In March, 2017, I attended a three-day Climate Reality training session in Denver. I remember many moments from that weekend - none more than the moment when Al Gore told us his understanding of change. I didn't write down his precise words, but it went something like this:
In life, change happens very slowly. For a long, long time, it doesn't seem to be happening at all. And then, suddenly, it happens all at once.
It's been five years since I heard Mr. Gore say this, but I've never forgotten his insight. This year, I think, that promise is being fulfilled, right before our eyes. Change, long so slow in coming, is beginning to happen. And perhaps it's even accelerating. Whether we like it or not - whether we're ready for it or not - we appear to be entering an age of revolution.
Since 2017, most of us have been living through hard times. But they've also been slow times. Times of hunkering down at home. Times of caution. Times when nothing - the availability of KN-95s, the re-opening of schools, the approval of vaccines, the end of the Trump administration - seemed to happen fast enough.
Now, my historian's instinct tells me we're about to start living through times that will move at a very different pace. If I'm right, we'll need to keep in mind Dickens' words about the French Revolution. Such times can be - at once - the best and worst of times.
The worst part will, almost certainly, involve the baked-in consequences of our rapidly heating and dangerously over-populated planet. There will be extreme weather events. In portions of the world, centuries-old agricultural patterns will be disrupted - forcing millions of people to migrate in search of a way to make a living. There will be wars over water, over arable land, over borders.
In many cases, these changes will not - at least at first - appear to threaten our own way of life here in the Northwest. But our respite will be brief, and we'd be wise to prepare ourselves for the worst.
If you're not in the habit of following the news on climate change, you'd be wise to start - because that news no longer consists of dire predictions for the future. Events are transpiring daily - some big, some small, some which seem merely curious. And if you keep an eye on these things, over a few months, patterns will begin to form. A bigger picture will emerge.
You'll begin seeing the certain events as fore-shocks of a coming age of change. The sense you make of all this will be for you to decide - but following climate news will be a kind of personal Rohrschach test.
Personally, for some years now, I've relied on The Guardian as my primary news source in many areas - climate among them. I like that The Guardian is free, with virtually no firewalls. The Guardian does, occasionally, ask for voluntary contributions - and I contribute. But I like having the choice.
I also like that, being a British publication, it's far more globally-oriented than most US sources. I especially like that I can use it to watch PMQs. (If that's not your thing, no worries. But I love it.)
Moreover, while I'm a lot more centrist than most of The Guardian's opinion writers, I greatly admire George Monbiot, the paper's main observer on climate matters. He's incredibly well-informed, generally manages to offer a fresh perspective, and somehow contrives to present terrifying news in a calm, rational tone.
The Guardian also features a Climate Crisis section - with several new stories every day. Today, for example, there's a story about rising suicide rates related to climate "doomerism" - focusing on the April 22 death by self-immolation of Wynn Bruce, an American Buddhist and climate activist who set himself ablaze on the steps of the Supreme Court. Wynn's self-sacrifice reminded me of the protests of Vietnamese Buddhists at the height of the war in Southeast Asia. Those protests were dramatic, but seemed to happen in another world. Wynn was a 50-year-old photographer from Boulder, Colorado.
Today's other stories are less sensational, but they illustrate the wide reach of the climate crisis. One is about a large study of sleep habits around the globe. In parts of the world where air conditioning and electric fans are not widely available, there seems to be correlation between hotter nights and serious sleep loss.
Another story involves a 50% decline in the harvest of the tiny seeds used to make Dijon mustard - due to heating in the areas of France and Canada which provide the greatest part of the world's supply.
Now, I can easily imagine how climate deniers would dismiss each of these stories. A man who sets himself on fire might be mentally ill. The fact that millions of people in India and equatorial parts of the Third World are missing sleep won't necessarily cause comfortable First-Worlder to lose sleep. And one can, I suppose, live without Dijon mustard.
But two or three stories a day - some catastrophic, some on a more personal level, some even curious - and you start to realize that the worst of times might well be upon us.
At the same time, there's beginning to be reason for hope from - of all places - the world of politics.
Just today, news comes from Australia's national elections. After nine years in power, the Liberal Party - which is actually a conservative party with a disgraceful record on climate - is out. The Liberals' loss doesn't seem to have come about because their traditional rivals - the left-leaning Labor Party - did especially well. The real change comes from new seats won by the Greens, and even more, from successful challenges to Liberal incumbents from centrist, climate-oriented candidates running as independent "teal" (blue-green) challengers.
Indeed, in much of the truly democratic world, new parties and candidates seem to be emerging to challenge existing power structures. And often, these new people are relatively centrist on many issues, but dead serious about the climate.
In this regard, Emmanuel Macron - just re-elected to a second five-year term as President of France - must be considered an early leader. But this year, in the United States - and particularly in the Northwest - there are encouraging signs of centrist challenges to the two-party duopoly.
In Washington state, Chris Vance, a former chair of the state's Republican Party, quit the GOP in 2017 and became a member of the Lincoln Project. This year, Vance is taking steps to form a new, centrist party in Washington.
In Utah, the state Democratic Party has decided not to run a candidate against incumbent Republican US Senator Mike Lee - throwing its support behind independent Evan McMullin, a sane conservative who challenged Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in a handful of states in 2016.
And in Oregon, long-time state senator Betsy Johnson - a former Democrat - is mounting a well-funded independent campaign against the newly-nominated candidates of the two major parties, Tina Kotek (D) and Christine Drazan (R).
To the best of my knowledge, none of these American challengers is outspokenly pro-environment. All three seem primarily concerned with staking out a position nearer the center than either of the two major parties.
I wish them luck. But my sense is that mere centrism will have pretty limited appeal in a time of rapid change. The Climate Crisis is pushing its way onto the stage. It will not be denied. And politicians who fail to address it will - if not this year, in a very few years - find themselves talking to increasingly fewer people.
Late last winter, when I decided to run for the Oregon House of Representatives, I was motivated by two issues - the Climate Crisis, and the crisis in American (and Western) democracy. To me, these two issues seem inescapably connected through the impact of big money and corporate corruption on our politics.
I'll go into my thinking in later posts - and on the campaign trail. But in terms of simple, pragmatic political strategy, it seems to me that it will be impossible to build a new, centrist movement or party on the basis of something as uninspiring as mere centrism.
Indeed, that approach seems to be taking a tattered page out of the Democrats' and Republicans' play-books: You don't need a vision of a better future. You don't need to address great challenges. All you have to do is say, "Vote for us. We're not as bad as the other guys."
That ain't gonna work. Not in these times.
For me, the Australian "teals" got it right. We do need the sort of unity more centrist, problem-solving candidates can bring to the table. And the proper starting-place is for new candidates is to address the greatest existential threats we're facing - the threat of a heating planet, and the threat of losing our ability to govern ourselves democratically, at a time when we truly need effective leadership.
At any rate, that's what I'm betting on.
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