Green is the color of things that grow. It’s the color of forests and crops and jungles and fields of grass. It’s also the color of a movement that seeks to instill a value system of prioritizing things that grow and all the supporting elements of a healthy ecosystem.
And yet as a society we have a concern for economic health. We seek to balance economy with environment, jobs with conservation, income with natural beauty.
But an ecosystem, as the name implies, is a system. It’s not a thing, distinct and separate from other things. It’s not like a single element of a salad that we can do without and enjoy the salad just the same.
A system implies interdependence, which means an ecosystem is a complex system. The economy is also a system with its own complexity and interdependence.
The economy and the ecosystem are interdependent to one another as they are connected. Human survival depends on an ecosystem, which means the economy relies on a healthy environment.
But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. In fact, countless books have been written expressing this very point, as well as documentaries, conferences, NGO’s, social movements, and so much more.
We know this, but the movement of our economic system toward interdependence with the ecosystem is progressing at glacial speed. We throw up our hands in frustration and give up, or otherwise bury our heads in the sand proclaiming that ecosystem collapse won’t happen in our lifetimes, or we get angry and forget how to merely live a happy life in the now.
In the early to mid 2000s I read a lot of books on this stuff and felt a growing anger welling within. I felt angry because I felt powerless to do anything meaningful about it. I tried my hand at protesting and found a substantial amount of self-righteousness within activist communities. In the late 2000s I worked as the sales director for a series of sustainability events around the country and found some rather sanctimonious piousness related to how people live “sustainably” which elevates their moral high ground.
It's been suggested that the environmental movement has been consistently hampered by its leadership who fail to understand how to connect with the masses in any kind of meaningful way. And while I love Al Gore and all that he stands for, he’s boring. His famous PowerPoint documentary and attempt at a movement to inspire the masses to teach and learn about the science of climate change put us to sleep.
Only the most intellectual of us care to hear the latest statistics of carbon this, topsoil loss that, glacial melting, stranded polar bears, and so on.
The masses — the people of planet Earth who strive each day just to live — need a reason to care. It’s truly that simple.
Talk of existential calamities won’t do it.
I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s landmark book The Ministry for the Future this past winter, and I’ve been telling people about it. Even highly learned friends of mine and environmental activists I know are having a hard time reading this book because it’s so complex.
It’s also painful. The truth of what human activity is doing to terrafirma is a hard pill to swallow. Economics has been intentionally designed to be too complex for the average person to comprehend. Which works to the advantage of those who would preserve the status quo at all costs.
Thus, the whole ball of problematic excrement is more than we can bear and it’s easier to just hope that the “experts” will somehow solve it for us.
Then I read a post this morning from the Free Press, about Taylor Swift uniting America. Imagine that. A pop singer!
But for the “Swifties” they would deem her more than a mere pop singer. And I admit, I don’t listen to or follow pop bands or singers. It’s just not my genre. But Taylor Swift is doing something truly astounding — she’s being her genuine self as a larger-than-life pop singer/songwriter/performer.
The article describes her lyrics as “songs that sound like pages ripped from her diary—and most of the time, it sounds like they could have been ripped from yours, too.” And that “she flawlessly straddles the line between the accessible and the divine.”
In simple terms, by deconstructing the patriarchal narrative that suggests a good girl doesn’t challenge belief systems and coming fully into her own — saying what she most wants to say in simple and powerful terms, she is awakening a generation of people (not just girls and women) who want more.
It’s emotional. It’s powerful. And even if you’re like me and shy away from pop culture, Taylor Swift can’t be ignored for her influence, catalyzed by her courageous transformation from conformist to rebel and her ability to so perfectly capture the zeitgeist.
With less fanfare and more easily dismissed as the irrational effort of a non-conformists, hippie, mountain climber turned CEO, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia recently turned his $3 billion empire over to Mother Earth. The entire voting stock of the company has been transferred to the Patagonia Purpose Trust and all of its non-voting stock, which represents the value of the company, has been gifted to the Holdfast Collective, “a nonprofit dedicated to fighting the environmental crisis and defending nature.”
Thus Patagonia, a $3 billion company serves Earth, and can never be bought out or corrupted from its purpose. This too, is powerful. But not nearly as powerful as 70,000 Swiftie-filled stadiums dancing and singing together in one voice of authenticity, love, and a call for truth.
The environmental movement could learn from the pop singer. It’s not about the statistics. It’s not about the science. It’s just about caring and finding validation for our universal need to love one another more randomly and spontaneously.
I’m not a Switfie, but I deeply respect her. I couldn’t tell you the name of even one of her songs. But if you want to understand the phenomenon of her appeal, give it a read. It will give you hope that our common humanity is still there, that people still desire to pour random love on strangers, to be kind, and to speak truth to power.
Green is the color of things that grow. It can also be the color of growing movements. In this case a movement of random acts of kindness toward Earth, of deeply feeling the aliveness of our great blue ball of life we live on. Loving animals, things that grow, and the soil that makes it all happen.
It’s up to us.
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