The Sky Knows No Executive Orders
Lessons in Ecological Resilience
If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.
- Joanna Macy
The gravity of the last few weeks has been/is immense. California’s wildfires (which are still burning) and a president who swiftly exited the Paris Climate Accords as fast as he could yell “drill baby drill” from the inauguration podium. The blatant erasure of Native wisdom through Trump’s declaration to rename Mount Denali (the Koyukon name of the mountain, Deenaalee '“the high one”) to Mount McKinley, after the 25th President of the United States who Trump has praised because of the tariffs he implemented. The total disregard of entire people groups by declaring that from here on out there will be only two genders. You forget, Mr. President, that transgender and non-binary people have always been here and always will be (history of Indigenous two-spirit people and the hijra in India, for example).
The flagrance of American exceptionalism from the inaguration stage was dizzying. The tumble and swirl of information, fear and heartbreak in the last few weeks is too much. It’s just too much.
As an environmental psychologist trained as a journalist, I know there will be an important place for information in the coming years about climate change that is contextualized, cited, and vetted. I will do my best to offer that here.
I also know that the threat or potential legislation of stripped back rights (immigrants, trans folks, reproductive, etc) will ripple out into myriad tragedies.
When such fissures happen, like a wound on a body, we must send all our nutrients, all our help, all our love to those places. Because that is how we heal. Because that is how we will survive. We will form scar tissue around what’s ripped apart and grow new wings. We must.
Last night, before I went to bed, my eyes filled with tears imagining the forests and lands that might be destroyed with new and unhinged oil exploration and development (and no, there is no shortage of fossil fuels in the US); my heart filled with tears over the incoming leadership (and those who bought the government) who worship money instead of practicing reverence of the Earth.
I picked up an old newspaper in my room. Earth First! began printing in 1980, a source of radical environmental news. I read a 1984 issue, and the headlines could’ve been written today.
The Struggle Continues!
Civil Disobedience is the American Way!
Widerness and Petroleum
Resist Corporate Control
The Books of Deep Ecology
As I read, I was reminded that we stand on the shoulders of generations who have loved the Earth. We are not the first and we will certainly not be the last.
Yes, these years will be hard, but what a better catalyst to engage the life-long good work of loving life more than we love fear. Of finding the good and amplifying it loud. Of protecting and helping each other, in community, mutual-aid efforts and more (as we are already seeing in Los Angeles). Find and join a local environmental group State and local efforts will be more important than ever, as will, according to biologist and author Dr. Aaya Eliza, speaking with a collective, coordinated voice.
No, it shouldn’t be this way, but this is what is happening.
I feel sober and heartbroken, but I look out the window, and can see the trees know no politics. The sky knows no executive orders. We are tender caretakers here, nothing more, and I want to recommit myself to learn from these wise elders who live their life in communal care. Who do not speak in the language of power, but the language of joy, which is the language of resistance.
Rebecca Solnit wrote in her A Piece for Hard Times:
They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love.
I am with you, opening to feel pain because that’s the only way to live close to what we love. I am scared. It is scary. But we must find our lighthouses: the artists, the more-than-human relatives, the networks of care that can hold us together.
Together, we will get through this. I just hope we don’t drag the carcasses of climate collapse along with us.
Remember what you love.
Remember what loves you.
Remember in this tide of hate what love is.
The pain you feel is because of what you love.
We are not giving up.
Love,
Lindsay