Robust language to change the world

Robust language to change the world
Submitted by Ron Hart for County Sustainability Group
On his television show, The Agenda, host Steve Pakin, observed "Neither the dire warnings recently issued by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change nor the decades-long efforts of environmentalists have incited enough action on climate change. Why not?" In response, Graham Saul, the executive director of Nature Canada, argued, we aren't using the right language to tell the story--robust language that answers the question,"What environmentalists are fighting for?"

When major environmental organizations were asked to respond, this is what Saul found: "Words varied from survival, sustainability, justice, cultural change, and protection, to conservation, human health, preservation, balance, world safety, life, green energy, living lightly, and species' rights." But there was no one word or expression that dominated the answers. Perhaps Graham Saul's question is the wrong question. Perhaps we have to go to a deeper, to a more basic level to solve universal problems like climate change.

In 1995, Albert Steichen, at the time the world's highest paid photographer, curated and assembled an exhibit of photographs, The Family of Man , a stunning proof that demonstrated we are all bonded by love, struggle, survival, passion, pain, fears, dreams, belief and hope. It confirmed our connection to all humanity. It demonstrated, we are one family. The exhibition was subsequently seen by nine million people. The book showing the photographs has sold four million copies and is still in print.

If our common denominator is that we are all members of a family, it makes sense to ask, "What is the wish that resonates with your family?" And then, "What are families fighting for?" The universal, basic aspiration for any family, is love for and protection of offspring. What are families fighting for? The easy answer is, "A better life for our children."
How can we build this better world?
Pam Palmater, lawyer, professor, activist, and fierce advocate for Indigenous self-determination, says, "First Nations are Canadians' last best hope at saving the lands, waters, plants and animals for our future generations." We would be wise to consider Dr. Palmater's warning.

We could start be listening to the wisdom of the process embodied in The Great Binding Law of the Iroquois Haudenosaunee Confederacy:
"In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation... even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine."
Isn't that the key to hard-won sustainability? The litmus test for actions? The very foundation for providing hope?

The Iroquois Great Binding Law provides a path that unites all disparate environmental groups towards one ultimate common goal--a better life for all. It provides both an individual and political path to affirm the web of life. It rejects ecocide. It provides the "last best hope at saving the lands, waters, plants and animals for our future generations."

This is a path for political action. Here is a core philosophy and primary commitment designed to effectively address climate change.
"Return to the way of the Great Law which is just and right. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the past and present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground – the unborn of the future Nation."

Politically, the formation of a new political party, The Children's Sustainable Legacy Party could reconfigure our political landscape. It puts our children's future squarely as our core mission. It offers a unified, focused process to a better world. It erases meaningless political distractions between right-wing and left-wing; between capitalism and socialism. It appeals to the most important dream of all for people everywhere: a better life for our children. Above all, it reestablishes what we have in common: our role as stewards of life.

Finally, it provides an antidote to despair: hope. If we are looking for robust language for a path to change the world, Jack Layton's final words and guidance to us resonate:
"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world ."