Addressing the Long Emergency

Hope and Inspiration for Climate Action

About 20 years ago, Robert Engman gave everyone in our meeting a copy of James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency. In reading it, I realized that as we humans are such great procrastinators, it was absolutely essential to get people to pay attention to climate change as soon as possible. As a scientist, I felt I might be able to explain the way climate change is happening and help folks understand the urgent need for action. I requested a travel minute to go from meeting to meeting with that story. In the course of that work, I met a number of like-minded Friends who were led to various pieces of the work. In this article, I’d like to introduce you to a few of them and show you what gives us hope for the future in our activism on climate.

You might think it simple. Scientists can prove that burning fossil fuels like coal and oil has released so much carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere that the Earth is warming faster than at any other time we humans have been alive. If we don’t stop soon, there will be more and more climate disruption and species extinctions. So, let’s just tell everyone what is happening, and they’ll just stop doing it: right? In fact, scientists have been telling folks about this for 120 years now, and people haven’t stopped yet, but on the positive side, they now have (mostly) admitted there’s a problem. But change doesn’t happen all at once. It happens little by little, as actions grow into a movement, and then rapidly, as the movement captures the general imagination.

Tackling climate change has so many facets that there’s something for everyone to do. There are little things you can do in your home or meeting and bigger things that we can all work on together! Saving energy is best, because even renewable sources have “carbon footprints.” About ten years ago, Patricia Finley and Margaret Mansfield joined other Friends in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PhYM) in establishing “Friendly Households.” The focus was not just changing from incandescent to LED light bulbs but insulating our homes, switching to Energy Star energy-efficient appliances, and being mindful about transportation by walking, biking, and using more public transit. The program urged flying only when absolutely necessary, reducing waste streams through composting and recycling, and trying to implement a circular economy at least on a local scale. Individual Friends made commitments to undertake some of these goals and sharing what works. By repairing appliances and clothing, for example, fewer of our household goods go into the waste stream.

To reduce the carbon footprint of our homes, meetings, schools, and businesses, Liz Robinson has been working for more than 40 years on public energy policy, most recently increasing and democratizing access to solar power. Solar for schools and communities, and renewable energy policy have all kept Liz involved and hopeful. Because much of the change needed requires legislative and executive action, Liz has joined with Patricia Finley, Bruce Birchard, and myself to launch a 501(c)(4) to allow us to effectively raise funds to lobby for action on climate change and other issues of concern to Friends. Quaker Action Mid-Atlantic Region (quakeract.org) joins several other “mini FCNLs” (Friends Committee on National Legislation) across the country that are focused in a specific region. So far over 300 people have joined Quaker Action to advocate for climate action more effectively in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. One of our recent action alerts advocates for moving Pennsylvania from 8 percent renewable electricity to 30 percent by 2030.

But change doesn’t happen all at once. It happens little by little, as actions grow into a movement, and then rapidly, as the movement captures the general imagination.

Eileen Flanagan joined the Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) in 2011 after seeing their demonstration at the Philadelphia Flower Show. Over the years, she has authored several books and served in several leadership roles, taking on PNC Bank to end coal mining by mountain-top removal and more recently to pressure Vanguard, the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels. This goes to the heart of how corporate greed drives climate change. Such greed embodies spiritual hunger, but the droughts, storms, and climate related conflict driven by fossil fuel emissions cause literal hunger. By mobilizing Quakers and others into focused nonviolent direct action, EQAT highlights a selected part of a system that is out of alignment. Eileen has found joy, fulfillment, and empowerment through her work in EQAT, partly through friendship and community and partly from a sense that our work really is addressing “the world’s deep hunger.” She is now taking a break from her leadership activities to write her next book, titled Common Ground, which is due out this summer.

Ed Dreby, Pamela Haines, and I have been speaking and writing about the way our growth economy—seeking to constantly increase gross domestic product to keep shareholders happy—contributes to climate change and the way Friends’ relationship to money is part of that. In this work, we’ve been supported by Quaker Institute for the Future, among other organizations. As Friends who aspire to live with integrity, we should acknowledge that money is not just a medium of exchange but is also a tool of oppression. In our global economy today, money is generated from debt that earns interest, extracting a share of each borrower’s productivity as profit for the lenders. Productivity and economic growth have increased dramatically in the last half century, but very little of that is seen in increased income for ordinary people, who struggle increasingly just to make ends meet. Instead, it is used to pay the interest, thereby fueling the rise of the billionaire class and overshooting planetary limits in the process. We need to move toward a circular economy which doesn’t grow—at least materially—any more than is necessary so that all life on this planet can flourish. Such a shift would upset the status quo in the same way that Jesus did when he expelled the money lenders from the temple.

Meanwhile, other Friends are hard at work on the justice aspect. Friend O calls on us to recognize that community is the ecosystem. How we tend to the community is how we tend to the ecosystem, and if we destroy the ecosystem, then we will be annihilated. She invokes the image of the ecosystem as a womb in which cell-to-cell communication, sharing of resources, and recognizing our “inseparable oneness” are essential. If we took our cue from the law of the womb, we would be implementing the patterns of life, but instead, we are employing the patterns of the predator: taking what we want and, as much as possible, avoiding the consequences. O says people must recognize that “we are all alchemists, but rather than changing lead into gold, we need to change fear into love,” something we really can do especially if we do it together! O’s work extends outward from climate in many directions, including difficult conversations about trauma and reparations. She helps to expose violence toward people and toward the Earth—violence that was normalized and unseen—through touching and feeling it, so we can heal together as a community.

Although it had several earlier incarnations, the Eco-Justice Collaborative (EJC) of PhYM was formed to bring together all of these different areas of economic and ecological justice work. The group has been clerked for the past 12 years by Ruth Darlington and Patricia Finley, who was inspired by Carson’s Silent Spring, Ehrlich’s Population Bomb, and by the work of Margaret Mansfield and Ed Dreby. Pat’s own work has focused on bringing Friends together in a sustained community to address eco-justice: from carbon footprint reduction to policy advocacy. It is through spiritually grounded community building that movements can grow and be sustained. She finds hope in spreading a message of reverence for creation and love for our neighbors, attending to antiracism, equity, and mercy.

What does that future look like? Can you see it? I see more sharing, more cooperation, more compassion, and more engagement to be essential parts of that vision, and above all, I see hope. What do you see?

Bruce Birchard notes the continued resistance to climate action from political, financial, business, and some labor leaders, and he finds it tragic. But giving up is not an option. As highly privileged people living in a rich and powerful nation, we may survive for some decades the consequences of the climate crisis. Yet we, more than anyone else, bear the most responsibility. To give up means consigning the poorest and least powerful in our global family to suffering and sometimes death from the most disastrous impacts of a rapidly warming planet Earth. To stay engaged, Bruce recharges frequently by spending time with his grandchildren and getting out into nature.

Climate change and climate conflict may necessitate the relocation of between 20 and 30 percent of the world’s population over the next century. Given that we are in large part to blame, will we welcome them as the Bible instructs (Lev. 19:33–34), or will we build walls and barriers to keep them away? Resettlement work is going to be an increasing part of living our witness, as more and more people flee climate catastrophe and the violent conflicts caused by it.

We really are in the midst of a long emergency, and we need to take a long view to address it. Jackie Bonomo finds that emphasizing community, equality, and peace, and living into those values with integrity is the best way to reach people. Young people see the tsunami of problems caused by climate inaction, and they raise good trouble— speaking truth to power—which she finds hopeful. Our species is characterized by great adaptability—finding liveable habitat from the tropics to the arctic—but we have only been around for an eyeblink in the scheme of evolution. In all of our three-hundred-thousand-year history as Homo sapiens, we’ve adapted to ice ages and heat waves, but the climate has never changed this much this fast. Adaptation doesn’t mean cranking up the AC; we only survive if the complex web of life that supports us survives. In The Story of the Human Body, author Daniel E. Lieberman notes that our adaptive success is inextricably entwined with our unique ability to communicate, share a vision, and cooperate in bringing it about. Hope comes from accepting the present and envisioning a brighter future. It is, to some extent, self-fulfilling. It certainly has been a consuming activity for me.

I’ve accepted the idea that the problem may not be “fixed” within my lifetime, and perhaps not in yours, but it’s essential for us to imagine a new story about the way it can be turned around in time for today’s grandchildren and their grandchildren to have a liveable world where they can still be happy. What does that future look like? Can you see it? I see more sharing, more cooperation, more compassion, and more engagement to be essential parts of that vision, and above all, I see hope. What do you see?