It was quiet in my growing up house. We closed the front door with silent deliberation and spoke to one another in soft tones. My parents didn’t raise their voices, either in anger or delight. We kept our feelings of fear, grief, sadness, even joy, corseted close, as if their release would tip the earth from her axis. Tears happened in muffled sobs in the corner of a bedroom. There was no room for anger.
We’re almost there, but don’t exhale yet! On August 28, the California assembly passed SB100—with the bold but achievable goal of powering California with 100% clean, carbon-free electricity by 2045. Keep up the momentum–Governor Jerry Brown still needs to sign the bill. This is politics and anything can happen. Stranger things have happened.
It was 1985, I was thirty-five, a new volunteer with RESULTS, an advocacy organization committed to ending hunger and poverty. I jumped in feet first, determined to make a difference, though I knew nothing about poverty, Congress or how a bill was passed. Something I couldn’t name was driving me to be a change agent in the world.
Cape Town has a population of four million people. Six reservoirs, that fill from rain, provide all the water for the city and the surrounding suburbs. But it hasn’t rained since 2015. And the reservoirs are dangerously low. The city is projected to run out of water in 2019.
Okay, I guess we’re still talking about solar panels, cuz apparently that’s what’s on your radar right now. So cool–let’s keep talking.
I bet it’s because we want to do something in the face of climate change. But what? I suspect that people want to be proactive; not passive bystanders. But how?
