OPINION
BY CAROLINE SMITH
The World is B OR HOW I STOPPED WORRYING AND LEARNED TO LOVE THE EARTH
Y
ou can read all the data sets and statistics you want. Whether it’s depleting carbon emissions in half by 2050 or the last sea turtles on earth, each day is a race to mass extinction. And as much as you want to stop climate change in its tracks, no amount of metal straws or carpools will stop the rate we hurtle towards heatwaves in December and the Port of Long Beach sinking into the Pacific Ocean. This is the existential pain of caring about the climate. As much as you want to change the world, your tiny individual actions seem to change nothing. Climate anxiety and ecological PTSD are very real phenomena that are becoming more prominent. I used to be the same way, having sudden bursts of climate anxiety, wanting to never use a plastic thing again and trying to be environmentally pure. That was until this semester when I enrolled in environmental literature with Professor George Hart here at Long Beach State University. I thought the class would be pretty basic, looking at nature in romantic poetry, the sublime and all that, but it turned out it focused on ecological theory and how to implement it, as well as a service learning element. Restoring a marsh at the Los Cerritos wetlands is a unique kind of homework assignment. I asked Professor Hart what he thinks is special about his class: “The service learning component makes it unique for me. I don’t teach any other class like this, and so connecting what we’re reading in a literature class with actual community work that needs to be done and makes a difference, is really special. It shows students how to take ideas from literature that you don’t think could really apply to anything and find their relevance.” This class ended up completely shifting how I think about the environment and where I learned that I was fine, actually. I needed to relax and chill out, long enough to realize that I was already being ecological.
It’s completely understandable to be stressed out by data dumps. Hearing how the sea levels are rising 0.14 inches a year leaves you with no action to take. You hear that number and are immediately discouraged by the fact that there is nothing you could do to change that. So as much as we want to think that a data set and some graphs can shock the world into changing, there is no clear action to take. A quote from Octavia Butler’s “The Parable of the Sower” explains this better than I could, “It’s better to teach people than to scare them.” People will stay motivated with the climate cause if they are taught the path. What is important is the personal experience. This doesn’t mean a personal experience with a climate disaster, we shouldn’t have to wait for everyone in the world to be caught in a hurricane to believe in climate change, but also interaction with the environment. You should care about the environment for environment’s sake. Because you grew up near a park with a creek that had frogs singing or you went to the beach where sea lions played in the surf. You should be connected to the environment. To see ourselves as a part of the environment instead of the ruler of it, we need to dismantle our anthropocentric view of the world. Anthropocentric means centered around humans, and this current era of Earth’s life is called the anthropocene because of the profound effect we’ve had on Earth’s history. For the most part, the human instinct is to believe we’re at the center of the universe and through innovation and self-realization, we have triumphed over nature. However, if we always have the idea that we are superior to all other parts of the world, we are going to have a lot of trouble finding the motivation to change. You’re not special. Or at least just as special as everything else.
“YOU’RE NOT SPECIAL. OR AT LEAST JUST AS SPECIAL AS EVERYTHING ELSE.”
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4/25/22 2:21 PM
