It’s Getting Hot In Here

We are global warming solutions, and we’re taking matters into our own hands everywhere. Usually we think of the front of climate action as directly opposing new coal plants, challenging political leaders to be climate champions, or fighting for victories on campus. However, in addition to the most strategic campaigns, (which we sorely need) we also need action everywhere, on everything imaginable, to reshape the face of our civilization.

In this spirit, the New York Times magazine gives us a report from a different front line, but one that I say is just as much a part of our movement: guerrilla gardening.

I like this tactic because its proponents grow and nurture two ideas in people’s minds; people can be a positive force in the world around them, and we need to take matters into our own hands. Guerilla leader Reynolds complains, “We respect public space by not degrading it: not littering, not vandalizing. But we rarely consider what we might contribute to it. Consequently, the common areas of our cities wind up belonging to none of us rather than to all of us equally.”  The idea that random activity can have a hugely positive effect on the world around us?  Preposterous!

But my favorite quote of the article turns the brave-leader-helping-the-powerless image on its head.

A young woman in a raincoat stopped to thank Reynolds for “the difference you’ve made in London and in the landscape” and to ask him if there was any chance he’d visit her neighborhood. “It’s really bad, really bad up there,” she said, like a weary citizen in a Marvel comic book. “My aim,” he told her, “is to encourage people to take the same approach that we have, and just get out and do it.”

Guerrilla gardening is not a substitute for the strategic campaigns we need. But it is part of the movement that is mobilizing as many people as possible to become empowered and build a just and sustainable society.