Environmental Justice

I just need to talk about it more. This is gonna be a short post.

Costs vs Benefits

A lot of the biodiversity of the globe is getting killed. It’s not really dying of old age or anything… It’s just getting killed. And pain like that can be overwhelming. In the face of it, the only real thing to do is remember how small you actually are. And how the future actually hasn’t been told yet.

I used to work for a grassroots environmental justice sort of organization. I spoke out openly, it lasted a summer and a little more. I felt like I did great things. As a result of my organization’s work, a crucial climate legislation was passed, taxing large oil and gas corporations operating in New York State. I let my community know, through heatwaves and wildfire smoke, and got paid for it.

I wish I stayed better friends with those people I met, those I worked with. Because not long after, I began my degree at a university, and I was driving more, and when in classes and socially I felt like much more of an outsider for my climate-justice views than before. And I was sensitive to that when I began attending this new place. So I stopped talking about climate justice. And then a year later, I had to move to Texas of all places, which absolutely hurts my soul every day I see how little people know or care about the Earth.

What are the costs? All you have to do is reduce how much beef you eat. Drive a little less. Stop sterilizing your lawns, stop killing trees and plants. But in my new Hispanic community, Sunday morning family breakfasts are always barbacoa, and tacos are always tacos de bistec. And especially in Texas, the neighbors always spend a fortune on killing their very few plants that get too large.

I have been trying to assimilate to what I thought this whole world was, Texas or New York where I’m from, for a very long time. For years now. I did this because I was lonely. And although I didn’t lose my voice, I have stopped using it in public, because I’ve been deathly scared of getting rid of what little social connections I felt like I was winning at. So I let the world go on, especially recently, as I have assimilated and kept watch of the world from behind my eyes.

I assimilated as much as possible to being what I felt to be human, now, though. I got everything I came here for. I have a big, loving family and I even got over myself and made friends. So now I think I can dig back into myself and bring my real voice and abilities back up to the surface. Just have to say fuck everybody else, I’m good at this shit and I do what I want. Easy. The benefits are great, in that they’re just starting to unfold and are full of infinite potential going forward. Infinite chances to take.

My Abilities

I’m a pretty good writer. Or decent at least. I tend to get people to agree with me, if I just put my mind to it. And if I actually want to get people to listen to me, the quiet persona I have seems to work good for that too, because they seem to be curious about what I have to say.

I do a lot of thinking, so I guess I do say some random curious things.

But mostly though? My best ability is that I already know what I want. I let myself get convinced otherwise for a bit, sometimes, but I’ve been on a life path for years and I’m not stopping. It was a very organic life plan. First I get as many good strong social connections as possible, then I build a platform for the rest of my life from that newfound stability, then finally I do my good person shit and make the world a better place to the best of my ability. Co-op sort of approach to it all is what I know is the best way forward. And then I get the benefit of knowing I won at life, and just keep winning. Yay. I can do a lot, I just need the right place to grow.

Doing actual environmental justice

Some of it scares me. But not as much as political shit scares me. Speaking out for the environment is so non-negotiably positive of a thing that I’m really not scared in the same way that some lunatic will attack me or like fucking doxx me or something much later down the line for it. It’s grassroots shit. You don’t need much.

Protecting people can get scary. Political oppression as this country gets scarier and scarier (U.S.) by the day, is maybe not something I would find myself in. I’ve never been to a protest, because I’m a good government-fearing gun-fearing American citizen, ha ha ha, but I could imagine myself handcuffing myself to a tree or an important fence or some shit and daring the giant scary tractor/machinery to come get me too. I just want to be crazy again like how it was possible to be as a kid, except for real reasons now not play reasons.

Most of the experience for me should be fun. Getting my voice back and starting conversations about how shit fucking stupid as hell this state’s, especially, environmental care standards are. How much I love birds. How…

Have you ever watched Ponyo? There should have been a time when we had the biodiversity, although not prehistoric, of the post-flood world of Ponyo. Where once there were ten to ninety-nine species of a certain sort of bug, now there may be one. The most resilient to the onslaught to the Earth that humanity has brought down. One little mayfly out of a hundred cousins that once were. One little firefly where once there were thousands. We can’t even imagine it anymore. This path we are on is called the Shifting Baseline Theorem (SBS), as applied to biodiversity.

I want to purchase plants to have on my shitty little concrete patio as insect nesting areas, and food sources. I have no yard.

The American problem

This issue is of course not just a Texas thing. I just complain about what I can reach, to blow off steam, I suppose. It’s more fun and meaningful that way. But you should have heard the ways that some of my family members from New York spoke about climate justice, and didn’t really much care for my environmental justice job. My one parent, most strikingly, spoke frequently of the happiness they experienced from the increasingly hot weather of climate change. This was after the second year of me working all summer at an outdoor job, where I frequently got heat sickness and would come home and throw up. What “nice weather”?

The SBS applies to a lot. In spirit of the nature of this blog, it also applies to hot, shitty infrastructure that we’ve all learned to live with. And all the air conditioners many of us can no longer healthily live without. Trees take a long time to grow. We’re so impatient that we somehow think that they will never grow. We cut them down young, and every time we do, we make our world more hostile to ourselves and animal/insect life alike.

Conclusion

I do not have all the answers, and this is not a research paper of a post. I only know the next step forward, realistically, which is to just have fun conversations about how shit the world is with anyone who will listen, and get into fights (even more fun for me) with those who don’t.

The whole point of life is to just have fun with it. And let everything, that you possibly can, unfold organically. Don’t plan so much. Have your morals in mind and just go where the wind takes you. And in general, get over yourself. Starting shit is so fun, and I should really stop letting all these chances to get into verbal fights with assholes and idiots who believe in greed more than biodiverse life go.

I don’t have all the facts. But if you see something getting killed, you should really do something about it. That’s why this is a short, messy post. Go plant a tree!