"No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference" by Greta Thunberg (2018, 2019)

 

A collection of Greta Thunberg's speeches from her travels in 2018 and 2019, No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference is a wrenching written account of her tireless determination to spread solid information - indeed, the Facts - about the global Climate Emergency that is a hallmark moment of the 21st century, not to mention for humanity's epoch in totality.

Thunberg introduces herself simply. She just barely mentions her accolades, her academic history, her work history. The most personal she gets is very personal, talking about her fraught fight with her parents to strike for the climate, her younger sister that she worries for, how she misses her dogs, and the collective future of humankind that has found itself hanging in the balance.

She leaves the audience with an appropriate onslaught of numbers, percentages, data-driven information regarding how much time (10 - 15 years, if that) we have to turn the Climate Emergency around and what we need to do about it (decidedly not Business As Usual). In a rare moment of hope, she mentions that the UK was able to make a significant change simply by shutting down some factories that were pollution heavy.

What can be gathered as of right now is that none of her messages have been taken head-on. Fracking continues, gas-powered cars drive steady every day, companies like Amazon are doing great, factories keep churning out their products, smoke billowing in the air. Everyday people buy plastic products and dump their garbage in the streets, everyday people manufacture goods with no thought as to their effects globally, and products that do have a carbon footprint smaller than usual, or non-existent, are extremely expensive so no one can really purchase them even if they really wanted to. The meat industry continues to treat animals poorly. All political attempts to rectify the situation are a superficial aesthetic display of money-grabbing power plays in the name of this or that, lacking the urgency that this moment requires.

Offering a bit of advice, she says:

"And sometimes NOT doing things - just like sitting down outside the parliament - speaks much louder than doing things. Just like a whisper is sometimes louder than shouting."

So what actions are you taking in your life to reverse this Climate Emergency? Because in agreement with Thunberg, it is no longer about doing things but acting on the dire circumstances that exist everywhere because of this Emergency.

These acts, according to Thunberg, are no longer about politics (though, obviously, we must make political decisions in order to alleviate the gutted world we find ourselves in).

"We need a whole new way of thinking. The political system that you have created is all about competition. You cheat when you can, because all that matters is to win, to get power. That must come to an end, we must stop competing with each other, we need to cooperate and work together and to share the resources of the planet in a fair way. We need to start living within the planetary boundaries, focus on equity and take a few steps back for the sake of all living species."

Stop and think about that. The next time you find an inkling of that competition Thunberg speaks of here - in the form of a hurt ego or whatever manifestation it takes - remember to step back instead of rushing for the next solution, the next purchase, the next way to make yourself feel that your on top, whether that be through communication, verbal or visual, or some other kind of act.

And this directly moves into another point Thunberg makes so sharply:

"We live in a strange world where no one dares to look beyond our current political systems even though it's clear that the answers we seek will not be found within the politics of today... where everyone can choose their own reality and buy their own truth... we live in a strange world, where we think we can buy or build our way out of a crisis that has been created by buying and building things."

Instead, Thunberg calls for something extremely and exceedingly creative, something she calls Cathedral Thinking. Something that requires everyone to think about the ground first, the foundations, the values that hold everything together. If we cannot agree on values of Climate Justice, which are values that tap into almost every, if not every, social problem/political unrest of today, then we will irrevocably be a sorry story in the unfolding of time. Humanity will have gone out as merely a joke, a gaseous, stinking blip where no one is left to even be embarrassed or crack a smile.

"This is not something you can like on Facebook."

A final point that is so fascinating and almost paradoxical to Thunberg's entire argument is that... "the climate and ecological crisis is beyond party politics. And our main enemy right now is not our political opponents. Our main enemy now is physics. And we cannot make 'deals' with physics."

To say the unsaid: humanity is capable of shifting the dynamic of Science - of physics. We have done so now to an unacceptable degree which is causing millions to suffer and millions more in pain from reasons that go beyond the imagination yet which stem from a disconnection to the Earth. Humanity has made an enemy of Science by manipulating its meaning, by manipulating its very nature, by manipulating its inner working as a biological organism. Humanity has reversed Science making a mirror image of itself as an Enemy where death encapsulates all. Can we change this? Maybe not. But each individual, one step at a time, one moment at a time, one thought, one action at a time might be able to. And yes, it requires Cathedral Thinking. Ground up.