One Step at a Time
Environment Prefect, Eleanor, encourages the 最新麻豆视频 Community to rid itself of ‘climate blame’ and instead celebrate Environment Week as the learning experience it is intended to be.
Each week, our Student Leaders share their insights with their peers in Assembly.
Last Friday afternoon I accidentally found myself delivering a speech outside our Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek's office, into a microphone, amongst a herd of soggy teenagers. When I say soggy, I don't mean that as a personality assessment, it was actually raining, and, when I say accidentally, I don't mean that I was one day walking to the community garden, tripped over a single-use plastic cup, and on my plummet to the footpath, signed some documents, joined some meetings, made an online profile and one thing led to another and there I was. Did I think that what I was doing at this little rally was monumental? Not really. So, then why do I bother?
I think it has occurred to me that peaceful protest has become a kind of therapy. However, I do not want you to think that Environment Week is just a collective effort to benefit my psychological wellbeing. Despite the statistics being increasingly alarming in regards to climate change, it seems that no matter which Minister we vote in, the issue has never been dealt with the right way, and no one is ever collectively happy. I came to the epiphany that yelling at a brick wall in the rain to a vacant office, shockingly, is not going to do much for the actual issue.
This reminded me of a notion called ‘climate blame’. Climate blame is a concept that unpacks the human tendency to escape criticism. We omit ourselves from the consequences of our collective actions, not because we do not care about the planet but, rather, because we do. The hot potato blame game, being our atmosphere, is due to fear, guilt, and helplessness.
Environment Week is an opportunity for everyone to make a difference without much effort. It is a stepping-stone week if you will. It is a learning experience that hopefully, each year, reduces climate anxiety and empowers us to be more aware of what we have and what we can do. It is not an opportunity to blame yourself or anyone else for what is happening.
For decades, corporations have tailored their products to dominate the human intuitions that we rely upon to survive, to connect, to be accepted, for comfort and for convenience. Hot water, retail therapy, devices made of precious minerals, private transport, heating, air conditioning, takeaways ... in a gross irony, we are victims of privilege. I have drawn out similar theories before and received some interesting rebuttals. One person saying, "Well, if you want to make a change, stop eating beef and palm oil and don't make it irritating for the rest of us," which inevitably, is followed by, "Can you please just eat meat and palm oil and stop making it irritating for the rest of us?"
It is not your fault for being a human who has had their vulnerabilities taken advantage of, and been conditioned without realising. Neither is it a company's fault for taking the marketing advice necessary to improve their product. It is an entire network of collective responsibility. No singular force is to blame. Therefore, Environment Week starts, I believe, with something inside – forgiving ourselves. When we learn that our ways have perhaps been wrong; we were acting out of ignorance, that we did not make an effort where we could have – after acknowledgement, the first step forward is to forgive yourself and to realise that it is far easier to act than justify your actions every day. I am not angry when I see you with a single-use coffee cup, I am just disappointed.
I hope that the rest of the week is beneficial and that you purchase an Environment Week pin to remind you that every day you have the capacity to make a change where others might not.
I finish with something that a friend once told me, that a good consensus is where everybody feels as though they had to give up something. Happy Environment Week!