Want to save the world? Stop arguing.

I’d been in the job for two months when the first one arrived. An email from a stranger. He had read my column in the local paper about local environmental issues and he was angry. I was on a gravy-train, he said (clearly he hadn’t looked at my payslips). I was intent on bringing this country to its knees, he said. Look outside, he said. It’s raining! In June! It’s cold!

Naively, I wrote back. Hadn’t anyone told him I was going to save the world? And anyway, I had science and logic at my disposal. That would soon show him! Except of course it didn’t. He wrote back, this time more rude and aggressive than before, and I defended my corner, and so it continued.

Over the next few years, he emailed me every month or so, or left messages under my online articles. Sometimes he was abusive, sometimes good humored, always they were patronizing. I was young, I was female; how could I possibly know anything of the world or science? We argued a lot and I spent many furious hours replying to him. I was convinced that if I was going to save the world, it mattered what every single person thought. It really did. Besides, a good, well-constructed argument with someone who knows how to argue back is a glorious thing.

But the more I argued, the more I saw a pattern. An incandescent-bulb of tedious discourse, winding round and round and burning huge amounts of energy for such little reward. It wasn’t a playful back-and-forth brain exercise. It was war and it was stalemate. No one was moving anywhere and the growing animosity on both sides was starting to wear. Who were those stupid deniers and their casual disregard for life on Earth? Who are those do-gooding greenies and their pious asceticism?

The rhetoric on “belief” and “converting” made me uncomfortable. This wasn’t about faith, it was about facts. And suddenly lines were being drawn. AGWers on the left, anti-AGWers on the right. During one public debate, a local politician spat venomously that my views on climate change made me a filthy socialist to be spurned and ignored, yet his party expounded policies for the rigid protection for the countryside. People wrote to the local paper complaining about the refuse problem in our city, and then wrote to me to say that forcing people to recycle was a breach of their human rights.

Around the dinner table people would tell me that wind turbines were an affront and solar a con because of the subsidies, but that the government should pour money into nuclear.
I was exhausted and confused. If everyone wanted the same outcome – protected wildlife, a clean world, energy security – then what were we arguing about? Why did climate change even matter?

Six years after I started that job there was the small but growing possibility that I wasn’t going to save the world. Plus there were other things I wanted to do: study for a masters degree, start a family, move to the country, maybe move to another country, maybe do a PhD. But I was stuck arguing over the finer points of how best to recycle the little cardboard tube inside a toilet roll and trying to explain that a wind turbine was not the same as communism. I had changed but the arguments hadn’t. The world had barely moved on but everyone still wanted the same conclusion.

I caught a radio program about a man who stopped talking for 15 years. When asked why, he said one day he had a cold and lost his voice so couldn’t speak. He was surprised at how much he learned just by listening and decided that he was going to keep listening until he knew everything he needed to know. Just listen. A revolutionary idea.

Then I was idly flicking through a book that someone had given me about conflict. One page caught my eye, about how we habitually deny other peoples’ feelings.

“I’m hungry,”says person A.

“But you’ve just eaten,” says the person B.

“I’m cold,” says person A.

“But it’s warm in here,” says person B.

Person A is still cold or still hungry. There’s no resolution to that, it’s a cycle that’s leading nowhere. Just listen, the book suggested. A revolutionary idea.

The angry emailer emailed again. I suggested a phone call and we chatted. He was intelligent and pleasant and we agreed that something would have to replace oil, although we both thought that for different reasons and we disagreed about a lot of other things. We even laughed, and recently he emailed to ask after my well-being and whether there was any pitter-patter of tiny green feet yet.
Then last week a friend tried, for the millionth time, to pick an argument with me about climate change. I found myself saying “Do you know what? I don’t have to argue about climate change anymore. It’s decided. The people who know, know, the people who don’t, don’t. That’s the end of the story. Believe what you like, it’s of no interest to me. There’s nothing to gain in me having this conversation with you.”

My friend considered this for a moment and nodded. Then she started talking. She told me how overfishing makes her furious, how the destruction of the forests leaves her in a rage. We left the conversation in agreement: action needed to be taken.
All of a sudden I didn’t feel like I needed an eco-psychologist any more, but like this.

Now I can start saving the world.

Image: Geisha Boy

The post How I Learned To Stop Arguing About The Environment And Enjoy Life appeared first on EcoSalon.

You better not shout. You better not cry. You better not snake someone’s parking space at the mall cause they might be high. Santa Claus is coming to town! Yay!

At the cost of looting yet another candy coated jingle, it’s the most wonderful time of the year, but also the most stressful. And arguments can ensue over mundane nonsense because we are under pressure to buy what we cannot afford, entertain even though our nests are distressed and lacking luster, and are downing sugar by the barrel at every turn. Here are some of the common tussles we encounter during the holidays:

1. Sacrificial Office Workers

Scrooge is alive and well in America. Just ask many an employee who is being told by the boss to cut their needed vacation, work long hours and forgo the annual holiday party and bonus this year due to hard times. Bah Humbug. If only every boss could be Michael Scott of The Office fame!

2. Shopping Scuffles

They happen wherever there are hordes in a hurry – in a busy street bustling with humans toting many bags, a packed mall parking lot, the line at The Cheesecake Factory, on the road to get to the mall or vacation destination, or with your family over the right thing to buy Nana or teachers. “You got Miss D. a Starbuck’s card last year! It’s so stupid. Get her something better!”

3. Family Break Time Battles

You want to hang around the house and finally get things organized. He wants to drive up the coast and hike, and the kids want to spend all of your money on a “real vacation” that involves sun, water, mediocre food at high prices and cute members of the opposite sex. It’s hard to agree on the best way to spend time away from work at school because everyone has a different idea of how to savor events like New Year’s eve and down time.

4. Disappointment Over Gifts

Taking back lousy gifts is not as simple as it used to be with the exception of department stores like Nordstrom and Macy’s which aren’t as desperate for a sale as the smaller boutiques. You might have been expecting jewelry and he bought you rainboots – believing you would go mad over the way they resemble classic and edgy Frye Durango harness boots. Your kid wanted just about anything from the Apple store yet being the smart parent you are, you opted for flannel pajamas and slippers. Life isn’t fair, but it can be warm and fuzzy.

5. Coming “Home” for Christmas and Feeling 13 Again

Mom has done so much for you and the family, schlepping that 10-foot tree through the door on her back, slaving over the crockpot, shopping like a fiend to get those Uggs in just the right shade of metallic silver. But pleasing her can be a mixed bag. She doesn’t want you to see your old friends if it takes time away from seeing her. Dad doesn’t understand why you don’t pick up your shit at your age, or why you are loafing and watching television instead of helping him repaint the house. Your sister is jealous because you got a designer watch and she got a toaster and your brother’s wife can’t do wrong in your parents’ eyes while you are never on time for dinner and live with a guy who doesn’t make enough money. They all get huffy when you tell them to f— off. Ahh, yes. It’s good to be home.

Images: 8136496@NO5;  NBC; Evergreenkamal; Websterkate; Consumerist; Seanosh

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