What's becoming increasingly clear is that the way we're living in the rich west is not sustainable. We simply cannot go on with the amount of consumption we currently have, constantly buying and throwing away electronic devices, expecting to be able to fly several times a year. This lifestyle is only a few decades old, though it's the logical endpoint of the growth of capitalism and consumerism for centuries, but this system will soon break. It is also not evenly distributed, and that creates problems too.
What's the alternative? Let's start with something simple that I heard about on a podcast recently - a culture of borrowing. Say I need an electric drill. So I go out and I buy one, use it, and then put it in a cupboard and it remains unused for three years after that. Wouldn't a better system be one in which I borrow an electric drill when I need one, and then return it, and then someone else borrows it? If I only need something like that once or twice a year maybe it makes sense if ten or twelve or twenty of us jointly own something like that. Why do there need to be twenty drills in my street when maybe there only needs to be one shared one? That's the thinking behind libraries of things - and it's a really good idea.
That's the kind of thing we can do right now. But as the climate crisis gets worse and worse (and it really is going to get worse, the only question is how bad) I think we're going to really find that we need each other. We're going to need profound resilience in moments of diminishing resources, extreme weather, food shortages. Even if we deal really well with the climate crisis, at this stage it is impossible to completely cancel it out. We're not fighting to prevent the climate crisis any more, we're fighting to minimise it.
And so we're going to need each other, and if we start now we might just build the kinds of communities that will be resilient enough to weather the storm that is coming. A world where you don't know your neighbours will not serve you well in a crisis. But if we find a way to share resources, starting with little things at the moment, but building to sharing community together, it might just create the kind of world where we can live with fewer resources, but deeper connections. This is a practical issue, but also an emotional and pastoral one. The more I think about it the more I come to the same conclusion: we're going to need each other. And so community building, community organising might be just as important climate work as protests and activism.
I say this as someone who does not find this stuff easy. I know my neighbours, but not that well, and I kind of like the anonymity of a city. Part of me really likes being in a city and being anonymous and doing my own thing. Part of me really likes closing the door at night and watching TV by myself. The idea of a neighbour knocking on the door to borrow something from me does not thrill me.
But I really do think we're going to have to rediscover "the village". We're really going to have to think of ourselves as communities of 200 people who are connected to each other's lives. We're not going to go back to how society was 1000 years ago. But I think there is something of the rediscovery of community that is going to be essential.
What's the alternative? Let's start with something simple that I heard about on a podcast recently - a culture of borrowing. Say I need an electric drill. So I go out and I buy one, use it, and then put it in a cupboard and it remains unused for three years after that. Wouldn't a better system be one in which I borrow an electric drill when I need one, and then return it, and then someone else borrows it? If I only need something like that once or twice a year maybe it makes sense if ten or twelve or twenty of us jointly own something like that. Why do there need to be twenty drills in my street when maybe there only needs to be one shared one? That's the thinking behind libraries of things - and it's a really good idea.
That's the kind of thing we can do right now. But as the climate crisis gets worse and worse (and it really is going to get worse, the only question is how bad) I think we're going to really find that we need each other. We're going to need profound resilience in moments of diminishing resources, extreme weather, food shortages. Even if we deal really well with the climate crisis, at this stage it is impossible to completely cancel it out. We're not fighting to prevent the climate crisis any more, we're fighting to minimise it.
And so we're going to need each other, and if we start now we might just build the kinds of communities that will be resilient enough to weather the storm that is coming. A world where you don't know your neighbours will not serve you well in a crisis. But if we find a way to share resources, starting with little things at the moment, but building to sharing community together, it might just create the kind of world where we can live with fewer resources, but deeper connections. This is a practical issue, but also an emotional and pastoral one. The more I think about it the more I come to the same conclusion: we're going to need each other. And so community building, community organising might be just as important climate work as protests and activism.
I say this as someone who does not find this stuff easy. I know my neighbours, but not that well, and I kind of like the anonymity of a city. Part of me really likes being in a city and being anonymous and doing my own thing. Part of me really likes closing the door at night and watching TV by myself. The idea of a neighbour knocking on the door to borrow something from me does not thrill me.
But I really do think we're going to have to rediscover "the village". We're really going to have to think of ourselves as communities of 200 people who are connected to each other's lives. We're not going to go back to how society was 1000 years ago. But I think there is something of the rediscovery of community that is going to be essential.
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