Questions To Ask Now
About climate, politics, and what to do next.
I’m lucky. I’ve lived most of my life in post-WW2 America, a time and place of incredible stability and opportunity. But today that stability is threatened, climate-wise and otherwise.
Here’s some questions I’ve been asking myself since Nov. 5th, and my current thinking on answers. I hope you’ll consider asking them too.
Is this my mess?
I’ve been working on climate for years because the answer to this question seemed so obvious. Overheating the planet will affect everyone’s life directly (already is). We all need to be part of fixing it; there’s no way to dodge or ignore it.
By contrast, I assumed things would be ok politically without me getting too involved. Boy, was that wrong.
After a four year respite, we’re now going back to division, hatred, incompetence, science denial, economic and geopolitical roulette, third-raters in charge of government and trying to dismantle it (and our democratic system), and who knows what else.
Why? We can all point the finger at something. The Democratic establishment was tone-deaf and out of touch. There was racism, sexism, disinformation, bad billionaires, wars, polarizing social issues and border chaos… the list goes on.
But mostly I think Nov 5th. was a big ‘F— you’ to the tens of millions of people like me who’ve benefitted from (and been involved in creating) our have and have-not society.
It was a message from the huge numbers of Americans whose jobs, time, bank accounts and pride have been beaten down and commoditized by 21st century capitalism and software.
Am I responsible for that? Yes. Like anyone whose livelihood and pride hasn’t been commoditized and beaten down, but who’s instead benefitted from these trends (even just owning stocks in an index fund). All of us are responsible.
And we’re not insulated from it. There’s no way to dodge this political mess, to not be affected. We’ve got to fight to prevent even worse from happening over the next four years, to recruit and elect candidates who can win, and who care about preserving the rule of law and democracy. And we’ve got to get serious about fixing the underlying problems and polarization that got us here.
So yeah, the political mess is my mess too.
Is this too big for me?
A common thing I hear from friends is “don’t try to change the world, you can’t, these are larger forces bigger than you, focus on yourself and your family.” Plus: “it won’t be good for your mental health.”
All this may be true. But I also know that of the eight billion people on earth, myself and my peers are among the most powerful, connected and capable.
Most of the eight billion are just trying to get through the day with enough to eat. They don’t have any capacity to work on climate or politics. Which means that if those of us who do have capacity don’t tackle these problems, no one will.
So no, this isn’t too big for me. It can’t be. As long as I tackle it with other like-minded people.
Does money matter?
Not really… doing the work is what matters.
Many people I know, when they saw me working on this last election, said “we gave money.” And that’s fine I guess: money helps get you in the game, it’s necessary.
But money wasn’t the deciding factor in this election, and almost never is. If all you do is give money, it doesn’t really matter. Money isn’t the scarce resource: it’s smart, talented people putting in the time and mindshare and doing the work.
Even the richest guy in the world, Elon Musk, figured this out. He realized that the real leverage is in applying your brain, capabilities and expertise - and he did.
These messes aren’t outsourceable.
Am I happy how I’m spending my time now?
Having spent most of my time working on the climate mess, I’m now thinking about shifting some of that time to the political mess (they do overlap).
I hope you’ll ask this question too. Are you really happy with how you’re spending your time these days, with what you’re working on? Is it the most important and satisfying thing you could be doing?
What can I do now?
So many things. There’s so much to do.
It’s been fun to see friends who’ve gotten involved in climate and politics recently get traction, feel challenged, get a burst of fresh personal energy, get that feeling of being on a strong team and mattering.
If you want to bounce some ideas around about either climate or politics, let’s do it! Either in person or by Zoom… just email me, I look forward to it.