On Hawks and Hope

I was walking with a friend and our dogs through Riverside park this morning. Suddenly a large bird swooshed right in front of us. It was a red-tailed hawk! It perched on a nearby branch, and we had a good look at her lush underbelly, and her inviting wingspan when she cuddled up for a better hold. She and her partner are nest-building. A crowd gathered some distance from the nest, some holding up their cellphones for a quick photo. Why are people so excited about a red-tailed hawk in New York City? My thoughts: It is proof that nature is still alive and vital, and people like knowing that despite everything we have done to trample upon her, she is still strong, breathing, and making life. That means there is hope for the parts of us that are connected to and a part of nature.
On Peoples' Minds: "You can't imagine how these birds look through binoculars --- you can see their eyes! They are so much bigger than you would think. You realize what spectacular creatures they are!"
In the News: The current election debate about charisma vs. substance is related to climate change. Let me explain, but I'm not going to link to Hillary Clinton's "shame on you" to Barack Obama, nor his reply - because it's just not worth the trouble. Barack Obama might not be your candidate, but I don't think it makes sense to reject someone for being charismatic or inspiring.
It is, however, hard to trust those characteristics in anyone. We are a nation of disappointed citizens. I hear it everywhere. No one wants to have their heart broken again. That kind of self protection helps a citizenry survive some dark times --- I would call it a kind of seasoned and cynical broadmindedness. Or, the voice of wisened experience, as in, "we know better than to wish for something as idealistic as a better world." How many of us witnessed the fatal shots that destroyed those who spoke of hope?
Were our hearts also broken when we as chldren witnessed our society's mistreatment of the animals and earth that we so cherished? Remember when you just knew that the fields, flowers, grassy hillsides and gawky newborn farm animals were a part of you? When snow and rain were opportunities for impassioned adventures into the unknown? Isn't the inevitability of climate change weighing on all of us, consciously or unconsciously? Do we feel too doomed to hope, or frightened into constrictive passivity?
Until we see a hawk making its nest in a city park, that is. Then for a moment, we believe. But only for a moment. Once the cellphone is flipped closed, we return our gaze to the same old concrete path, our heads hanging downward.
So many of us seem to have forgotten that feeling hopeful about the future was once as natural as a pair of hawks choosing a good tree to raise their young.

Snow in New York!

Wow! Finally we have snow! The streets are full of fluffy powder, and the flakes parachute from the sky. A dog dives into the foot high drifts formed by the early morning snow plows and emerges with a beard. School has been cancelled and the kids yank their parents hard by the hand while pulling their sleds. Some of the smaller children momentarily disappear as they slip and toddle into a packed mound. The doormen smile approvingly. Everyone knows that snow in February is just so perfect, so okay, so healthy. While some people still have to irritatingly scurry to work, most are forming an unevenly spaced, and slightly random, but steady procession to Central Park. There a vast whiteness paints the landscape into winter, and the cold crystals settle onto branches, rocks, and benches. The landscape has been layered with a clean healthy dose of February percipitation reassuring our worried minds and nurturing the earth that was just a bit too dry for this time of year. Up on the hill, we shared our sled with some adult visitors from England. "Oh My God," they said, "Our plane leaves tonight and we can't believe we are here in the snow, and I've never done this in my life, and we just have to, do you mind, just a bit, if we have a go?" Of course not. Dressed in tourist's frocks, belly-down, they hurled themselves to the bottom of the hill. Now it was my turn. After insisting that my children wear triple layers, I realized that I had failed to do so myself. My toes grew stiff and numb but still we slid crookedly, and straight, sometimes with collision, over and over again until the childrens' faces all gleamed with smiles, and with the blush of exhiliration upon their cheeks. I chatted with someone who told me that George Washington was the first sustainable farmer. Of course, I thought. Here in the city that never sleeps we dream of milk that comes in a bottle, vegetables grown upon the land and a President who respected the environment's boundaries -- not to mention times when the sharing of a sled was the most natural thing in the world. When we were ready to leave, we piled snow on the sled and dragged it home. Upstairs, we dumped it into the sink, and ladeled it into large mugs, mixed in some fresh cream and maple syrup, and enjoyed our snow creams. We looked out upon the chilly skyline adorned in its favorite fur --- a lapel of snow and ice. Everything was just as it should be. We are all quietly relieved.

psychological sustainability?

I've been talking to some young people about their relationships to nature and to climate change. So far I've identified two groups of people. The first roup is very preoccupied with "fitting in" and being "mainstream" (as defined by popular media). The other group realizes that they aren't mainstream and never will be, and are trying to define who they are independently of media representations. Interesting. The mainstream group has spent much less time actively engaged with the environment. They also haven't been encumbered by the limitations that a sustainable planet would require. The non-mainstream group seems to have spent more time negotiating very rustic environments, and they have had some experience of selfhood separate from society. They have spent some time working with the limitations imposed by long stays in the wilderness.
Both groups long for more intimate contact with nature.
My point is that that psychological sustainability and ecological sustainability are linked: what is good for the person's mental health is good for the earth. We will have to address climate change in both spheres, changing how we live and changing our society. We are talking about the psychology of climate change. See Nikke Harre from New Zealand.
On Peoples' Minds: "There is no way I have any idea what to do about global warming, so I choose to ignore it. What difference can I make, anyway?" JS, a young man sitting in a bar.
"It doesn't concern me. I have everything I want, so why bother" BG, his friend.
In The News: Floursecent bulbs. Don't get me wrong - I use them but they are a complicated solution. Hard to use, harder to dispose of, but they do use less energy. Exactly my point. Changing technologies without changing the process of how we live often recycles the problems that lead to climate change.
My endorsement: I am going for Barack Obama because he gets it. In order to change the problems faced by our nation and this world, we can't simply substitute products. We have to change our process. Psychological sustainability is ecological sustainability, and yes we can do this. My experience is that most people secretly want this, but they afraid, hardened, cyncical and disappointed. I'm not, and neither is Obama.

Intergenerational Ecology

This weekend I had the chance to speak on a panel about the environment at an intergenerational luncheon at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun. I was joined by my 10 year old son who spoke about what the environment meant to him and how people could help protect it. We were also joined by Vivian Yale, an 86 year old environmentalist who shared memories about how much more earth friendly people were back when she was a child, and Les Judd, founder of Green Boroughs, who discussed what motivated his new business venture. The audience responded strongly to the idea that climate change was already affecting us, and to understanding that the solutions were in some part psychological.
One audience member, however, commented that changes in policy mattered more than how we modified our behavior. I agree with an emphasis on policy, but tend to think that policy and people grow and work together. We can't implement new legislative outcomes until we can imagine difference. Listening to Vivian Yale describe being summoned to the local candy story to receive a phone call felt communal and friendly. My son's comments evoked a similar sentiment when he said "I am very, very happy when I am in the more remote parts of the environment, like forests and mountains. I really love to protect these places. They are beautiful and full of wonder and majesty. I feel the same about animals."
Based on what I hear from the people who work with me, no one is that pleased with the existing relationship we have to our earth. We all know that something is missing and seem to be waiting for some motivational event - because the problem just appears to be so big. We can't work and vote for the legislation that will help us rebuild what we have lost, until we ourselves feel the loss, value it, and then believe that something we do can actually make a difference.
On Peoples' Minds: "Sometimes I think that these memories of how life used to be are also ideas for how life could be." - Vivian Yale.
In the News: This was a while back, but I think it makes the point that climate affects our minds, our personalities --- and then our communities and cultures. Dealing with climate change means a willingness to recognize the interdependence between all aspects of human cultures, landscapes and ecosystems.
Note: Recently this article was pointed out to me by habanera (thank you!). Human activity is coming close to damaging every corner of our marine ecosystems. This is going to frighten and scare people. The defenses that people adopt when frightened and scared are often dissociation ( a kind of emotional disconnect) and denial (deciding something isn't happening). Dissociation and denial often lead people to keep engaging in the destructive behavior that led to them feeling frightened in the first place. People can't vote or act on behalf of new legislation until they feel the cause for which they fight, and believe in their ability to effect change.

Millenials vs. Boomers

I read a piece by Andrew Romano. I was very taken with his discussion of the collaborative vision-hungry millenials who vote for Barack Obama and the somewhat cyncial realist boomers who go for Hillary. His blog serves as the political voice of the millenial generation, the voice for change. I began to wonder whether or not we could understand something of climate change in these terms. Many of the boomer generation want to solve the problems of the environment by substituting technologies, or products while maintaining the same old consumer dependent economic structure. These millenials, however, are closer to my heart and seem to understand that the climate crisis will require full scale change - in how we live, think and behave; a move perhaps to a more collaborative economy, one that cooperates with the limitations of our planet. Full disclosure: I'm neither boomer nor millenial, a member of the lost generation in-between.
I felt saddened by Romano's piece as much as enthusiastic. The millenials - now I know to call them that - that I work with organize around a type of nihilistic narcicism - and a kind of crude sexuality, obliterative partying and a wierd dissociative materialism. Yet, at the slightest encouragement they sit up for hope. They want something to be required of them, to be of service, to know something of what it means to be inspired, to believe, to experience authenticity. I think we took this away from them when we took the earth and nature away from them when they were children. It isn't too late to give it back. More on this to come.
In the News: Other people are catching on to the reality that climate change is happening now, to us. We are the earth's face, and understanding the relationships between our minds and our environments can help navigate climate change.

Nature and Self

I have been doing research to investigate how a changed relationship to nature changes us, and what the ongoing impact of climate change will be on the human psyche. The journalist Richard Louv suggests that obesity, ADD and even bipolar illness can be traced to children's disengagement from nature. The more alienated we are from nature, the less sensitive are our relations with the planet. We abuse and hurt our ecosystem everyday because we no longer think about it as a living organism with which we are in a partnership. Although I love the "back to nature" concept, sometimes people are so unfamiliar with the wilderness and behave so harmfully, that one might think the earth fares far better when left alone than when inhabited by human guests. My family has discovered trash on the mountaintop, or laptop camping trip movies, complete with advertisements, obscuring the view of falling stars in the rural night ski.
What I am seeing is that young adults long for permission to live less materialistically, and seek opportunities to connect to long lost parts of themselves from which they have disconnected. As someone said in a recent interview, "You realize right away to stop caring about animals and to stop thinking about the outdoors. If you watch what our society does to animals, forests, open spaces, it is very clear that nature is like some kind of scapegoat for humanity. Staying open to that is just too painful." This responsive wistfulness comes up quite a bit. But I find that many people no longer know how to access or utilize those parts of themselves. Last night Barack Obama stated that people needed to turn off the TV and unplug the video games. I couldn't agree more, and am studying what I call the vicious cycle - or the triangle of concern - between the unbalanced use and acquistion of resources, people and the earth.

On Peoples' Minds: "How do you go hiking without a car?" overheard outside a Manhattan bar.
"I've never been on a hike, a walk, camping --- nothing. But I like nature videos." A Manhattan high school student.

In the News: People can't heal an earth they barely know, or understand a nature they barely experience. In fact, the more people are alienated, the easier it is to behave in a manner that causes more harm.

Green Business

I'm all for green businesses. Everybody needs to do their part. I applaud the efforts by small businesses and large coporations who are taking global warming seriously, and are willing to adopt sustainable practices. My worry is that people will neglect the deeper changes we have to make in our values, lifetsyles, and mindset. We also have to change our patterns of consumption. We have to free our minds from the patterns that instill depedence upon technology rather than optimal use of it to further human potential. I worry when the fashion industry hires meteorologists to time the release of fashion lines to the new climate trends that will result from warming. From a business perspective, I get it. As a citizen of the earth, I wonder. What about making clothing that lasts longer --- let alone invoking the princple of hand-me-downs!

On Peoples' Mind: "Buying more stuff, even if its environmental, won't fix the economy or solve global warming. But changing how we buy might make a difference." - a 27 year old graduate student.

In The News: Even restaurants are heeding the green call. The question is: Can we just replace our practices with green technologies, or do we have to change how we live?