Battling Fear in the Face of Ecological Destruction

A reddish egret, its legs and tail feathers coated with oil, flies above the water. Credit boston.com

When faced with ecological destruction, many people succumb to despair, and assume there is little they can do.

It’s easy to understand. Pictures of wildlife drowning in oil, dead whales that ate too much plastic, stories of cancer in those living near heavily sprayed areas, recalled factory meat, government and industry corruption, activists without a better solution. These are all unsightly truths, incongruent with our vision of reality like they taught us. Such destruction could suck life away from any emotional soul.

For a long time, I too felt despair by all of society’s problems. My head was a mess of obstacles, but I was able to get past them. Here are a few things I felt:

• Government and industry are so corrupt. Will they really fix anything? How can I trust them?
• Individual action won’t amount to anything. It’s up to those with power – government and industry, to change things. [But they’re so corrupt!]
• Other people could never change or educate themselves to become aware of the situation.

At the time, I asked myself, What could be done? Even if I recycled more and composted, industry would still be dumping toxic sludge into my backyard. It sapped my emotional strength and I remained where I was. Finally, I discovered the idea of a sustainable economy, and it woke me somewhat from my despairing slumber.

Sustainable Economy

The basic idea behind a sustainable economy* is that businesses will evolve to be ever more considerate of their social and environmental impact. We will come to revere the triple bottom line: people, planet, profit. Among others, this includes:

• placing more value on social relationships and community-building
• enhancing the work-life balance
• recognizing the value of natural resources and human labor
• reworking government and industry policy to support all of these goals

Currently, our economic system is linear, from inputs to waste, with an obsessive focus on economic growth. However, the biological system is not linear, and is circular, cyclic – waste from one species becomes food for another and nothing is truly “wasted”. We can’t have pure and endless economic growth because there simply aren’t enough natural resources to sustain the current economic engine. In econ language, nature has become an economic externality. Manufacturing depends on resources. Products depend on resources. Without resources, we wouldn’t have wood and metals for homes and cars, minerals and water for concrete, lead or silicon for electronic gadgets. Thus, a sustainable economy would place a price tag on natural resources, more accurately reflecting the level of natural reserves, in order to more actively conserve and restore resources rather than depleting them.

The possibility of a sustainable economy means there is a way we can run our society without completely depleting our resources. There is a way we can live happily, with profit, and with care to our environment. The issue is not whether it is a possibility, the issue is how we’re going to get there.

Hands Across the Sand demonstration against offshore drilling. Credit to The Sierra Club

The People Have Power Over Government and Industry

For most skeptics, the idea of a sustainable economy is not enough. They need to know how to get there, and if those steps are realistic. Two huge mental and physical barriers are government and industry. They are difficult to convince towards ecological reform, but they are the key to widespread change.

Oftentimes, when we as individuals think about what we can do to improve our environment, the formidable presence of government and industry scares us back into the shadows. What is one individual’s impact, when government policy could whip things around for thousands or millions of people? Or when a tweak of industry policy saves millions of pounds of virgin resources? How could I, one speck of a person, compare to these giants? I couldn’t produce the large-scale change that government or industry could.

One of the biggest reasons people remain skeptical of their individual power and thus, of taking action, is because they believe their actions have little impact. The trick is in the numbers: More people, more power. If every person generates 4.4 pounds of waste a day, and 200 people decided to embark on a zero-waste project, that saves (200)(4.4) = 880 pounds of waste a day, or 320,000 pounds a year. We would have less toxics sitting in our environment and a greater abundance of virgin resources. The more people choose to be, think, speak, and act sustainably, the more power this concept has to spread further, until it has the people power to change policy, business, and community.

One can look to recent social movements to appreciate the social change that has come about through the sweat and blood of hundreds of thousands of people. Thirty years ago, women were paid significantly less than their male coworkers, sodomy was a crime, mental illness was extremely stigmatized, and Barack Obama could not have become president. All of these situations vastly improved over multitudes of lawsuits, debates, riots, protests, voting sessions, and public awareness campaigns. These progresses highlight humanity’s hope for a more idealistic future. The green movement is growing. Consumers are demanding more organic produce, less toxic beauty and cleaning products, composting more, buying less junk, and saving more. Minimalism is a growing movement. Businesses are adapting to the calls of their sacred consumer. After all, businesses won’t make profit if customers don’t come back. Walmart even has a sustainability department. Check out this video if you aren’t convinced.

Government and industry are to blame for a huge load of injustices. Even though they hold a great deal of power, if the people work together, social change can happen. It’s up to all of us to spread the best ideas.

Social Influence: Other People Can and Will Change

Another mental obstacle to spreading awareness and taking action is the belief that other people could never come to change their habits.

The issue of influencing large numbers of people can sound impossible, but it’s really quite similar to blogging. How many bloggers today started out as nobodies, without a clue as to whether their work would help a single soul? Everett Bogue, Leo Babauta, Glen Allsop to name a few. And now, they have thousands of subscribers. Thousands of people are reading their work, listening to their ideas, believing that they have something worthwhile to offer. Each of these bloggers started with just a few believers, without any certainty that they would ever really get anywhere or truly influence someone’s life. But they persisted, and now have thousands of followers. Bloggers like Everett, Leo, and Tammy inspire their readers to change and to believe in the possibility of a more ideal society. Their words hold power in part by the number of subscribers they have. Their success proves that large-scale influence by one ordinary individual is possible.

Not all bloggers reach the top. Some have a few hundred readers, others more or less. Everyone falls somewhere along the blogging spectrum, so too in the case of environmentalism. One person has the power to influence another. Some people have the ability to influence thousands of people, others less. The importance here is the fact that new sustainable concepts can spread, much like how minimalism and the green movement has been spreading. It is fallacious to believe that they could never spread.

You and Me: The Power of Positive Realism

In our own personal lives, positive realism is probably the best approach to maintaining personal happiness and motivation while facing the complex challenges of ecological progress. Mary Jaksch has a great article discussing this concept in more detail. As she says,

A dream needs to be accompanied by realistic goals.

Being positive requires hope that a better future exists, giving us something to work towards, and imbuing all of our related pursuits with enhanced meaning. Being a realist towards environmentalism means recognizing both the obstacles and the possibilities in making change.

Here is how I look at it:

• Knowing that there are such great ideas like a sustainable economy gives me hope for a society that does work sustainably.
• Knowing that certain actions lead to greater or lesser environmental impact gives me a path of action. My impact counts because:
  +++ – I will actually reduce my physical ecological impact, however small on a global scale.
  +++ – My personal actions have the possibility of influencing others. The more people that choose to reduce their impact, the greater the power of this lifestyle, and the greater the net impact reduction.
• Being a realist also requires me to accept that there are obstacles and setbacks, but that these setbacks provide no evidence that I’m wrong or that I should stop. Perhaps I could try things differently.

Is this whole sustainable economy thing really going to work?

As with any new system, new rules need adjusting and fine-tuning. Nothing ever started out perfect; new paths were always paved while feeling through the dark. An uncertain and foreign path is certain to induce fear. No one knows the right answer, but we all know where we’d like to be, and we can all try our best to get there.

Taking all of this a step further, we could apply the logic from How to Turn Fear Into Power to combating ecological fear.

1.  Face your fear. Recognize your fear symptoms and admit to yourself you’re scared.

2.  Dig deep for truth. Why am I scared? Your fear probably comes from one of the sources mentioned in this article – a lack of belief in individual impact, social progress, or credible solutions. Pinpoint where your fear is coming from, and hopefully my article will help you see through it.

3.  Turn fear into power. Now that your fear is unjustified, don’t let it rule your behaviors. Ecological progress is possible. A sustainable economy is possible. Influencing another human being to lower their impact is possible.

Do something. Start a blog. Start composting. Start learning about how to green your life or how to create a sustainable economy. Try this guide for a list of things you can do that doesn’t contribute to oil dependency.

I hope this article helped shed some clarity for those skeptical about the pursuit of ecological reforms. Feel free to share your opinions.

*For further reading:

• Recession must make us question ‘Relentless pursuit of growth’
• Prosperity without Growth? – Transition to a Sustainable Economy
• Redefining Progress – About Sustainable Economics