Notices by Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨ (bethsawin@spore.social), page 4

To be honest, being cautious about brand new chemicals, brand new viruses, and brand new (in human time scales) CO2 levels seems like a pretty reasonable stance. Like we don't actually understand all that much about what goes on in cells or brains or ocean currents. But what we do understand is that sometimes those sons-of-a-gun are surprisingly sensitive.

I prefer my government to be grounded in the needs of people (as mediated by say epidemiology or climatology) not the needs of capital (as mediated by, say campaign contributions or gifted vacations). You?

When you think of the behaviors & decision making tendencies that come from enculturation in capitalism, patriarchy & white supremacy not as "human nature" but as one small and somewhat odd (and violent) cluster in a vast human solution space, the options for climate response get a lot wider too!

I can start - these days when I'm walking on the back roads of my town it's not unusual to be passed by someone on an e-bike. They seem really suited for places like mine where people may live miles up hill from little village centers.

Signs of collapse and signs of an ecological society emerging coexist right now, in my opinion. The news covers the scary parts, and we need to know, and not look away. But lets not miss the little shoots of a saner more connected ecological-social-economic system either. What's a hint of a life-sustaining society emerging you've seen of late?

Temperature records aren't falling, they are being pushed.

If this is the summer you've decided #climatechange is here and it's bad", welcome to the movement(s). We need you. There's so much to do, and much that can be turned.

Are you good at chatting and listening? How many people can you reach who just need a safe space for thoughts they might be thinking but haven't yet consolidated into conviction and action?

Are you good at mending and tending - fantastic. We need gardens gardened, and ecosystems restored, and public health bolstered.

Are you good at building things - excellent we have a whole clean energy infrastructure to build.

Good at conflict resolution and community building - OMG, with converging, conflicting needs, we need those who can keep conflict generative and non-violent.

Are you imaginative? Artistic? We need you! The darker and scarier it gets the more we need visions of justice and ecological societies. And we need beauty and stories and humor as we sit in tired circles at the end of long hard days.

Are you willing to be brave and uncomfortable in your insistence that every adaptation and every innovation must center those who have been most marginalized? You are key to the movement, since an ecological society is a just one, and a just society is an ecological one.

I have a headache from gardening under wildfire smoke.
My neighbor is sick w/an infection from a tick bite.
It looks like we won't get any raspberries because of that weird cold snap in May.
I walked barefoot in blooming clover today with no fear of bee stings, because...no bees.
These small sadnesses and individual moment of ill health and discouragement are part of #climate change too, not just the big cataclysms.

Keep your eye on the ball

The big watery jewel-like one in the blackness of space.

The "economy" will shrink to fit within the earth systems of which is it a subsidiary. The status quo wants it to seem like that's the debate, but ya' can't debate physics, biogeochemistry, and ecology. The debate is about how much of that shrinking is chosen vs imposed and whether the shrinking subscribes to just and ethical principles or not.

At the same time, much humble and pragmatic thought that begins with a foundation in living bodies and what they actually need to survive (human bodies, bodies of water, communal bodies (libraries, parks) etc etc) gets dismissed as metaphorical or aspirational but not realistic.

Noticing that much that is promoted as realistic and businesslike defies biological, ecological, physiological, and/or physical common sense (like schemes to get through a pandemic w/o public health investment or climate change without leaving coal oil and gas in the ground or to have art without channels by which artists can afford to live). Talk about magical thinking.

You have a jar full of very smelly perfume. The easiest way to keep your room not smelling of perfume is:
(a) don't spill the perfume
(b) splash it everywhere and then invent a "putting perfume back in the jar machine."

Good. Now, you have a planetary crust full of a dangerous warming substance. The easiest way to keep your planet hospitable is....