Myth Busting

Chicago CR 07312013. Photo by Gabriel Zurita Holder / Photoshop by Lilia Villa

  
Humans put a man on the moon, cured smallpox, and created a computer that can fit in your pocket. 

Deniers claim it’s too hard to build a clean energy future, but that’s a myth you and I can destroy.     

~ Al Gore



I attended a three-day Climate Reality training earlier this month and officially joined a global movement of volunteers who are determined to get us all talking about solutions to the Climate Crisis. Former Vice President Al Gore led the training and started out the morning referencing Mahatma Gandhi’s term – Satyagraha. Gandhi based his entire life’s work around this term - loosely translated it means "insistence on truth’ or ‘Truth Force’. This word is a combination of two Sanskrit words that Gandhi linked together.

Gandhi wrote:

I have also called it love-force or soul-force. In the application of satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and compassion. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on oneself.

That term was at the core of his non-violent actions that changed the British Empire and gained India her independence. 

And so our training began with the insistence that we tell others about Climate Change with kindness, patience, and to always tell the truth. If we do not know the answer, we must say so and get the up to date information back to whoever asked the question.

I am not, as many of you know, a climate scientist or a specialist of any kind. I am a human, like you, living on this planet. I, like you, have a role to play here addressing this issue. And I am 100% convinced that we must act together to solve this problem starting now - if you haven’t personally started already.