FOUNDATION: What's Your Why?
The moral basis for urgent energy action
Several of my earliest memories in life involve waking up and being unable to breathe. Unable to call out for help, I would struggle down the hallway gasping for air that felt like sandpaper as it was pulled and pushed between the swollen flesh of my throat. The sound produced is often referred to as a “bark.” If I was lucky my parents would hear this sound before I even got to their room, and they would rush me into the bathroom grabbing a towel to put over my head, as they’d help me lean over the bathtub, head next to the spigot blasting out scalding hot water. It might take 5, 10, or 15 minutes — an eternity to a child, and surely to parents as well — for my throat to open up enough that my rescue inhaler could even begin to work. And if it didn’t by the time the hot water started running out, it would mean another morning of watching the sun come up in the emergency room, hooked up to a nebulizer.
The catastrophe has been with us all along.
In our communities. Where our neighbors work. Where our children play. Our energy system has wrought immeasurable damage to the people we love, to the planet we depend on, and to our pocketbooks. The energy system we have today represents decades of carefully orchestrated public policy neglect and failure.
I grew up three miles downwind of the Pleasant Prairie coal plant, which we innocently referred to as the “cloud factory.” At home, we regularly opened the windows to let in “fresh air.” Somehow, it actually wasn’t until I reached graduate school that I realized the reason I could so easily borrow an inhaler from a friend or grandparent growing up was not normal, or a lucky coincidence, but that the prevalence of asthma in my community could best be described as a policy of “slow violence.”
It turns out that industry lobbyists did such a good job steering the Clean Air Act of 1970 towards VISIBLE causes of air pollution, that it wouldn’t be until 1997, when I was 8 years old, that Congress would revisit the issue to give the EPA power to regulate the particles small enough to pass through the lining of our lungs, aka “PM2.5.“ Big, visible, particles are simply cheaper to remove, and harder to lie to the public about.
Denial. Doubt. Delay. This is has been the industry playbook for over a century. Exxon knew… and so did the rest. And if you want to know how they keep getting away with putting profit over people, decade after decade, look no further than Drilled Podcast.
The less we know about energy, the more license the industry has to pollute and profit — and the more children who will have to grow up with asthma.
I refuse to be complicit in the polluting of our air.
That’s my why.
Why Talking About Morals, Matters
In my energy advocacy work over the last six years, the most common question I’m asked, directly or indirectly, is “Why should I pay more for _______?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do. (And it feels good to do the right thing if you can).”
That, I’m convinced is the answer people actually looking for. That is the answer I wish I gave each and every time I was asked. But that is not the answer, nor even the type of answer, that nonprofit professionals or academically-educated people, like myself, are trained to give.
The question being asked is about cost, so I should respond with a benefit, right? I am being presented with a limited fact (or a misperception), and I should expand the context of their understanding with additional facts, so they can properly weigh the costs and benefits to arrive back at our initial mutual interest in the climate, right?
Change is threatening. Costs are threatening. The economy AND the climate are threatening. Trading a small quantity of one threat for a little more of another does not address the underlying anxiety of the question. Likewise, facts have never been known to be an effective remedy for anxiety.
Facts are great for when we want to rationalize why we made a decision. But in making actual decisions, we humans by and large rely on feelings. How we feel about ourselves, how we feel about our relationship to others, how we feel about our future, and how we feel we will feel in the future about ourselves or our relationships to others. And it turns out we prefer feeling good to feeling bad.
There are few more effective ways at making humans feel bad, or at least anxious, in this modern world than speaking the language of money — Speaking to the frame of money. Money is not how we measure ourselves, but how we measure how we’ve compromised ourselves to protect what we actually value.
There’s a reason product specifications are an afterthought in most marketing. We are typically not being sold the benefits of a product, but the fear and insecurity of life without the product. A loss in social status. Being left behind. Being unprepared. Not being likable. Not being lovable. Not belonging.
Yes, we must all make a living, but how we choose to live within our means and want be seen by others is a moral consideration. What do I value? What do I want to be seen valuing? What do I see the people whose opinions I value, valuing?
When people are expressing their anxieties, they are not looking for additional facts to weigh and analyze — they are looking for moral guidance.
“Should I?” “Yes, it is the right thing to do (if you can).”
“It is the right thing to do,” is an expression of values. It is an expression of your values. It is an invitation for them to mirror your values—and to live into their own values. It is a vulnerable expression because it also invites accountability.
“So you’ve done it too?” “Yeah, and it was a big relief!”
And ideally also, it’s an invitation for you to share your own story.
“A relief?” “Yeah, let me tell you why…”
Why are we here?
In the 1973 book, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, by economist and environmentalist E.F. Schumacher, he identifies education — specifically “metaphysical” education — as humanity’s most important resource.
When people ask for education they normally mean something more than mere training, something more than mere knowledge of facts, and something more than mere diversion. Maybe they cannot themselves formulate precisely what they are looking for; but I think what they are really looking for is ideas that would make the world, and their own lives, intelligible to them. When a thing is intelligible you have a sense of participation; when a thing is unintelligible you have a sense of estrangement.
A central aim of Green Neighbor Challenge has always been to cultivate “agency” or our ability to participate in the energy economy. Our guiding values are “creating hope through collective action,” and “community capacities for self determination.” It is not enough to merely address the symptoms of the climate crisis, but we must all be involved in the solution to address the sense of alienation that helped create it.
Education can help us only if it produces “whole men.” The truly educated man is not a man who knows a bit of everything, not even the man who knows all the details of all subjects (if such a thing were possible): the “whole man” in fact, may have little detailed knowledge of facts and theories, he may treasure the Encyclopaedia Britannica because “she knows and he needn’t,” but he will be truly in touch with the centre. He will not be in doubt about his basic convictions, about his views on the meaning and purpose of his life. He may not be able to explain these matters in words, but the conduct of his life will show a certain sureness of touch which stems from his inner clarity.
When we allow ourselves to be ruled by fear, by our basest instincts for survival, we withdraw from cooperation, from relationship, and even from action unless strictly necessary, to conserve our energy. When we instead cultivate connection with our inner story and fundamental convictions, we are able to act generously, collectively, & out of abundance to achieve impossible feats as agents of our own history.
The problems of education are merely reflections of the deepest problems of our age… We are suffering from a metaphysical disease, and the cure must therefore be metaphysical. Education which fails to clarify our central convictions is mere training or indulgence. For it is our central convictions that are in disorder, and, as long as the present anti-metaphysical temper persists, the disorder will grow worse.
What I take E.F. Schumacher’s lesson to be is that it is not enough in an age of misinformation (or scientism) to have the facts on our side. We must master and share our own stories if we are to speak to the generalized anxiety of others, while inviting them to reconnect with their own values and stories so we can work together towards a common purpose.
What’s Your Why?
I’d like to invite you now to ask yourself why you care about the environment. Why do you care about other people or our shared future? What is the purpose of your life, and how does energy action fit into it? Was it one formative experience —one sudden ‘aha’ moment or epiphany? Or the gradual accumulation of experiences, and practices into a greater worldview or way of being?
Whatever it is that comes to mind, please share it in the comments below. Let us practice our own stories together. To not only build our own sense of community, but to develop your own ability to share it with others.
There are no right or wrong stories that lead us into action. Please accept each story shared in our community as a gift, not an invitation for debate. Always be kind.
If you are not sure what your story is, or feel like there are more layers to your story you are still unearthing, I’d invite you all to give a listen to Wallace Shawn, a professional actor, unpack his own story, in a life full of unpacking the stories of others.
This newsletter is a labor of love. If you found it valuable, please continue to share it and invite others to join this community. This issue took longer than I had hoped to complete, but my commitment to you is one of quality over quantity. Environmental groups like Green Neighbor Challenge are navigating a hostile funding environment and are in need of more public support than ever. If you’re able to chip in to support my work, I would be most grateful and humbled! Thank you to all who already have and do!
Up Next: I plan to answer the question, “What does a home energy transition look like?” and lay out a roadmap of topics for future posts (and home energy action)!