dragonlady7

general, climate hope, current events

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sunshineandhope https://sunshineandhope.tumblr.com/post/658412071748304896/httpstwittercomursulavstatus1417529465266229 :

https://twitter.com/UrsulaV/status/1417529465266229250

[ID: a series of tweets by Kingfisher & Wombat ursulav

Thinking today about the climate and personal responsibility vs. personal power.

The greatest trick corporations pulled was convincing us that we, personally, are responsible for all pollution, because we ate the wrong thing or bought the wrong car or didn’t recycle enough.

Never mind that the top polluting companies pour out more pollution than vast swaths of humanity. Never mind that they lobbied politicians for decades to keep from having the most basic controls put on them. Never mind that they still do. Nope, our fault!

Never mind that it turns out that plastic we so painstakingly separated isn’t actually recycled after all, and that the little recyclable logo is put on anything that might possibly be recyclable with future technology. Never mind the shenanigans pulled with “organic” labeling.

But man, it sure got consumers tying ourselves into knots for decades and derailed corporate accountability nicely. So I no longer buy most of that “personal responsibility” line that corporations push.

But I do believe in personal power.

We are standing in this strange threshold, right now, on the verge of a new world. A hotter, weirder world, yes. A world no longer on easy mode for humanity. We are going to cross into the new world no matter what.

But right now, on this weird threshold, we have power.

Those people who plant ten thousand trees in a decade, and suddenly songbirds show up for the first time in decades, they have shaped that new world. The people growing pollinator gardens where insects find a refuge, they’ve helped those insects come with us.

That one guy in San Francisco who singlehandedly raised thousands of Pipevine Swallowtails in his backyard—that’s power. He’s strengthened that species for the new world to come. Gave them just a smidge more breathing room. Sometimes that’s the difference between life & death.

It’s rare, I think, that you can actually see a tipping point in the history of humanity while you’re living through it. But anybody can see this one. Any action we can take, right this minute, to save our fellow travelers, will have outsized ripples in the new world ahead.

It’s not all in the hands of scientists (though thank god for them) engineering crops that will survive the heat or zoos desperately breeding endangered species as a hedge against extinction. This is the point where the power of a garden or a frog pond or a donation is magnified.

We cannot stop the flood, but even a couple sticks held together with chewing gum and twine has the power, on this strange threshold, to be an ark.

And having said all that, if you haven’t got the garden or the frog pond (and many don’t! It’s okay!) but you’ve got a spare five bucks, kicking a few to people like twitter.com/WildlifeFound, twitter.com/MyFrogCroaked, and twitter.com/NativeSeedsSRCH or twitter.com/BatConIntl never goes amiss.

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