National boundaries are arbitrary. No more significant than state lines or city limits. The people on the other side are rarely all that different.
We can say the same about the aisle that separates political parties or the river that separates neighborhoods.
We only have one planet, and it’s heating up. Doesn’t matter that we carve lines in the earth or lay claim to parts of it. Climate change effects the whole thing.
We like to think that politics divides us. That claim itself is like pretending one country can avoid the effect of climate change. Like one party can avoid the effect or recession. Or one people can avoid the effect of injustice. It feeds a delusion.
There is one people. Only ever one people.
Some may make it harder for others; that’s a problem for everyone. So they don’t get to pretend it is their right. And we don’t get to kick them out. There’s one. That’s it.
So what do we do?
We struggle to best understand how to be one people. But two common choices definitely send us in the wrong direction:
- believing division is possible and
- expecting a single individual to make decisions for us.
This makes the right direction more obvious: working together, building community, and planning together.
Learn from the environmentalists, who cut to the heart of it: There is no Planet B.
Because there is Earth. Us. And our work to make a difference. Everything else is simply part of the work.