Five compelling reasons to prioritize climate action!

Unless you feel that passionate fire for a cause burning in you already, activism is a bit of a hard sell. And unless you’ve got water in your basement, your house is sliding down an eroded cliff, you are choking on mold, or sucking down copious amounts of dangerous particulate matter from nearby wildfires, ‘climate’ action is an even harder sell!

In midst of a chaotic life with competing priorities, selling someone on the idea of climate action is like trying to sell a new mama the latest brand of geriatric incontinence depends when she is struggling to figure out which brand of diapers on an overcrowded supermarket shelf will do the trick for her precious baby's bum without destroying the planet!

I’m certain this isn’t novel news for anyone considering the millions of viewers who watched “Don’t Look Up” over the winter holidays. In a world designed for super convenience, Netflix binging, online shopping to your heart’s content, and a global pandemic, responding to what still might seem like a distant but looming climate crisis might be the hardest of sells.

I could sugar coat it and fluff it up but you’d see right through it. So I'm gonna give it to you straight.

Activism, overcoming inertia and getting your body moving in the direction of the positive change you wish to see on the planet, requires effort. Sometimes a whole freaking lot of effort.

With full awareness that I'm saying all the wrong stuff to lure you in closer, I dare continue.

Activism requires discipline. It requires stepping well beyond your comfort zone and doing sh*t you’d never dream of doing for yourself alone.

Activism requires sticking your neck out there over and over again and using your voice ad nauseam for something you believe in until either you die, throw in the towel and give up, or convert that dream into reality!

It requires putting one foot in front of the other even if you aren’t sure there will be firm ground beneath your feet upon taking your next step.

If I haven’t lost you yet, here is where my tune shifts.

We have been conditioned to believe that activism requires foregoing pleasure for pain. While that's true for some forms of activism, I have found another way to ‘get active’ that feels pleasure-filled because it's aligned with who you are, with what you value, and with how you enjoy spending your time the most. It is called 'Regenerative Activism' and it begins with a THRIVING YOU at the heart of it.

If you love that feeling you get after a long stretch of binge watching, that gnawing realization that you just traded precious gifted moments of life on this planet to be passively entertained requiring only of you to sit on your bum for hours on end, then you can stop right here.

If you are the type to do that and walk away feeling mildly nauseated or a slight sinking in your gut knowing that perhaps you missed your life’s calling in those precious lost moments, or you realize you are numbing out because it feels hard to stay present to the hard sh*t going on on our planet, then activism might just be the medicine you need.

Activism is a need vs. a want. Nobody really wants to do the work of climate action. If you were to take a poll, most activists are eager to see the day when the cause they are fighting for ceases to exist.

I can tell you that personally, I’d love to be able to binge watch ‘Reign’ every night with my 13 year old daughter because the joy it gives her to do that with me is more than enough reward. And the show itself is pretty entertaining too.

But I don’t. At least not as often as she would love for me too. We’ve agreed upon set times with limits around how long we watch. We’ve talked openly and candidly about what I’m doing with my time instead. We’ve watched educational films together and I’ve explored and shared openly my WHY in this work and why my decision to engage in climate action and health matters for her too.

This doesn’t feel like deprivation or pain (the opposite of pleasure) to me. In the list of should's, ought to's and want to’s, knowing my WHY brings me back to the work I feel called to do, and therefore need to do, right now.

Knowing my WHY anchors me in a deep sense of possibility, passion and purpose. Knowing my WHY gives me reason for being on a planet that is struggling to thrive.

When I am not doing this work in the times it is right for me to be doing it, I feel uneasy, restless, anxious, sometimes even angry and nauseous. Those are the moments when the fear and worry seeps in. It’s in these moments that I lose hope because if I know that I am ignoring that internal nudge to do something, the things that are MINE to do, then I realize just how easy it is for others to ignore that nudge too.

But here's the truth. We don’t have time to ignore the nudges. For every second we ignore, the climate situation worsens. The overwhelming majority of scientists, like in the vicinity of 99%, have made it crystal clear in exponential ways that the climate crisis is a result of human activity, OUR activity. We live in a system of built in checks and balances and when the balance is thrown off, the system fails. We are seeing this in our governments, in our social structures, and on our planet as a whole. It is the same for our planet as it is for the communities who dwell on it and the people who inhabit it.

If your trusted healthcare provider (I am one of those) tells you that you have a 99% chance of surviving if you pursue a recommended treatment, you’re gonna do that treatment! Or if you heard that if your kid eats a certain food, there is a 99% chance they will grow unsightly horns out of their head, you’d promptly stop feeding it to them.

Well this is where we are with climate change. And much of the change has already been set in motion with dire consequences already playing out. I know that you see those changes but are you allowing yourself to FEEL them and to FEEL the truth of what it means for us if we don't act? Even more, the truth of what it means for the children we have been tasked with passing the keeping of this planet on to next?

But here is the good news, the inspiring news, the hopeful news. Scientists have also informed us that if we all act boldly now, we have a reasonable chance at saving the planet. By 'saving' I mean ensuring that it will remain inhabitable, viable, and sustainable for human life for generations to come. So by saving the planet what I really mean is saving ourselves. Don't kid yourself. Don't keep mincing words. Climate Action is FOR US. It is for the preservation of human life on planet earth. Period.

Our planet will bounce back in time. She’s hard wired for resilience in spite of our best efforts to throw her way the heck off balance. But she can out pace us all of us when it comes to patience and endurance. Rest assured, in time she will heal.

So if you were to get on board with this activism stuff, who would it be for?

In our world of immediate gratification, doing it for future generations can feel a bit too far out in front to motivate us to turn off the TV or give up our other taken-for-granted mind-numbing distractions and conveniences.

But what if I told you that engaging in climate work is first and foremost FOR YOU and the people you love?

Don't know what I am talking about?

Let’s revisit that gnawing realization that you might have missed your calling or that sickening feeling in your gut that you just wasted precious moments of your life that you will never get back. You can only do that so often before you wind up feeling anxious, depressed, withdrawn and eventually in some alternate state of reality far removed from real connection with your fellow humans who are living smack dab in the middle of a changing climate on planet earth and suffering every day because of it.

We are hard wired to need one another as is evidenced by how we come into the world and the long duration of time we are dependent upon our mothers for survival. The pandemic has shown us that by it's correlating pandemic of social isolation.

But this pandemic of social isolation started long before COVID hit. COVID just made us painfully aware of our dependence on and need for one another. It also made us aware of the value we get from giving to and serving one another.

Being on the front lines of this pandemic certainly has it's stressors. But feeling like you have no other option but to socially isolate with no opportunity for mutual give and take with those in your community can leave one questioning one's purpose for existing at all.

We are communal creatures by nature and we thrive best in a mutual exchange of give and take. But looking to nature teaches us that as earth-beings, we are each designed to give and take in a specific sort of way. An apple tree takes just the nutrients it needs to grow and when it bears fruit it bears APPLES! It doesn't try to bear anything else.

To THRIVE we must all be about the work of figuring out what is OUR own fruit to bear. What fruits are OURS to give to our world in need? What nutrients do we need to take in to give those fruits best?

When we are about the work of discerning what is OURS TO GIVE we come in to right relationship with ourselves, our communities and our planet as a whole. We THRIVE.

And what do we get in return when we give what is ours to give?

1. Peace.
2. Inner calm.
3. A good night’s rest. Even if it was a short night of sleep.
4. We get to look our children in the eye and assure them we are doing everything we can to ensure they will inherit a thriving planet when it is our time to leave.​
5. ​We get to have deeply powerful, rich, and meaningful conversations about the matters we care about most...the health of our planet, the physical, emotional and spiritual wealth of our children, and about what it really looks like and means to THRIVE in a time like now.
   

Wanna talk 'Activism' and what a personal Climate Action Plan might look like for you? Schedule a free Discovery Call with me today!

Registration for my 12 Week Climate Action Intensive for Women is open through January 25th. If you are a woman remotely concerned about the climate crisis and eager to do more about it, I would love to help you get started! Got a group or gathering you would like for me to speak to? I have personally dedicated myself to speaking on whatever platform I am given about this topic because doing so assures me a better night's rest!

Godspeed in pursuing the work you are here to do and plentiful peace to you and yours.

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