall we? Keep reading.
And keep fighting.
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