Garden Girl

I read quite a few of the bloggers & journalists who write on issues of sustainability, climate destabilization and energy.
I’m happy to see a zeitgeist building as these issues are starting to permeate into the mass consciousness. A few years ago ( heck even a year ago), it was easier to dismiss these writers as fringe eco-maniacs with chicken little complexes, even when the body of scientific research had been supporting what they were saying for years.

As the number of people gathering & disseminating information online about the ecological challenges we’re facing grows, I’ve noted a trend in the writings that makes me very happy. That trend is one I think of as writing in a spirit of pragmatic optimism.
Some of the first bloggers I became aware of and started to read regularly had grim facts to report & an even grimmer forecast for human civilization. These folks certainly were not & are not talking out of their hats. Many of them have been gathering data & investigating issues like peak oil, arctic melting, soil depletion, and the problems of monoculture farming for years and I would imagine it’s beyond hard in the face of daily new reports of increasing peril and mis information spreading, apathy & greed on the part of governments and industries, not to take a pessimistic view.

But here’s what I strongly believe:

We don’t have the luxury of pessimism.
We have no time to spend energy in “I told you so” judgmental recriminations & a self righteous schadenfreude.
Nor is it going to help us to take a survivalist attitude of “the smart & strong who saw this coming & prepared will make it just fine”.
Even if that were true, which I doubt.
Those attitudes may feed the ego when times are tough, but they won’t feed our bodies.
To feed our bodies (and our spirits), we are going to need knowledge and skills and local networks sharing them.

If we preach gloom, doom and the elitism of those who have already started on creating greater self sufficiency, we may put people off the path of self empowerment that will not just serve them well, but help them serve others well too.

It can be scary to confront change, especially when we’ve been socialized into a very dangerous passivity that eats at our confidence.
I think what people may need most now is encouragement to take a few baby steps like going car free or joining a victory gardening community and growing just a little of their own food, because if they take these small steps successfully, they will feel empowered to take more steps and to help others take action.

Pragmatic optimism is about building a real momentum for change, which beats being smug while others end up feeling helpless all to heck.

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