It’s Getting Hot In Here

I’ve been thinking about stuff a lot lately. It started back in December, when America was gripped by the frenzy of consumption that Christmas brings and I saw Annie Leonard’s “The Story of Stuff” and religiously avoided all stores.

A few days after Christmas, when the country was recovering from its collective post consumption hangover I flew out of Miami to spend the month in Guyana, a small and impoverished country in South America. While I was there, I continued my musings about stuff.

As a climate justice activist, my work centers around the injustice inherent in climate change as the rich, developed nations of the world’s unsustainable lifestyles imperil the survival of billions. I’ve researched climate injustice, attended and facilitated workshops, discussed the issues passionately and thought about it a great deal.

But it took actually leaving the country to deepen my understanding of climate injustice. I could have, of course, stayed in the U.S, where from New Orleans to the mountains of Appalachia examples of poor, marginalized peoples suffering being accepted as a by product of our excessive lifestyles abound.

However, visiting a country in the Global South that will truly face the impacts of climate injustice was an eye opening experience. 800,000 people live in Guyana, the majority of these people crowded in the narrow coastal strip that is buffered by a centuries old sea wall which was built by the Dutch and abandoned by them. Their capital of Georgetown and most of the development that exists is all under sea level, and they lack the money or engineering capacity to repair the sea wall. If we don’t avert the climate crisis, the majority of the countries population will be in a similar situation to the people of New Orleans.

I spent most of my time in the interior, including two weeks where I lived in a small Amerindian community that, like many similar villages in the world, had no electricity. As I spent time with my Macushi friends, the simplicity of their lifestyles struck me. They lived off the land, hunting and farming provided the majority of their diet and their homes were constructed from sustainable, naturally occurring materials. And from my perspective, they just had so little stuff.

No pavement, no lights, no TV’s, no fast food, no mall. No SUV’s and no smell of exhaust. And people were happy. Everyone had enough to eat, a good place to live and stable, well functioning community. Of course, as Amerindian people in an incredibly marginalized country, they lacked access to education and economic opportunity and faced many challenges of their own, but overall the standard of living was quite good.

I thought a lot about the lifestyle of people in my country, my lifestyle. I try to consume as little as possible, and live simply. I still have so much more stuff than any Macushi person. I have more stuff than an entire family. I thought more about stuff on the plane on the way back. Looking through a sky mall magazine, I was absolutely amazed and disgusted by the amount of stuff we feel we need.

Mechanized cat water fountains, hand lotion warmers, ice cream dispensers, containers of every shape and size whose sole purpose is holding useless stuff, 4 foot yeti statues, massaging arm chairs, the sheer amount of stuff was incredible. All of it made with plastic, toxic metals, almost all of it requiring electricity. The majority of it manufactured in ineffiencient coal powered factories in China and the developing world. All of it completely unneeded.

Our lifestyles require 32 times more natural resources than the lifestyle of most people on this planet. Our lifestyles are driving global climate change and destroying the biosphere. Our lifestyles are pumping thousands of toxic chemicals into the water and air that we breathe and the bodies of animals, plants and ourselves.

And yet people seem to think that it will be impossible to change this insane way of living. I’ve heard a lot of arguments against taking action on climate change that revolve around the “Americans wont change their lifestyles.” That is why we need nuclear power and “clean coal” to provide power for hand lotion warmers and mechanical cat water fountains. We need to drill for oil in the Ecuadorian rain forest so that we can drive SUV’s around on land we have smothered in concrete.

All of it is untrue. To believe that is to cop out, to turn away from the possibility of a just, sane sustainable future and accept the status quo, accept that this insane, destructive way of living is the only possible way. Accept that people in the Global South and the poor in developed nations will continue to have to bear the burden of our overconsumption, that children in Ghana and China and so many other countries will have to breathe in toxic fumes and absorb chemicals through their skins as they process our cast off electronics.

I personally will never accept that this kind of insanity is the only world that is possible. As I flew back in to Miami at night, my face pressed to the airplane window, I felt a tear roll down my cheek as I stared at the devasted, paved, destroyed landscape. Stepping out of the airport into the underground parking lot, I felt nausea as the suffocating fumes of exhaust filled the air around me, contaminating every breath. And I felt rage and sadness as I saw a well dressed, overweight couple step into their Hummer and drive off into the night, just one more American couple living the American dream.

So I will continue to fight, joining thousands of people around the globe who are fighting against this kind of all consuming insanity. I will be strengthened by those who have come before me, and all the incredible people, many in the youth climate movement, who also have a vision of the world where there are no communities, ecosystems or species that are disposable. Let us continue the fight knowing that “another world is possible” and that right now, we are the ones creating it.