Remember to Work Toward Hope

Over on the Climate Access blog is a great post about how we need to think not just about sustainability but regeneration. The whole post is great and has a lot of good things to say. There is one thing that stands out to me, however:

 Ecological fatalism, unfortunately, is on the rise in North America. As a communicator, to me this means we need to emphasize the symbols of hope and possibility that are emerging in our culture. It also means moving beyond the idea that we need simply to lessen the harm of human activity (i.e. the public’s role in sustainability is to try to reduce their harm by purchasing the right products and then hope for the best) to the notion that human activity may actually have a regenerative role to play with ecosystems as well as in our communities.

This first paragraph draws attention to the fact that a lot of us who try to effect change speak of the horrors of global warming and environmental threats and forget to speak of the hope that lie within the actionable ideas of the human race. I am guilty of this. It is easy to see how bad things have gotten and that nothing is being done to really combat this and get in a rut.

I cannot forget - we cannot forget - however, that there are those who are making the changes. There are those who lead. There are those who, as the article points out, are not just working to sustainability, but actually helping to regenerate the hurt environment. Ideas and methods and solutions are being developed and brought to fruition. What we need to be doing is calling on our leaders to encourage these type of activities, just as they have encouraged what brought the human race to this era of "greatness". This is about knowing we can move forward as a species that recognize they are a part of the planet, a part of the environment. This is about recognizing we can be better stewards of what we are a part of.

We are in a terrible, crucial point when it comes to climate change and global warming, to be sure. We can however, emphasize the hope and the reality that we have the ideas and solutions to deal with the issues we have brought about with the environment. We are the cause, but we can be the cure. There is hope for the future, there is hope for the environment. Let us work toward a more prosperous clean, renewable, and sustainable future for ourselves and the environment.