Note: of course, the world has "ended" countless times before. I am here referring to the feeling that the world is ending, together with the truly urgent (though impossible to fully predict) threat of climate change.
The key points in this "speaking":
How can we live in such urgent times of climate change and not take continuous, drastic, urgent action?
Any future speculations about climate change disaster cannot tell us how to act in the present. To find an ethical grounding, we need only look at the inequities and irrationalities of our societies as they are.
Most of us sensed these inequities quite simply as children: how did we forget? Through socialization, "normalcy" is established and maintained.
On the risk of over-emphasis on personal responsibility: your personal "carbon footprint" was actually marketed by British Petroleum (BP) as a way to shift responsibility from oil companies to individuals.
And yet, doing nothing because we can do little cannot be the way to move forward. We must find a way to act in accordance with a truer, more beautiful reality.
We live in such an unreal society that the reality of our interconnectedness strikes us as absurd. We must act as if everything around us is living, good, and deserves our respect. And if we act that way, we'll begin to see it intellectually and perceptually.
Listener Insights:
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