I brought up the subject of climate change at a dinner party over the weekend, giving my quick pitch about how we must immediately end fossil fuel subsidies and invest in clean energy. 
I got nods all around, especially from the women, but my husband didn’t talk to me the rest of the night. Later he asked “Why do you always have to be such a downer? Why do you insist on hijacking every conversation?”
Thinking it over, I realized he was right. I can be an awkward nerdy jerk sometimes. I get frustrated at something someone says and just blurt it all out like some crazy lady on a street corner. My frustration has grown over the decades from seeing just how little has been accomplished toward what Bucky called “the most critical task our species will ever face.”
I did not choose this issue. It chose me the same day I spent my four hours with Buckminster Fuller on the sky deck of the John Hancock Building in Chicago (which I learned this weekend doesn’t even let you go out there anymore!) It has been some thirty years since that talk on the sky deck, and a couple of days since that dinner party, and what comes to me now is one of the last things Bucky said to me.
“It is most important that you spend time really working to get at the truth of things. Once you do, and you know a certain amount about it, you must dare yourself to speak out, and you must work hard to find ways to influence the thinking of others. Whether or not humanity survives will be an individual decision. We must each speak up.”
So what is the truth of things, as far as I can see? Well, here’s where it starts:
To achieve the necessary slow down of carbon emissions, we must immediately END FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES. At present, according to Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, world governments provide over $1.7 TRILLION in subsidies to help energy companies frack us, excavate vast polluting tar sands, cross our small towns and most pristine lands with pipes that burst, and with rail cars and derricks that explode and spill. While we are paying for this “progress” we could be developing more solar, wind, geothermal and other perfectly clean energies that would also be free, which is of course why it is not happening. We simply must stop subsidizing our own demise.
We must invest that same amount of money to DEVELOP CLEAN ENERGY.
Carbon emissions are still growing fast. It is long past time to slow them down. We must remain below a 2 degree C increase in temperature change, and the window on this is closing. Brilliant scientists are begging us to panic. Yet we allow ourselves to be distracted by wars for more oil and football and baseball. Go Giants. But let’s do panic. Let’s do speak up on social media, to our representatives, and at dinner parties.
We can explain that we do have the technology and the economic ability to accomplish 100% clean energy. That we are just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz: The power was always ours. All we have to do is decide to use it. See TheSolutionsProject.org for more on this.
A clean energy revolution will also create millions of jobs. There is no longer any excuse for allowing the fossil fuel industry to continue to subvert the clean energy revolution that will save us and change everything. We cannot allow our government to continue to subsidize our demise. As Bucky put it:
“The only reason we are not allowed to tap vast and readily available energies is that business hasn’t found a way to put a meter on the sun.”
It is not going to be easy to change the direction of this massive train on the tracks, because it requires that we change some fundamental thinking about how things work, but unless we find the courage to speak up we do not even have a fighting chance.
We can and should all work on finding kinder, gentler ways to smack people upside the head with the truth, since, as the Dali Lama said, unless you can do it with kindness, you shouldn’t do it at all.
But we will all sleep better at night knowing that at least we tried; that we had the courage to speak up, even if our spouses got a little miffed.
It is a war of words and we are not yet winning.
Please share Buckyworld.
Catastrophic environmental events brought on by climate change will take a heavy toll on the human psyche, and just the emotional stress of knowing can be devastating. Looking to Bucky’s wisdom for some new light to share on this problem, here’s what I found, all from the forward of his seminal 1981 book, Critical Path:
BUCKYIDEAS 