The blame game is a dangerous game. Indecision is rife as everyone decides to pass the buck instead of one person taking the leap and choosing to lead. Precious time is lost when people sit around trying to decide who is at fault in any given situation. Instead of working overtime to figure out who should be blamed, so much more could be accomplished if everyone decided to share responsibility and diffuse the burden of blame. If people stopped pointing fingers they could join hands and minds to find realistic solutions to our climate crisis. When it comes to the question of environmental destruction, the blame can’t so easily shift from the fault of the individual to large corporations. It isn’t just corporations who are to blame for the state of our climate. Corporations are after all made up of individuals.
While it might feel good to diffuse responsibility and pass the blame off to an entity powered by group think, passing the blame won’t exactly solve any of the hard hitting issues that we face when it comes to what needs to be done to do hurt to the environment less.
Passing to blame onto another is the siren call of not wanting to feel guilt, not wanting to change and restructure systems already in place, and wanting to save face by not being wrong. Owning that each and every one of us is part of the issue and a part of the solution is an important step on the road to recovery and healing. There are some important things to remember when it comes to evaluating what can be done to help the Earth which may also serve as a helpful reality check.
If change is anything, easy isn’t it.
Change isn’t easy, it’s never been easy. It took over 200 years to end slavery, and it’s been over 50 years since the Civil Rights Movement but a disproportionate amount of black men are still in prison than any other racial group and — like many other minority groups — facing police brutality. People have been marching for decades but the idea of acceptance of all differences seems to not have stuck because racism is still a thing — as is more than evidenced by brutality against several minority groups as a result of the coronavirus panic — even though we’d all like to believe that we are color blind.
Women have been able to vote for 100 years now and through the 40s to 60s they fought for more rights yet as of 2018, only 4.8% are CEO of a Fortune 500 company, the pay scale is still unequal, and there has still never been a female president of the United States of America.
Giving in to one fight doesn’t mean you have to give up the whole fight.
Fighting does not mean that you give up when things start to look bad, when you get tired, or when you start to doubt yourself and your cause. Fighting does mean that sometimes you have to take a break or concede a battle, but when it comes to the larger war, you can’t throw in the towel just when it gets a little too hard, or just when you feel a little too “over it”. When you think you’ve hit rock bottom and you have nothing left to give, that is the true test, the time when all you thought you’d accomplished and learned can show up if you let it. When you think you have nothing left to give that is when true innovation can arise.
It is more than acceptable to give up sometimes. The important thing though is that you can’t stay defeated, at some point, you have to regroup if you want to win the war.
The road to climate recovery is long and hard.
Climate talks throw a spotlight on how we all consume natural resources — sometimes in excess — which severely affects the lives of other people, animals, and organisms around us. The rapid finger pointing in an effort to defer blame throws people into a state of acute vulnerability and may create feelings of remorse. It is after all hard to imagine a world without disposable items that can be lifesaving — look at water bottles in places that don’t have access to clean water or lifesaving protective equipment in the face of germs and viruses. Uncoupling ourselves from climate destructive behaviors will not be easy, it requires altering our collective way of life. Whose to say our path forward will be better than the current one, but all we do know is that this current way forward is harmful to the Earth.
Science, news, and social media lay bare the human experience like never before and paint a picture of how our actions directly impact the environment. Quite frankly, that view is ugly, it’s terrifying, and it’s aggravating to the point of falling into denial. It is something that anyone would like to hide from, turn away from. But we must not look away. We are all affected by whatever happens to our planet. We must all survive the super storms and the super viruses that are a result of our actions in the present and in the past.
As we benefit from the choices of those that have come before us, so must we pay the price for those same actions that have helped us to get this far as a human race. Something can’t be taken without paying a price, and nothing is given for free. Not even the natural abundance that may surround us is free for the taking.
So as we gaze upon our collective climate bill, how the tally has run up because of choices made by people today and those long gone, it’s more than natural to see that the fault doesn’t just lay on the shoulders of you or me or any one corporate entity. The fault lays with all of us. I’ll be the first to admit that I sure do benefit from the fossil fuels that were burnt to power the lights and charge my computer as I sit here writing this post so I am just as much to blame as anyone else.
We can also all be a part of the solution.
One person or entity cannot bare the entirety of the climate issue, but on the shoulders of many even the smallest of actions can make an impact.
Caia Rose 