Some people tell me it’s hard to deal with global dangers and dangers to our health that aren’t fun to think about and that feel out of our control as well. How can we deal with it?
Compare those to how we protect our families in other situations. I often feel better thinking about dangers than ignoring them, like when we talked with our children about dangers they faced on their way to school. I remember a colleague asking me to baby sit for his children when I was abroad. They were a British couple and Alistair was explicit – there were people around who snatched and sold children. That was painful to think about. That’s why they had to.
I’m a husband, parent and grandparent. It is my job to think about what could destroy my family and embitter our lives. We all take pride in protecting our families and helping them protect themselves. Part of being a grown-up is to stare danger in the face and deal with it.
Lots of things are well within our ability to advocate for the environment. My wife and I have supported the Union of Concerned Scientists for decades. Joe Donahue introduced us to Bill McKibben’s 360.org. I’m not sure why many people are reluctant to go outside and demonstrate. Years ago, we participated in the first Earth Day, a lovely event we shared with friends in St. Louis – I think we were in Forest Park but my wife remembers it as at Washington University, closer to our place.
Perhaps you participated in the Women’s March, or heard Martin Luther King describe his dream in front of the Lincoln Memorial after the country’s greatest folk singers serenaded us and we linked arms for the march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. A demonstration can literally be a walk in the park with friends.
Some of us have professional options – I’ve handled some environmental lawsuits, for example. All of us can speak with our Congresspersons as well as local office-holders. They actually want to know what we’re thinking – we’re not burdening them by letting them know in a civil way. Mary Poppins was right, of course, “a little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down.” But we have a mutual interest in telling them. My point is that politics can be fun. It is NOT all about money. It’s about votes, voters and people.
And there is the pleasure of taking responsibility. Many of us were inspired when President Kennedy bid us to “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” Kennedy followed immediately with the wider implication, “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” Survival in the face of potential environmental catastrophe needs all our help. The environmental movement is global, neither black nor white, upper, lower or middle class. People are involved from every corner of American life. Let our numbers and power inspire us to solve these problems and protect this world for all our children.
Let’s take those walks in the park with friends for the environment, and make visits to our representatives with friends for the environment. And let’s feel really good about it.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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