Climate Action & Staying Power: Together Long Enough

Olympian Fields of Action Series: #19

All of the seven characteristics/imperatives/Movement-building goals of the Climate Movement are interrelated. But the last two are in a mutually reinforcing symbiotic relationship. To fulfill the Better Future Covenant, to live out our Ten Movement Values of love, justice, beauty, freedom, creativity, wisdom, pragmatism, non-violence, sustainability and success, to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better, to make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful, to make hope happen, our world more just, and our future come faster, on all of our Olympian Fields of Action we must be together enough, long enough.

That’s because we must be together enough for as long as it takes. 2050 and thereafter, throughout this Century and beyond — that’s our timeframe. We cannot be like vernal pools that spring up and briefly burst with life and activity and then disappear. Many movements are like this, but we cannot be.

In the US the Trump years have taught us this. Not that we needed such an awful lesson. The climate challenge itself should have taught us that it demands decades of sustained commitment to collective action.

Being together enough is essential to our being active long enough; it can keep us together longer; and the need for longevity can motivate us to keep coming together, because being together enough, long enough is essential to achieving our Major Goal.

For those of you who are Climate Movement Artist-Athletes and have made The Climate Movement Promise, you have made a sustained commitment to collective action over time to overcome climate change by achieving a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

Our Great Cloud of Witnesses

In the United States and around the world pollution activists have been at it since the 19th Century, about 150 years of activism, of people just like us trying to make our world a better place.

And of course our heritage includes all those striving for freedom and justice throughout the 200,000 years of human existence. The interwoven threads of justice and freedom are bound together in every human heart — in our hearts.

They are bound together in the hearts of the Hebrew Prophets, Jesus of Nazareth, Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida Wells, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Dorothy Day, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Rachel Carson, Nelson Mandela, Wangari Maathai, Harvey Milk — as well as contemporary leaders like Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg.

These are our forebears and our leaders today. Their lives, their examples, tell us to stay true to our calling, our commitment to climate action, to stopping bad stuff, setting wrong right, and making things better.

CATS Have Nine+ Lives

As a lone individual, how long will you last? On a Climate Action Team or CAT — where we meet, support, and act — you can double, triple, quadruple, quintuple that. Maybe more.

How long will your CAT last? If your CAT is supported in some way by an organization, a coalition, a faith community or some combination, you will last longer, perhaps much longer. Your CAT can have at least nine lives!

CATS worldwide could last longer if they appoint members to be “keepers” or guardians of each of the Ten Movement Values (or the values affirmed by the CAT) and the Better Future Covenant. The keeper’s role is to keep each one alive by facilitating the actualization of their particular Value. Keepers will be on the lookout for how the CAT is living in and living out their Value, and report to the CAT their observations, praising the group for fulfilling the Value, or encouraging the CAT to more fully live in and live out love, justice, beauty, creativity, wisdom, pragmatism, non-violence, sustainability, and success.

Similarly, the CAT can appoint a “joy-spotter,” who raises up joys within the CAT and those throughout The Climate Movement.

This is the great cause of our time and one of the greatest expressions of freedom of of our age. It can be the great cause of our lives; it is one that will outlive us.

Our lives themselves are ephemeral pools, which makes every moment so utterly precious as it will never come again. Finitude, history, and the fact that there will never be another you combine to create a continual kairotic stream of opportunities. As chronos time ticks by, we have chance upon chance to seize our kairos moments to come back again and again and again to take the field of victory on all of our Olympian Fields of Action, to make a difference that no one else can, to claim our destiny, to create justice and a better world, to live our lives like they matter — because they can; because they do.

More than anything else, it is our love that must keep us moving forward long enough. It is the dynamic nexus of finitude, kairos, and love that continues to lift us to our feet to make our stand, to strive towards our vision. Every precious second of your life is an opportunity to choose love.

And that’s how we will have staying power, our third source of power, to join together with our moral power and our people power to change the world.

It’s time to say Yes — today, tomorrow, and the next day and the next, until our sands of time have run their course and we pass the baton to those who will keep us moving towards victory.

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in our Olympian Fields of Action Series about The Climate Movement. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you are doing.