I love coral reefs
I love how each coral looks like it’s a
plant or a brain but it’s actually more
like a high-rise apartment or a
neighborhood for thousands of tiny
little animals called coral polyps and
each of these polyps thrives off the
energy of even tinier photosynthetic
algae living in their cell tissues this
relationship between the coral polyp and
the algae began 500 million years ago
and it’s the foundation for the most
biodiverse ecosystem on the planet Earth
today and not only that coral reefs have
gone extinct before numerous times and
they’ve really it takes long 20 million
years or so to do it but they come back
if that’s not resilience I don’t know
what is in the summer of 2011 I came
across a scientific prediction that said
coral reefs would collapse globally in
2016 and that they’re likely to go
extinct by the end of this century if we
don’t take immediate serious action to
address climate change
I felt devastated I didn’t want to
believe it but these predictions are
coming true the Great Barrier Reef has
collapsed by 50% since 2016 and more
reefs as well are dying because the
ocean is heating up too much for too
long
the domino effect of this one climate
change impact alone is enough to crack
the foundations of civilization as we
know it about 1 billion people depend on
coral reefs for their food and they’re
in
come reefs also help protect coastal
areas from storm surges which we know
are getting more frequent and more
intense due to climate change I don’t
want to see the coral reefs go extinct
within my lifetime I want my
grandchildren’s grandchildren to know
their beauty can you imagine a trip to
the aquarium in 2112 where the parents
and the teachers are saying well maybe
in 20 million years we’ll see one of
these in the wild again nobody wants
that so we have a choice to make and we
have to make it soon scientists are
telling us that human activity are the
greatest cause of the climate change
happening today and that by ignoring
this we’re quickly creating a scenario
in which climate change will spiral out
of our control so what do we do by we of
course I’m talking about we humans but
I’m particularly talking about we humans
who depend on fossil fuels for what we
eat for how we travel for how we thrive
as a society the Eco Buddhist
philosopher and author Joanna Macy
describes our civilization as the
industrial growth society growth is our
imperative production is done on massive
industrial scales and we treat the earth
largely as our resource commodity to
exploit and the dumping ground for our
waste Joanna Macy lays out three lenses
through which people see this present
moment the first lens is business as
usual this is the widespread celebration
and commitment to progressing our
industrial growth society most of our
economic theories political debates and
media that we consume is from this lens
but like an optometrist checking our
vision Joanna Macy asks us to look
through two more lenses the second lens
is called the great unraveling this is
the acknowledgment that
business as usual is causing massive
social and ecological crises a lot of us
are stuck in business as usual and we’re
in denial about these crises and a lot
of people get stuck here to it
acknowledging that we have a big problem
but we feel totally helpless and unable
to do anything about it
I know I’ve been there I’m sure a lot of
you probably have too the third lens is
called the great turning and this is the
perspective that humanity has both the
power and the potential to shift from
business as usual to a more just and
life sustaining society this is a vision
of active hope and determination as Erin
Dottie Roy put it in her book an
ordinary person’s guide to Empire
another world is not only possible she
is on her way on a quiet day I can hear
her breathing each of us has a role to
play in this historic moment our first
and most difficult task is to move
through denial and despair towards a
resolve and readiness to change this
shift first happened for me when I was a
student studying abroad in Costa Rica I
ended up enrolling in a mural painting
class with an environmental muralist by
the name of Esteban Camacho Stevenson a
stay bond had found a mural a wall for
us to paint at a public school in San
Jose the students at this school wanted
to see a mural of the ocean now this is
again in 2011
I am completely concerned about the
degradation of the oceans in fact you
could say I was in despair about this so
when a stave on innocently asks our
little class what we might want to put
in a mural about the ocean this stream
of environmental issues that I’m
overwhelmed about just pours out of my
Esteban was so gracious with me in this
moment
he just started asking questions and
making sketches of the things that I was
saying and we ended up making a
beautiful mural about the connection
between humanity and the ocean painting
this mural was the most therapeutic
thing I’ve ever done in my life with
every brush stroke I was expressing both
my love for the ocean and my despair
over its abuse these things stopped
weighing me down and they were released
into the world transformed into
something new something beautiful that
was creating new impressions and ripples
as a part of people’s everyday landscape
art has this amazing ability to help us
transform and help us to heal it can
communicate across intellectual
emotional and spiritual levels and
action particularly action done in
community with other people is also so
uplifting and it’s a really important
part about being alive so these two
things art and community action have
been like guideposts and guiding
inspiration for me ever since this
experience in 2012 one year later a
group of landowners and activists in
East Texas launched a campaign talk
called the tar sands blockade and they
were trying to physically stop the
construction of the Keystone XL pipeline
through East Texas I was blown away by
the boldness of these people and I was
also upset about the violence and
intimidation that they were experiencing
at the hands of the TransCanada
Corporation and the sheriffs in East
Texas I wanted to go out there but I had
no idea how to be a tree sitter or a
black hater but I knew how to paint and
I knew how to edit videos and take
there are no drill pads or factories or
refineries where I grew up
we just have headquarters for
corporations that own those sorts of
things so I had never met anyone myself
who was affected by land grabs or public
health effects of fossil fuel extraction
until I joined this campaign I quickly
became to learn about the names and the
stories of the communities affected by
tar sands mining in Alberta Canada
these are First Nations indigenous
communities the Athabasca Chipewyan the
Beaver Lake Cree I came to no closer to
home the names of communities along the
Gulf Coast of Texas who are poisoned by
the factories and refineries that these
pipelines lead to Manchester Port Arthur
the people in these communities didn’t
grow up like me they don’t look like me
it became impossible for me to ignore
the fact that race and class are the
biggest predictors of how polluted
someone’s community is we take for
granted a healthy environment the same
way that we take for granted good health
until we don’t have it anymore but this
analogy falls short because you can’t
pass off a personal sickness or an
injury on to someone else
the way that we’re systemically passing
on our environmental toxins and
degradation to some communities so that
other communities can be more healthy
and more wealthy environmental justice
is a vision for a world that doesn’t do
that anymore it’s a vision for a world
that is is more equal and it’s a
movement led by the people who are most
affected in order to stop this from
happening this requires a cultural shift
towards what Reverend dr. Martin Luther
King described as the Beloved Community
a radically deeper love and
accountability towards one another and
the places that we call home
perhaps climate change is the final act
in this multi-generational
epic of environmental injustice those
who are most responsible for causing the
climate crisis are currently feeling at
the least because they’re buffered by
the comforts and wealth of our
industrial society those who have done
the least to cause the climate crisis
are currently feeling it the most these
environmental justice leaders are
telling us that the earth is sacred and
has rights of its own they are asking us
to recognize that if we constraint
continue to treat the earth first and
foremost as a resource commodity to
exploit and second most as a dumping
grounds for our waste then we will fail
to address a root cause of the climate
crisis
are we ready to listen to them after all
this is an enormous cultural clash for
us to reconcile our way of life is built
upon centuries of parceling up and
commodifying the earth and centuries of
trying to dismantle or eradicate any
opposing paradigms to this and yet still
in 2018 we see communities and
particularly indigenous nations who
oppose this worldview and who practice
alternatives and considering the fact
that 80 percent of the remaining
biodiversity on the planet is in
indigenous territories they may have an
idea or two worth spreading about how we
could restore ecological balance on our
planet we each have just one life and
limited bandwidth so we have to start
small with ourselves with our
perspectives relationships and
communities but we also have to think
big and come together bridging these
barriers of race class
cultural divides any that you can
imagine in order to implement solutions
on the scale that is needed one small
way that I’ve begun to do this in my own
life is by working with my neighbors in
Austin Texas to develop a public food
forest the festival beach food forest is
an edible and medicinal landscape on
public parkland in the heart of Austin
we’ve converted an empty field of
Bermuda grass into an abundant community
Commons every sprig of rosemary and
lavender every pecan and fig and
pomegranate on this park belongs
entirely to everyone the food forest
puts free food on people’s table it
pulls carbon down from the air into our
soil and water down to replenish our
aquifers can you imagine a world where
instead of relying on a food system that
needs fossil fuels and pesticides and
workers getting six dollars a day for
hard labor we can rely on abundant
edible and medicinal landscapes in our
neighborhoods all over the world there
are people who are implementing
solutions like this solutions that are
grounded in the values of environmental
justice and the strength and creativity
of community partnership yes the
challenges humanity faces today are
daunting
they are massive I hope that as we face
these things as we move through our own
denial and despair about them and move
towards a readiness to change that we
can look to the coral reefs for
inspiration and a working model the
beauty abundance and resilience of coral
reefs is built upon millions of small
perhaps we can save the coral reefs and
billions of other lives too by
organizing ourselves in such a fashion
after all we are in this together
another world is totally possible so let’s make it happen thank you
I love how each coral looks like it’s a
plant or a brain but it’s actually more
like a high-rise apartment or a
neighborhood for thousands of tiny
little animals called coral polyps and
each of these polyps thrives off the
energy of even tinier photosynthetic
algae living in their cell tissues this
relationship between the coral polyp and
the algae began 500 million years ago
and it’s the foundation for the most
biodiverse ecosystem on the planet Earth
today and not only that coral reefs have
gone extinct before numerous times and
they’ve really it takes long 20 million
years or so to do it but they come back
if that’s not resilience I don’t know
what is in the summer of 2011 I came
across a scientific prediction that said
coral reefs would collapse globally in
2016 and that they’re likely to go
extinct by the end of this century if we
don’t take immediate serious action to
address climate change
I felt devastated I didn’t want to
believe it but these predictions are
coming true the Great Barrier Reef has
collapsed by 50% since 2016 and more
reefs as well are dying because the
ocean is heating up too much for too
long
the domino effect of this one climate
change impact alone is enough to crack
the foundations of civilization as we
know it about 1 billion people depend on
coral reefs for their food and they’re
in
come reefs also help protect coastal
areas from storm surges which we know
are getting more frequent and more
intense due to climate change I don’t
want to see the coral reefs go extinct
within my lifetime I want my
grandchildren’s grandchildren to know
their beauty can you imagine a trip to
the aquarium in 2112 where the parents
and the teachers are saying well maybe
in 20 million years we’ll see one of
these in the wild again nobody wants
that so we have a choice to make and we
have to make it soon scientists are
telling us that human activity are the
greatest cause of the climate change
happening today and that by ignoring
this we’re quickly creating a scenario
in which climate change will spiral out
of our control so what do we do by we of
course I’m talking about we humans but
I’m particularly talking about we humans
who depend on fossil fuels for what we
eat for how we travel for how we thrive
as a society the Eco Buddhist
philosopher and author Joanna Macy
describes our civilization as the
industrial growth society growth is our
imperative production is done on massive
industrial scales and we treat the earth
largely as our resource commodity to
exploit and the dumping ground for our
waste Joanna Macy lays out three lenses
through which people see this present
moment the first lens is business as
usual this is the widespread celebration
and commitment to progressing our
industrial growth society most of our
economic theories political debates and
media that we consume is from this lens
but like an optometrist checking our
vision Joanna Macy asks us to look
through two more lenses the second lens
is called the great unraveling this is
the acknowledgment that
business as usual is causing massive
social and ecological crises a lot of us
are stuck in business as usual and we’re
in denial about these crises and a lot
of people get stuck here to it
acknowledging that we have a big problem
but we feel totally helpless and unable
to do anything about it
I know I’ve been there I’m sure a lot of
you probably have too the third lens is
called the great turning and this is the
perspective that humanity has both the
power and the potential to shift from
business as usual to a more just and
life sustaining society this is a vision
of active hope and determination as Erin
Dottie Roy put it in her book an
ordinary person’s guide to Empire
another world is not only possible she
is on her way on a quiet day I can hear
her breathing each of us has a role to
play in this historic moment our first
and most difficult task is to move
through denial and despair towards a
resolve and readiness to change this
shift first happened for me when I was a
student studying abroad in Costa Rica I
ended up enrolling in a mural painting
class with an environmental muralist by
the name of Esteban Camacho Stevenson a
stay bond had found a mural a wall for
us to paint at a public school in San
Jose the students at this school wanted
to see a mural of the ocean now this is
again in 2011
I am completely concerned about the
degradation of the oceans in fact you
could say I was in despair about this so
when a stave on innocently asks our
little class what we might want to put
in a mural about the ocean this stream
of environmental issues that I’m
overwhelmed about just pours out of my
Esteban was so gracious with me in this
moment
he just started asking questions and
making sketches of the things that I was
saying and we ended up making a
beautiful mural about the connection
between humanity and the ocean painting
this mural was the most therapeutic
thing I’ve ever done in my life with
every brush stroke I was expressing both
my love for the ocean and my despair
over its abuse these things stopped
weighing me down and they were released
into the world transformed into
something new something beautiful that
was creating new impressions and ripples
as a part of people’s everyday landscape
art has this amazing ability to help us
transform and help us to heal it can
communicate across intellectual
emotional and spiritual levels and
action particularly action done in
community with other people is also so
uplifting and it’s a really important
part about being alive so these two
things art and community action have
been like guideposts and guiding
inspiration for me ever since this
experience in 2012 one year later a
group of landowners and activists in
East Texas launched a campaign talk
called the tar sands blockade and they
were trying to physically stop the
construction of the Keystone XL pipeline
through East Texas I was blown away by
the boldness of these people and I was
also upset about the violence and
intimidation that they were experiencing
at the hands of the TransCanada
Corporation and the sheriffs in East
Texas I wanted to go out there but I had
no idea how to be a tree sitter or a
black hater but I knew how to paint and
I knew how to edit videos and take
there are no drill pads or factories or
refineries where I grew up
we just have headquarters for
corporations that own those sorts of
things so I had never met anyone myself
who was affected by land grabs or public
health effects of fossil fuel extraction
until I joined this campaign I quickly
became to learn about the names and the
stories of the communities affected by
tar sands mining in Alberta Canada
these are First Nations indigenous
communities the Athabasca Chipewyan the
Beaver Lake Cree I came to no closer to
home the names of communities along the
Gulf Coast of Texas who are poisoned by
the factories and refineries that these
pipelines lead to Manchester Port Arthur
the people in these communities didn’t
grow up like me they don’t look like me
it became impossible for me to ignore
the fact that race and class are the
biggest predictors of how polluted
someone’s community is we take for
granted a healthy environment the same
way that we take for granted good health
until we don’t have it anymore but this
analogy falls short because you can’t
pass off a personal sickness or an
injury on to someone else
the way that we’re systemically passing
on our environmental toxins and
degradation to some communities so that
other communities can be more healthy
and more wealthy environmental justice
is a vision for a world that doesn’t do
that anymore it’s a vision for a world
that is is more equal and it’s a
movement led by the people who are most
affected in order to stop this from
happening this requires a cultural shift
towards what Reverend dr. Martin Luther
King described as the Beloved Community
a radically deeper love and
accountability towards one another and
the places that we call home
perhaps climate change is the final act
in this multi-generational
epic of environmental injustice those
who are most responsible for causing the
climate crisis are currently feeling at
the least because they’re buffered by
the comforts and wealth of our
industrial society those who have done
the least to cause the climate crisis
are currently feeling it the most these
environmental justice leaders are
telling us that the earth is sacred and
has rights of its own they are asking us
to recognize that if we constraint
continue to treat the earth first and
foremost as a resource commodity to
exploit and second most as a dumping
grounds for our waste then we will fail
to address a root cause of the climate
crisis
are we ready to listen to them after all
this is an enormous cultural clash for
us to reconcile our way of life is built
upon centuries of parceling up and
commodifying the earth and centuries of
trying to dismantle or eradicate any
opposing paradigms to this and yet still
in 2018 we see communities and
particularly indigenous nations who
oppose this worldview and who practice
alternatives and considering the fact
that 80 percent of the remaining
biodiversity on the planet is in
indigenous territories they may have an
idea or two worth spreading about how we
could restore ecological balance on our
planet we each have just one life and
limited bandwidth so we have to start
small with ourselves with our
perspectives relationships and
communities but we also have to think
big and come together bridging these
barriers of race class
cultural divides any that you can
imagine in order to implement solutions
on the scale that is needed one small
way that I’ve begun to do this in my own
life is by working with my neighbors in
Austin Texas to develop a public food
forest the festival beach food forest is
an edible and medicinal landscape on
public parkland in the heart of Austin
we’ve converted an empty field of
Bermuda grass into an abundant community
Commons every sprig of rosemary and
lavender every pecan and fig and
pomegranate on this park belongs
entirely to everyone the food forest
puts free food on people’s table it
pulls carbon down from the air into our
soil and water down to replenish our
aquifers can you imagine a world where
instead of relying on a food system that
needs fossil fuels and pesticides and
workers getting six dollars a day for
hard labor we can rely on abundant
edible and medicinal landscapes in our
neighborhoods all over the world there
are people who are implementing
solutions like this solutions that are
grounded in the values of environmental
justice and the strength and creativity
of community partnership yes the
challenges humanity faces today are
daunting
they are massive I hope that as we face
these things as we move through our own
denial and despair about them and move
towards a readiness to change that we
can look to the coral reefs for
inspiration and a working model the
beauty abundance and resilience of coral
reefs is built upon millions of small
perhaps we can save the coral reefs and
billions of other lives too by
organizing ourselves in such a fashion
after all we are in this together
another world is totally possible so let’s make it happen thank you
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