LETTER: 'All hands on deck' needed to address climate change - Rocky Mountain Outlook

Editor:

Climate change is happening on our watch.

It is rapidly accelerating – exponentially – and it begs us to respond.

We are past the point of governments alone taking the lead – as they haven’t.

I call for all hands on deck now.

Each of us is contributing to climate change – innocently, and naively. Let us not allow this to continue, complacently.

Andrew Nikiforuk, journalist and author, presented Degrowth or Collapse at artsPlace a year ago. At the end of his brilliant presentation, I felt compelled to speak. I said, “When I went to the UN Earth Summit as an independent citizen in 1992, I carried two questions with me: Can technology alone resolve humanity’s ails?” I swiftly answered. “No. This is a spiritual crisis. We are disconnected – from ourselves, from each other, and from the Earth.”

Then I suggested: “We need to get our verbs accurate. We say ‘I need’, when we really mean ‘I want’. And we say ‘I can’t’, when we really mean ‘I won’t’.” Andrew immediately agreed, as did a stirring in the audience.

I also carried this question to the Earth Summit: ‘Is there a society, ideally currently incarnate, that is a shining example for us?’  I was directed to the Kayapo people, who have lived in the Amazon since time immemorial.  In their exemplary culture, everyone has all the skills they need to survive on their own. Everyone has a unique gift, respected and fostered by the community, without which the community as a whole cannot survive.

We all have gifts – some hidden, even from ourselves, some vividly obvious. We all have a voice, a body to stand with, and resources to share, no matter how meagre our income may be. Some have ample excess, to generously share.

It’s time to respectfully turn on the lamplights, and recognize how we, ourselves, are contributing to climate change and its acceleration.

Its pace won’t abate – at all – until we change our ways.

With love and kinship.

Ariole K. Alei,

Canmore