Ecological and Social Healing

Multicultural Women's Voices

Jeanine Canty, Jeanine M. Canty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317273417
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is an edited collection of essays by fourteen multicultural women (including a few Anglo women) who are doing work that crosses the boundaries of ecological and social healing. The women are prominent academics, writers and leaders spanning Native American, Indigenous, Asian, African, Latina, Jewish and Multiracial backgrounds. The contributors express a myriad of ways that the relationship between the ecological and social have brought new understanding to their experiences and work in the world. Moreover by working with these edges of awareness, they are identifying new forms of teaching, leading, healing and positive change.

Ecological and Social Healing is rooted in these ideas and speaks to an "edge awareness or consciousness." In essence this speaks to the power of integrating multiple and often conflicting views and the transformations that result. As women working across the boundaries of the ecological and social, we have powerful experiences that are creating new forms of healing.

This book is rooted in academic theory as well as personal and professional experience, and highlights emerging models and insights. It will appeal to those working, teaching and learning in the fields of social justice, environmental issues, women's studies, spirituality, transformative/environmental/sustainability leadership, and interdisciplinary/intersectionality studies.

WORLDVIEW

Spaces In-Between, Prescott National Forest, Arizona by M. Jennifer Chandler.

Vow

Mothers

You gave what

You got; I shall not.

Honey

Hushed daughters

God privileged sons

You gave

What you got

Fathers; I shall not.

—Rachel Bagby

1

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN

MEI MEI EVANS

We are the children of the Age of Enlightenment, and we have brought the world to the brink of ruin by acting under the delusion that humans are separate from the earth, better somehow, in control of it. We believe that humans are the only creatures of spirit in a universe otherwise made up of stones and insensate matter; that the nonhuman world was created for us alone and derives all its value from its usefulness to humanity….

—Kathleen Dean Moore¹

We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves.

—Pope Francis²

Humanity now reaps the deadly harvest of that which the exploitation-based paradigm of western civilization has sown. Our failure to acknowledge and act in accordance with what each of us instinctively senses to be the true interconnectedness of all life has led us to the brink of an unimaginable eventuality: climate change looms as an imminent threat to earthly life as we know it.

Not only has the consumption-oriented lifestyle of developed and developing nations imperiled all human life, but it threatens equally the entirety of what philosopher David Abram has called the “more-than-human” world³ with habitat loss and mass extinctions. As Kathleen Dean Moore, self-described moral philosopher and environmental advocate, puts it:

We believe we can destroy our habitat without also destroying ourselves… Ecological and evolutionary science tell us that this is false; that humans are part of interconnected, interdependent systems; that the thriving of the individual parts is necessary for the thriving of the whole; and that we are created, defined, and sustained by our relationships, both with each other and with the natural world.⁴

Even in the face of mounting evidence to its unsustainability, those relative few who profit from the desecration of the living world and the destruction of its diverse human communities persist in pursuing business as usual in a winner-take-all quest for supremacy. The illogic of corporate capitalism not only exhausts its own supply of resources and fouls its own nest, but it also exacts a fearsome price in human and more-than-human lives and webs of relationship.

I wish in this chapter to try to come to terms with what this juncture in global history means to each of us, to ask what actions we might take individually and collectively to ensure that future generations—both human and wild—will inherit a healthy, flourishing world that offers beauty, spiritual sustenance, and the continuance of both cultural and biodiversity. How do we act on the awareness that all beings are connected in an intricate, extensive lattice of life, now gravely imperiled? What does it mean to be a good human in these circumstances? Should I live to be old, as I hope to do, what is it that I will look back on and take solace in knowing that I did or attempted to do?

Twenty-five years ago it was my destiny to experience firsthand the environmental and social disruptions visited by the Exxon Valdez oil spill on the human and wildlife communities of coastal south central Alaska. I have done my best to bear witness to this tumultuous experience in my novel, Oil and Water, which seeks to dramatize not only the unprecedented environmental destruction of that event but something that degraded the relationships of the area’s human inhabitants as well: the unholy bargain proposed by the Exxon corporation (with the federal government’s and the State of Alaska’s complicity) that enabled many to profit from the disaster, to become “spillionaires.”⁵ British Petroleum’s horrific Deepwater Horizon debacle in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, as well as Royal Dutch Shell’s plundering of Nigeria, among other oil companies’ questionable conduct worldwide, have done nothing to change my low opinion and mistrust of their industry. The generally unethical, rapacious, and polluting behavior of petrochemical corporations worldwide has led many of us to conclude that “the way the fossil fuel industry conducts its business is not all right with me.” Happily, the divestment movement is spreading throughout the world, bringing such pressure to bear that even the philanthropic Rockefeller Brothers Fund, heir to the fortune of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil company, has jettisoned its fossil fuel holdings. The University of California and the nation of Norway are but the latest to commit to divestment as of this writing.

Background on Climate Change

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of several hundred scientists from around the world assembled by the United Nations, released its most recent report in spring 2014, it forecast crop failure and ever-decreasing supplies of freshwater as well as catastrophic sea-level rise and the continued increased likelihood of violent weather events.⁶ Since then, according to NASA, Earth, as of early September 2015, has experienced the warmest eight-month period since records began to be kept in 1880, surpassing even 2014’s record-setting warmth.⁷ Why does this matter?

James Hansen, former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is widely considered to be one of the world’s leading climate scientists. His book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity, is a call to immediate action.⁸ (Hansen, a career scientist, is not exactly one to indulge in poetic hyperbole, so please take a moment to let the enormity of his book’s title sink into your psyche.)

Hansen and others have concluded that the Earth can sustain no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere before we are assured of global meltdown—in the form of the aforementioned cataclysmic storms (think of the hitherto unprecedented destruction wrought by the Russian and Australian heat waves of 2010 and 2013–2014 respectively, Hurricane Katrina or “Superstorm” Sandy, or 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan, as well as the record-setting number and ferocity of wildfires in the western US in 2015), to say nothing of the more incremental changes to weather and climatic conditions as we have known them, including sea-level rise and ocean acidification. April 2014 marked the first month in at least 800,000 years that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere attained 400 ppm, and the level continues to climb.⁹ Simply put, without immediate action to drastically reverse this trend, we increasingly inhabit a world in which the continued occurrence of climatic disruptions is no longer a question of if, but when, those disruptions will occur.

Hansen advocates that “most of the fossil fuels must be left in the ground… That is the explicit message that the science provides.”¹⁰ He writes that “the science demands a simple rule: Coal use must be prohibited unless and until the emissions can be captured and safely disposed of.”¹¹ Dismissing the myth of “Clean Coal” entirely, Hansen states that if we hope to solve the climate crisis, “we must phase out coal emissions. Period.”¹²

From Despair to Empowerment

Our individual despair, hopelessness, and sense of overwhelm in the face of seemingly irreversible climate collapse is one shared by people worldwide. We are not alone in our experience of grief. But there are strategies for confronting the sense of disempowerment we may feel and for transforming it into positive action. The work of those like deep ecologist Joanna Macy, who first designed workshops to address the notion of moving individuals and society “from despair to empowerment” in the face of environmental and technological annihilation, holds critical insights for us today.¹³

First, we must acknowledge and accept the “psychic numbing” that acts to shut down our emotional response in the face of the enormity of climate change. As one despair-to-empowerment workshop leader, Kevin McVeigh, has put it: “No feeling, no healing.” According to him, we must “let in the reality of what is happening…, telling each other the truth of what we see … feeling the pain, …and validating it as sane and purposeful.”¹⁴ In the absence of this validation, McVeigh warns, psychic numbing results:

[T]he feelings themselves may seem life-threatening … to the extent that we judge them to be too painful, frightening, or unpleasant, we may begin to turn them off completely. Believing that our feelings are the real threat, we begin to screen out systematically all data which arouse [them]… We gradually lose our ability to have any emotional reaction at all to the possibility that all life on earth could be destroyed.¹⁵

Once we’ve come to grips with the fact that psychic numbing or denial is a natural response to the fear engendered by the threats posed by climate collapse, we can develop a new perspective of reality and then reclaim our power to act. Macy, McVeigh, and others stress the importance of fostering and drawing strength and support from each other and in solidarity with the living planet. Finally, they emphasize the importance of good self-care or, as McVeigh puts it, “taking good care of ourselves and each other while we care for the world.”¹⁶

Sandra Steingraber, longtime environmental activist and the author of Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment, among other books, sometimes deploys a strategy of using her subject position as a mother to examine the paradigms that lubricate the engine of corporate capitalism. In a 2013 Bioneers interview, Steingraber said that our job as parents is to make children feel safe, and that what makes children feel safe is the knowledge that grown-ups are doing things to address particular problems.¹⁷ Regardless of whether or not we are actual parents, do we not have a moral responsibility to future generations (both the human and the “more-than-human”) to safeguard the continuance of life on Earth? And doesn’t it always feel better to do something than to do nothing?

Not long ago, people asked, “What is it going to take to disrupt the inertia?” But with the coming-together of 400,000 climate-change activists in New York City and the 2500 concurrent actions in 162 nations around the world on September 21st, 2014, we dare to hope that that inertia has been disrupted once and for all. The Catholic Church, President Obama, and other world leaders have finally gotten on the bus, and organizations like 350.org are helping to coordinate meaningful citizen actions in response to global warming.¹⁸ Indeed, the groundswell of bottom-up activism bodes well for human societies that have outgrown hegemonic top-down models of governance and commerce, a phenomenon that environmentalist Paul Hawken chronicles in Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World.

A New Economic Paradigm

Jeremy Rifkin, founder and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, examines the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. He states, “Our industrial civilization is at a crossroads,” noting that, among other issues, a “record one billion human beings—nearly one seventh of the human race—face hunger and starvation” and that climate change “threatens to destabilize ecosystems around the world.”¹⁹ Rifkin founded The Third Industrial Revolution Global CEO Business Roundtable to work with others in search of “a new paradigm that could usher in a post-carbon era.” He foresees an increasing “democratization of energy that will bring with it a fundamental reordering of human relationships, impacting the very way we conduct business, govern society, educate our children, and engage in civic life.”²⁰ Rifkin points to the European Union, which is “expected to draw one-third of its electricity from green sources by 2020.”²¹

Canadian activist and author Naomi Klein likewise proposes that the climate crisis challenges us to discard the ideology of the “free market” that enriches an elite class at the expense of everyone and everything else. Klein, now an advisor to Pope Francis, proposes instead a restructured global economy with reconfigured political systems. Like Rifkin, she and a growing number of others argue that we have reached the end of one economic era, and that it’s time to replace it with another:

[C]limate change – if treated as a true planetary emer...