I’ve been on the bleeding edge of sustainability for nearly as long as I can remember. It’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, I feel alive with purpose and meaning, and I live a life that is vibrant, alive, and ever-changing. On the other hand, I often feel a bit disconnected from my fellow humans. It can be hard for others to understand where I’m coming from or connect with my drive and impassioned speech.
About a year ago, I started honing in on the word resilience. I see what’s coming: a disrupted climate that seeds chaos in my fellow man; the unending fear that everything we worked for was for naught, and in it’s place, the sharp pain of realization that what we’ve built our lives and societies around is a house of cards. We have lost the capacity to self-sustain, and our global supply chains are on treacherous and shaky ground.
Around the world, communities are already feeling the effects of the climate crisis. For them, the crisis has already descended. Change is surely coming to us as well. So what are we going to do about it?
Twenty years ago, the world was more ignorant and hopeful place. A small collection of us picked up the baton of sustainability and pleaded for our communities, our societies to consider the future of our grandchildren’s grandchildren.
Time passed. We’ve entered a new age. Instead of worrying about the fourth generation of my future lineage, I worry about the lives of my teenage children. We have passed beyond the age of sustainability and entered the age of resilience.
I don’t expect you to believe me. This isn’t my first rodeo. When I moved to radical sustainable community in 2005, nearly everyone thought I was ludicrous.
Fifteen years later, the lessons I gained there have prepared me to see what is coming, and what must be done. We need to become resilient. Interdependent. Connected in real and meaningful ways. Simply so that we can hope to survive.
You don’t have to believe me. But I invite you to suspend judgment: wait 15 years and see what the world brings.