In this editorial, distributed by the Elon University Writers Syndicate, Greg Hlavaty, associate teaching professor of English, acknowledges the need for hopeful climate action and nature's power for renewal. It appeared in the Greensboro News & Record, The Daily Reflector and The Winston-Salem Journal.
Near my home in North Carolina, tourists often pose for photos by a large dam on the Haw River. I imagine they must carefully crop those photos, because while downstream offers a pretty view, a monstrous island of trash mars the dam’s upstream side. Plastic bottles, balls, and debris interlock with a sizable log jam just waiting for the next hard rain to raise river levels and wash it all downstream.
When I first moved here, I tried to interest people in a river clean-up, but we all chose to look downstream. We’d say the trash pile was too big to tackle. Why bother? The choice seemed to be: Look upstream and sigh, feel overwhelmed by the mounting garbage; or look downstream and enjoy the relatively unpolluted view.
Either choice had the same result: inaction.
Rebecca Solnit’s much-loved Hope in the Dark critiques both optimists and pessimists as being guilty of certainty of outcome, a position that allows both camps to “excuse themselves from acting.” She suggests a middle path, a moving away from complacent certainty into a space of hopeful action.
But how does one have hope in a time of great climate change?
Several years ago, a smaller trash pile backed up against a sliding metal gate near shore. Again, the choice: look downstream and enjoy the slow-moving creek. Or look upstream: see a trash pile gyrating in the current.
My upstream view was depressing. I assumed that this pile would remain the smaller cousin to our monster trash patch. Why bother? So I chose to look downstream, enjoy the optimistic unpolluted view. There is a freedom in ignoring problems.
I looked away, and for me, the matter was settled.
But the trash pile changed. Silt accumulated. Plants appeared. By last spring, the trash was no longer visible. It had become a small island.
I assumed the island would wash away, but this spring it has a thicker base, the plants lush. A newcomer would likely call it pretty and never guess the new island is founded on trash.
Let’s not be naïve. The trash remains beneath the island, and the river is still full of other pollutants and microplastics. Yet I refuse to let this knowledge become the defining factor of my view. I now choose to abandon my certainty and embrace hope. And hope is not naïve. Solnit frames hope as an “embrace of the unknown and the unknowable,” a mindset that frees us from our tired locked-in views of optimism and pessimism. That freedom allows us act.
In our current era of political polarization and climate change upheaval, it’s easy to feel helpless, our bodies and minds the trash piles forming from the negativity this country now seems to revel in. But the trash pile also teaches that nature can be regenerative, and we need to believe that our smallest actions, like silt accumulating over trash, can make an impact.
We all have power.
Start small and local. Recently our local outfitter, The Haw River Canoe & Kayak Co. hosted a well-attended Haw River clean-up. No money exchanged hands. No one profited monetarily. Volunteers paddled into uncertainty and returned with canoes full of trash. That’s meaningful action.
We have not lost. We are not helpless.
We cannot control what’s coming, but we can open ourselves to a hopeful mindset and step into that uncertain river. It’s still alive and full of possibility. Remember: a trash pile can completely morph into an island. Do you not yet believe? What would it take to do one small thing to make your place better?