My mother says I was never afraid of anything as a child. I would run laughing into huge waves on the beach and climb trees so tall it made my brother dizzy to try and follow. I am fortunate enough to have a family and personal safety net that means I do not fear the lack of food or a roof over my head.
And yet I live every day with fear, a deeply personal and also political kind of fear that is at the same time a bit laughable in the light of day and devastatingly realistic. Climate change threatens my future and the people and places I love, and the physics of the atmosphere mean that there is no way to undo the damage we have already caused–all we can do is wait to see what the effects will be. I find this terrifying, and even more so that our country has been so helpless (and in denial, and backwards, and corrupted) in response to the threat.
I usually deal with this diffuse sense of fear and helplessness in self-consciously quirky ways, like practicing survival skills and learning first aid, navigation, and other useful post-apocalyptic strategies. I also try not to think about it too much if I don’t have to. Last night, however, I did think about it, and I talked about my fear.
Aerial photo of open pit bitumen (tar sands) mining in Alberta, Canada, by photographer Louis Helbig.
At Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, over one hundred people gathered for a four-hour peaceful action training to prepare for a demonstration the next day. We had come from all over the nation: California, Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nebraska, West Virginia, even Alaska. Some were from DC, of course, but it was astonishing how many had come from so far away. They had come for one purpose: to protest the Keystone XL pipeline and the increased tar sands mining and burning it will facilitate.
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