The Resilience Imperative and Civil Disobedience
“Well then, perhaps we need to follow the leads of McKibben, Jaccard, and Hansen, and go get arrested. Perhaps we need to breathe deeply and act courageously to make hope more concrete and despair less convincing. Perhaps those of us in the 50 to 90-year-old set need to commit to civil disobedience to honor our children, grandchildren and our hopes for their survival. The time has arrived for all of us, but especially the post-war “growth generation” to break out of our too comfortable zones. Stopping carbon emissions is a pre-condition, but nothing will change unless we are prepared to put ourselves on the line.”
Props to Mr. Lewis for accepting the responsibility members of his generation bear for many of the messes us young’ns are facing. Anti-props for reaching his age without realizing what a waste of time and effort (or worse) is that peculiar set of behaviors that we’ll call Civil Disobedience Leading to Arrest. If you want to have a compelling story to tell at your next cocktail party, by all means seek out a seat in the nearest protest paddy wagon. If you want to actually help the planet and improve our collective future, try on the following action plan for size:
1. Decide what your fair share of the world’s resources is, with particular emphasis on fossil fuel consumption and pollution sinks.
2. Derive a written plan for reducing your consumption of resources to this level.
3. Implement your plan.
4. Use your social capital to normalize this behavior and to place pressure on those who fail to follow suit.
5. Since you probably overestimated your fair share (or population growth has since rendered your initial estimate incorrect), rinse and repeat (sans sodium lauryl sulfate).