ecospirit

Yesterday, local high school students helped load my truck with horse manure from the Appalachian Therapeutic Riding Center for use in our community garden in Celo Community (six families). Banter among the boys, showing off for the lone girl present, was broadly horsey. One boy sported a full Confederate flag as his shirt. Another boy wanted to know what I thought about chewing tobacco. I said it was bad, and the girl agreed. Then someone inevitably brought up politics. The boy who likes to chew said, "I like Trump because he's going to bring the Bible into the schools." I wanted my truck filled with manure, so I didn't take the bait.

A climate strike action is called for noon today in Washington. I know teachers at Mountain Heritage, and ever since Greta Thunberg started her school climate strikes, I have written those teachers to be aware of the movement, and to support their students when the time came. That time has not come to Yancey County, NC, which remains Bible Belt, despite inroads by the liberal, citified retirees who are steadily moving in. Knowing that, none of these teachers has responded, though I'm sure we could talk off the record, given the chance.

This is a youth movement. I'm a Boomer, a worn-down climate warrior who resigned a tenured position to fight the climate wars almost twenty years ago. In that time, carbon emissions have increased hugely, with no legislation having been passed limiting/taxing them, even though many businesses are poised to change their strategy, given the right political leadership. But straight-talking Greta will have none of either. According to her, politicians have done virtually nothing, and are not be trusted. Companies will change, but only if they can continue to make money, which is more important to business interests than the survival of their children and grandchildren, let alone the flourishing of the non-human world.

It may be too late, but the youth of the world - in Sweden, the UK, parts of Europe, and Australia - have awakened to their dire plight. Seeing that education for "good jobs" or being an "informed citizens" is useless in the face of failed ecosystems, economies, and civil institutions, they are taking to the streets. Today is the first big strike date in the US, with a big action scheduled in DC, contemporaneous with gatherings of mostly high school aged youth in many cities, including nearby Asheville. We Boomers, along with a life-web on heightened alert, are acutely interested in how this one goes. And the next, and the next, growing in strength until what business and government do will be moot. That is Greta's vision, and I pray she is right. Even if it's too late, to have a display of love for humanity and the Earth which cradles us, a display of dignity and idealism in the face of widespread sordid politics, would feel like vindication of "God's" creation of a creature who might mirror "Him." Adjusted, to be sure, for immense grief and irony.

Postscript: One and a half million schoolkids worldwide left school for some "home schooling," street-learning style on Friday.  This was the biggest climate action thusfar.  Greta has her own analysis of the action and what it will take to make a difference: "we need a whole new way of thinking."  She emphasizes that we will not be able to solve the climate crisis by working within a capitalist system as currently defined (sorry, Al Gore).  She has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.