A disconnected environmentalist?

In some ways I feel like a disconnected environmentalist. I really like walking in the woods, I enjoy a beach especially on a stormy day and I believe we are doing a great job at destroying the natural environment all around us. I rationalise my concerns for the planet but in some ways I don’t ‘feel’ it, I don’t really get it through my body and I am not sure why this is.

I think that many of us get hooked on sustainability through different pathways. Some come to it through the environmental concerns of our suffering planet; some are more focussed on the societal issues of how we organise ourselves and our communities; and more of us arrive through a spiritual or philosophical journey of questioning our connections to a higher being or the great choreographer.

For me, I come to all things sustainable through the social divide, the concern that the way we organise ourselves is stupid and ineffective, that we always somehow manage to arrive a community goals none of us as individuals want. This is my primary mover I suppose and I believe that if we really connected socially we would settle into our rightful place on the planet and so greatly reduce our environmental footprint.

As I delve deeper into sustainability I find I need to balance the environmental and spiritual connections also, both personally and communally. It is not possible to go deep in one area without understanding and involving the other two. They are all connected and intertwined. And my primary motivation is through the social strand, my environmental concerns are one step removed. I support others in their pursuit of the environmental concern but it is not my work to do. I am a ‘disconnected environmentalist’ and that is okay, I am enough.

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