Thursday, July 28, 2011

About saving the world....

"Develop new models to interpret the world-in-crisis: the only world we know"
Guillermo Gómez Peña

So many people have written so much more eloquently about climate change and global crises than I can that it is somewhat daunting to even try. That said, it seems some days as if it is the only topic worth talking about. More and more I see that sentiment reflected in the work of those around me- from Will Potter's latest book, to the upcoming Tar Sands Action here in DC, to the headlines coming out one after the other on water scarcity, food crisis, fracking, incarceration of environmentalists, natural disasters, heat waves, droughts, floods, famines.

It's strange to me, in a somewhat unsettling way, that I never felt particularly drawn to the environmental movement before. What that says about the fractured nature of the left, disconnected political frameworks, or the discourse of the mainstream aside, I have found that today to be a part of the environmental movement is simply to be a part of the movement that seeks to avoid the end of the world as we know it- or conversely to avoid the end of nature, and embrace the end of capitalist driven, unequal, exploitation based economics and politics and rebuild the world right, as they say. My dear friend Carlos in Mexico once told me that in his vision of the Mayan end of the world prophecies for 2012, the destruction of earth is exactly what we are already living in the escalation of- climate change, violence, oppression, hunger, thirst- the end of the world through bad practices of human civilization. The encouraging part of his narrative was the thought that the end of everything in Mexico (a statement he made to me two years ago before the shit really started to go to hell over there) there would open a space for rebuilding, recreating, and finding a better world.

Of course in all these years we have never found the answer to utopia. My dad likes to remind me that things have always been bad, from the stone ages on pretty much, humans have faced oppression and have labored against the elements. The world has seen revolutions of all sorts, has seen countries and communities start again and again and yet we seem to have learned few answers. Since encountering the Latin American models of revolution- learning as you walk, inventing collectively as you go, the DIY political model- I have believed them to be the best. Yet in practice a strong and long lasting deeply radical space has not been able to hold much sway.

In environmentalism the argument so often seems to be about saving the world, now. One can argue tactics and methods, but I would argue primarily that the environment will not be saved, nor will the human world which we both construct and live in be changed for the better, unless these movements also address the deeper forces which guide climate change and responses to climate change- which avoid an end world in which the rich live in private walled cities on hilltops while the poor drown in the floods and quakes of our changed planet. You can call this vision hyperbole only if you can deny the fact that it is already happening, on a geography as vast as the regions of our planet which allows us distance from trauma. I have no suggestions as to how we can win this battle or how to answer the host of questions that comes with taking responsibility for our future if we win. But at this point I feel it would be hard to say that the environmental movement can be viewed as separate from all of the world's struggles- the indigenous, the poor, the marginalized; racism, classism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, capitalism, exploitation- there is no longer a way to tackle issues in isolation.

That is the ideal, of course. In practice it seems quite daunting. Where to start? And what to do in the meantime, all the lifetimes that might pass before this new thing might come into being? Being a consistent and constant part of the struggle is central. But there is also the day to day. I try to combine daily life with professional life with long term life with short term life... it seems hard to live so many things at once, but we do it all the time, no matter how much or how little critical thought we put into it. So then.

At PAHO I am now working on Sustainable Development and Environmental Health. My boss in particular focuses on pesticides in the Americas (we recently eradicated all DDT in Central America and Mexico, while promoting alternatives for vector control for Malaria!) and on environmental risks to health. It's pretty fascinating- basically it focuses on the ways in which humans impact environmental health and how the changing environment affects our health- from creating new regions for vectors like mosquitoes carrying Malaria to travel due to rising temperatures, to the health effects of displacement and migration due to food shortages, water scarcity, and other forms of environmental change, to increased levels of natural disasters. PAHO advocates for the creation of assessments and plans to deal with current and future climate change impacts- something we will all need to be preparing for, if only mentally right now on this East Coast oasis of ours. Urban centers will have particular challenges to face- but perhaps that post is for another day.

End ramble.