5.5
August 9, 2018

Climate Change, & the Casual Hatred of Men.

Climate Change.

As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just said, we need to understand that it’s not just important to fight climate change—it’s urgent. We’re out of time.

In Vermont, snow will stop falling within a few decades. They’ll be able to farm yearround. Throughout the US, ticks and wildfires and beetles have spread, killing 100,000s of trees and infecting 100,000s of humans. Glaciers—water sources for billions of humans in Asia—are rapidly melting. Fish—a basic food source—are dying in rapidly acidifying (and overfished) oceans. Coral reefs are blanching. Mass migrations, wildfires choking our air, flooding…we are driving fast into a wall, and the time to apply the brakes is now.

The good news is, going green is possible. We just have to focus, all of us, not just liberals—as if we were readying for a war. Because this will be a war—a war for harmony, in the face of irreversible suffering wrought by ourselves. The good news is, like any crisis, the opportunities are rampant—and we can turn things around…if not completely (too late for that, what we’ve done to ourselves will continue for decades) enough to save many species, including ourselves.

Maybe you know all this. Maybe we’re sick of hearing it. But small actions, and activism, can help. What can you do to help this war effort, for peace?

~

Manhood is a fraught term, these days.

It is about corrupt power, but it’s also about basic kindness. It is about loving compassion, but it’s also about anger and guilt.

White men, in particular, get a lot of hell from liberal circles, these days. So much hell that a majority of them, saying, hey I didn’t do it, I’m not racist, I don’t have it so good—helped elect a racist corrupt joke of a President who’s effing our whole country for allllll of us.

It ain’t right to run from guilt and vote for a bad human, but it also ain’t right to accuse an entire gender of fundamental sin—no matter how understandable and justifiable that anger is.

Accountability is necessary. Healing is necessary. Working together is necessary.

So let’s stop warring with ourselves and unite around equality–around honesty–around caring for those more vulnerable than us. Let’s establish healthcare and safe streets and a decent education as basic rights—what FDR called the second Bill of Rights. Let’s fight climate change “before” (or after, I’ll take after at this point) it’s too late.

Let’s turn our nation toward decency—toward a civilization where all of us can live together. After all, we have no choice.

Even the mercilessly, heartbreakingly bloody Civil War didn’t “get rid” of that command: figure out how to live together.

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