In honor of Earth Day, I spent my workout walking on my homemade treadmill workstation while reading Al Gore's book 'Our Choice'. You can tell he wants to broaden his audience because it's full of pictures; you can have the attention span of a fruit fly and still enjoy it.
Global warming is really too huge to think about sometimes. I can see how easy it'd be to be a global warming denier. I think most people want the future to be better for their kids than for them, or at least the same. The thought that it might be worse, maybe much worse, is just too big to deal with.
What would I say if I had a roomful of global warming deniers? Maybe something like this.
I'd like to be in control of my life, but a lot of the time, I'm ruled by fear and don't even know it. Only later do I realize I'm afraid of something that feels too big to face. What if I never have enough equity in my house to sell it? What if I lose my job and insurance and then get sick?
It gets worse when I think about whether my avoiding this stuff will actually make things worse. What if I was too worried to sit down and understand my insurance benefits, or get my work done, or whatever? If I'm too afraid to face something, I can't even begin to fix it.
Obviously if I'm going to survive, I need to think about scary stuff so I can deal with it before it hits. So I just face stuff. I can give some Buddhist name to it, and there are a lot of impressive-sounding Buddhist names for these things. But really, it's just turning and facing stuff I don't like. It's not complicated.
And it pays off more than I thougnt, because once I do it, I feel a little bit more in control of my own life. And I like being in control! I want sharks with frickin' laser beams!
We're animals, and we have the brain chemicals that help us run from predators, or fight when we need to. So we like anger because it makes us feel as if we're fighting, instead of running away like the chickens we are. Anyone inviting us to be angry is helping us feel big and strong, even if it's all a puffed-up illusion, and our anger is an excuse to avoid the real threats in our lives.
Or we can use the rest of our brain, which is probably shrivelled and flabby from neglect, and maybe calm down for a second, take a look around, and start dealing with what's threatening us.
Earth Day isn't about barefoot hippies singing songs about love. It's about squaring your shoulders, looking at one of the biggest threats to our future, looking it in the eye, learning about it, and not backing down out of fear. And then doing something about it.
So, do I want to be a slave to my brain chemicals, and avoid stuff I don't like? Or do I want to grow a pair and take stock of what's going on around me? See what I can do about it?
All those deniers are probably all about being tough and strong, not being weak. So I'd tell them tnat avoiding scary stuff is weak! They're just slaves to their brain chemicals! And facing stuff, now that takes guts.