One weekend camping, I was walking down a quiet dirt road, deep in thought, when a giant truck suddenly roared past me, breaking my reverie and choking me in a plume of exhaust. I suddenly had a vision of myself as a very old lady, telling my grandkids a story about how "cars could blow poisonous fumes right in your face and did it every…
One weekend camping, I was walking down a quiet dirt road, deep in thought, when a giant truck suddenly roared past me, breaking my reverie and choking me in a plume of exhaust. I suddenly had a vision of myself as a very old lady, telling my grandkids a story about how "cars could blow poisonous fumes right in your face and did it every day!" And the kids are astonished that we once lived like this. I've worked in the environmental/climate field for a couple decades, so I've been marinating in the topic for a awhile, but that random vision was galvanizing because it gave me a personal point in deep time to work toward. I often tell myself, "I want to live long enough to see this!" I am otherwise someone who struggles to see my life even 5 years in the future.
The other day, I was visiting my nephew, who was showing me around his first home, where he lives with his girlfriend. The backyard was a wide expanse of dead grass and weeds. I said, "Wow look at that clean slate. You could do so much back there!" He said, "Yeah, but it's just a rental. I'm not going to do anything if we don't own it and we're just gonna move out one day." I said, "DUDE. I dug and planted and landscaped and created beauty at every shithole rental I lived in my entire adult life." I'm a habitual place-maker. I LOVE transforming dead spaces into little Edens. My climate motivations derive from that same source; I'm working toward a verdant vision of beauty that is on the other side of the climate crisis.
For the last few years, the focus of my work has been building electrification - how to use the sun on my roof to power all my appliances, and how to load shift to do things when energy is cleanest and cheapest. I'm now dipping into water cycles, too, installing greywater and a Flume monitor. All this to say that I am geeking out on getting very intimate with my family's energy and water needs and patterns, and scheming ways to meet them with sun, rain, waste water. It's like a game. I'm a curious monkey, who grew up watching Gilligan's Island. I want to be the professor, making systems with bamboo and coconuts!
Lastly, I want to mention one more strong motivation: I consider fossil fuels the Death Star. They are destabilizing the climate, making us and all our fellow creatures sick, and polluting at every step. BUT ALSO, fossil fuel money bankrolls every political movement I abhor and fight against: the villains working nonstop to shred civil rights, the social safety net, and democracy are propped up with fossil fuel money. And I don't want to give them a single fucking dollar. From this fierceness I feel, I am trying to figure out ways to live that starve those movements of their dirty Death Star profits.
Amy K.! You are a revelation. This made me so happy: "DUDE. I dug and planted and landscaped and created beauty at every shithole rental I lived in my entire adult life." I'm a habitual place-maker. I LOVE transforming dead spaces into little Edens. My climate motivations derive from that same source; I'm working toward a verdant vision of beauty that is on the other side of the climate crisis.
Your sharing made me wonder if their is a flow chart somewhere of ways in to this consciousness/action based on your natural inclinations, like you are scientist/survivalist and I'm artist/philosopher or whatever. Where does that lead us to naturally plug in to the big tent movement?
There must be some kind of climate movement Enneagram! I'm more of an artist/survivalist who works with engineers and policymakers to communicate their wonky work. My placemaking is all about creating beauty. And my work is drawing people to a vision of what's possible. The persuader! The honeypot!
One weekend camping, I was walking down a quiet dirt road, deep in thought, when a giant truck suddenly roared past me, breaking my reverie and choking me in a plume of exhaust. I suddenly had a vision of myself as a very old lady, telling my grandkids a story about how "cars could blow poisonous fumes right in your face and did it every day!" And the kids are astonished that we once lived like this. I've worked in the environmental/climate field for a couple decades, so I've been marinating in the topic for a awhile, but that random vision was galvanizing because it gave me a personal point in deep time to work toward. I often tell myself, "I want to live long enough to see this!" I am otherwise someone who struggles to see my life even 5 years in the future.
The other day, I was visiting my nephew, who was showing me around his first home, where he lives with his girlfriend. The backyard was a wide expanse of dead grass and weeds. I said, "Wow look at that clean slate. You could do so much back there!" He said, "Yeah, but it's just a rental. I'm not going to do anything if we don't own it and we're just gonna move out one day." I said, "DUDE. I dug and planted and landscaped and created beauty at every shithole rental I lived in my entire adult life." I'm a habitual place-maker. I LOVE transforming dead spaces into little Edens. My climate motivations derive from that same source; I'm working toward a verdant vision of beauty that is on the other side of the climate crisis.
For the last few years, the focus of my work has been building electrification - how to use the sun on my roof to power all my appliances, and how to load shift to do things when energy is cleanest and cheapest. I'm now dipping into water cycles, too, installing greywater and a Flume monitor. All this to say that I am geeking out on getting very intimate with my family's energy and water needs and patterns, and scheming ways to meet them with sun, rain, waste water. It's like a game. I'm a curious monkey, who grew up watching Gilligan's Island. I want to be the professor, making systems with bamboo and coconuts!
Lastly, I want to mention one more strong motivation: I consider fossil fuels the Death Star. They are destabilizing the climate, making us and all our fellow creatures sick, and polluting at every step. BUT ALSO, fossil fuel money bankrolls every political movement I abhor and fight against: the villains working nonstop to shred civil rights, the social safety net, and democracy are propped up with fossil fuel money. And I don't want to give them a single fucking dollar. From this fierceness I feel, I am trying to figure out ways to live that starve those movements of their dirty Death Star profits.
Amy K.! You are a revelation. This made me so happy: "DUDE. I dug and planted and landscaped and created beauty at every shithole rental I lived in my entire adult life." I'm a habitual place-maker. I LOVE transforming dead spaces into little Edens. My climate motivations derive from that same source; I'm working toward a verdant vision of beauty that is on the other side of the climate crisis.
Your sharing made me wonder if their is a flow chart somewhere of ways in to this consciousness/action based on your natural inclinations, like you are scientist/survivalist and I'm artist/philosopher or whatever. Where does that lead us to naturally plug in to the big tent movement?
There must be some kind of climate movement Enneagram! I'm more of an artist/survivalist who works with engineers and policymakers to communicate their wonky work. My placemaking is all about creating beauty. And my work is drawing people to a vision of what's possible. The persuader! The honeypot!
Aha! https://ecoanxious.ca/resources/eco-anxious-enneagram/