“Climate change is not only about the exhaustion of the planet, it’s about the exhaustion of so many of us, our lives, our worlds, even our minds.”

—Ajay Singh Chaudhary

A rough patch

Dear friends, I’m sorry I missed writing for you last week. I was stuck in Grants Pass, Oregon (home of the 24-hour Jelly Donuts shop!) waiting for several things to happen: 1) to feel better and stop coughing, 2) for a set of new tires — you can’t just buy one, and, 3) for the world to come to its senses. (Well, maybe not that last one.) I just couldn’t get my head clear.

OK, one at a time. I had started south on the snowbird trail but just before leaving caught that bug that’s going around town … flu? Some bronchial thing? A really bad cold? Whatever it is, after a stop at the Ilwaco Walk-in Clinic, I was convinced I needed a double-barreled antibacterial. (Wait a minute — isn’t a respiratory thing viral? Yes, 80 to 95%, but not all.) So I started a dose of amoxicillin and got on the road.

Surprise! I woke up in Grants Pass as the Pepto Bismol Baby — from head to toe I was the color of a red beet egg (one of the favorite treats on the German side of my family). Yikes! Then my oh-so-helpful and smarter-than-me Volvo SUV said I had low tire pressure, front right. So, I took my little red body to Les Schwab and was told, “You’re going nowhere fast!” Not because of my color — Les Schwab is friendly to everyone — but because one of the technicians said my front right tire treads could expand and pull apart at any moment. I have noticed certain parts of my body expanding, but this was a new one on me.

As you may know, you can’t buy just one tire, and because everything about a Volvo is special, I had an over-the-weekend wait for a new set of very expensive tires. Meanwhile, despite discontinuing the antibiotic, nothing changed about my skin color or the fact that if I touched myself anywhere, then I also had white polka dots. And still a very bad cough. And a couple days later a UTI (sorry if this is TMI).

Meanwhile at home and abroad

I think this qualifies as a “rough patch,” though it was nothing compared to what was happening around the globe in the news: the murder of Alexei Navalny; the continued genocide (and domicide) of Gazans; the less known though even more extreme crisis in Sudan; totally insane weather: fires in Texas, snow storms and blizzards closing down California … or what was to come.

Just as I was getting back on the road and waving goodbye to lovely downtown GP, I got an early morning call from one of my podmates that one of ours needed an emergency Air flight to OHSU, only the North Coast weather was so horrific that a ride in an ambulance with four tires on the ground was the only option. That meant that of our six-member pod, two were down and out with serious health issues in the ICU in Portland. One had covid safe at home; and two of us were on the road and coughing up a storm. Only one standing.

It seemed a one-two-three-four-five punch and I felt like not just us but all of humanity and our fellow creatures were on the mat down for the count. Then I began reading a review of a current New York Times best seller, “The Exhausted of the Earth,” by Ajay Singh Chaudhary, and this captured my feelings perfectly. Chaudhary says that how we feel and the state of the earth are connected. He argues that “our ecological life is exhausting, our social and economic lives are exhausting, even our individual lives are exhausting.” And as he develops his argument, he adds in some distinctive opinions about how our tangled and dysfunctional political lives are also exhausting — and I couldn’t agree more.

The Supreme Court’s slow-walking decision to keep Trump on the states’ presidential ballot, or his immunity to escape punishment for criminal behavior is IMHO ghastly criminal in itself. So many of us — hoping against hope — have continued our faith in the court system; and we’ve tried so hard to believe that the highest court in the land somehow operates above the fray. But watching this supremely clownish clown show — for example, how is it possible that Justice Clarence Thomas hasn’t recused himself when his wife repeatedly emailed Trump lackey Mark Meadows about the need to subvert the will of people and keep Trump in office? — has pretty much demolished my faith.

The court system evidently can’t save us from the one-day dictator with the golden shoes, who kept classified documents hidden in his Mar-a-Lago bathroom, incited citizens to riot, endangered his VP’s life, declined to step down after losing the 2020 election by seven million popular votes and 74 electoral votes, and … well, we could go on.

Can exhaustion save us?

So reading Chaudhary makes me feel like he’s hit the nail on the head. But though he is describing what I feel as a citizen on the earth, he also proposes that “the feeling of exhaustion is key to tackling climate change” and perhaps the other woes we are currently suffering. He says, “It doesn’t have to be this way. Your exhaustion is not some random byproduct. There is a class of people out there who cause your exhaustion, [and] it’s not just Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk.” I would certainly add many in the GOP who are unwilling to do their jobs, get to negotiating in good faith or passing legislation for the good of the people.

Chaudhary goes on to say, yes, we can now see and feel the dramatic climate changes all around us. There is no disputing it. His theory is that our response to climate change is about power, pure and simple. Some of his hifalutin philosophy is too dense for me, but basically he says it won’t be organized government that helps turn our ecological crisis around. And it won’t be capitalism. The corporations and government entities that are largely responsible for blurring the science and creating climate disinformation for decades see the writing on the wall.

It’s these same entities who are entering the fray simply to keep their hold on power. (Like P.S. — recycling will not save us; it’s basically a ruse.) High-tech moguls are now trying to pitch carbon mitigation and scrubbing technologies as solutions. Nope again! That won’t do it: it’s simply their snake-oil efforts to keep their profit machines running.

So what’s it going to take? — our exhaustion? Chaudhary suggests that when we realize we share this feeling, we’ll be moved to work together more effectively in grass-roots efforts because this will empower us. He argues that exhaustion is just the stage for action — suggesting that the right understands this far better than the left: organizing in churches or radical right cells is deeply emotional; and shared emotion is what we need to create new forms of rebellion. “Humanity can either save capitalism or our Mother Earth,” proclaimed then-president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, a proponent of the Cochabamba People’s Agreement (tinyurl.com/bdfzs4xp), one of the most powerful grass-roots proposals for climate change action.

OK — but first my pod and I need to get well. At least my brain is back in action and I’m not quite as pink. I hope I haven’t discouraged you by saying our “What the heck is going on in our world?” exhausted feelings are real. I hope I’ve encouraged you to inspirational action. And, in the meantime, next week I’ll be interjecting some hope into the picture — writing about the new food options on the Peninsula. After all, an army has to eat!