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Previous letter (1 Nov 2018): "Extinction rebellion; report on recent meetings; progressives are failing"

December 4, 2018

"And finally, does the individual know that he is the makeweight that tips the scales?"

Carl Jung

Dear friends --

I regret that it's been over a month since I wrote to you who are on our inner New Mexico list. We have been very busy, as many of you have been as well.

Among other "distractions," I had a very productive week in Washington, DC in mid-November. These trips entail considerable correspondence, detailed analysis, and followup (of which more can always be done).

I will be going back to DC in February, for two weeks. Even now we must stay very involved with DC actors -- this week if possible, because positions are being taken.

It is best to save most issue discussion for a Bulletin, with much wider circulation, later this week.

After that, we seek face-to-face discussions with you and your friends, for example in other organizations and in churches. Emails such as this are not going to galvanize the actions we need.

Thus we hope to see many of you early in the new year. We look forward to that, with bells on! But it's up to you to make that invitation.

Your solidarity and participation are very important to us.

More broadly: "we" -- the planet, the country, the state, our communities -- need everybody involved now, and not just thinking or feeling or meditating either but in the public sphere, in the realm of publicity, broadly speaking. (Please don't misunderstand. The distracted masses are not our audience. Various kinds of leaders and decisionmakers are.)

As we keep emphasizing, many doors are open, to all of us. All we need do is walk through them, one step after the other, into the brave new world our hands and hearts can mend, or build.

To repeat, we need everybody. I mean this in two primary ways. First, we all need to be involved, because we are now in a total civilizational emergency. There is a job for everyone -- for every talent and every circumstance. Finding those jobs is a matter of personal investment, heart, and vision.

The flip side is that we cannot neglect anyone. Nobody is expendable. Nobody is "deplorable." If we who care about the environment don't explicitly include everybody in our plans and policies, our plans will fail. We are in this together.

• Actions
  

• We want to hire two more staff members. Please help! We aim to hire additional staff in the New Year, for research and writing as well as for outreach and communications. We have already extended an offer to an outstanding young professional. No, we don't have the financial resources -- yet.
  

Those of you who have helped so far -- thank you. If you can help, please do. If you are familiar with our work and want to help in another way, please be our ambassadors. Reach out to friends on our behalf.

FYI, the internet and social media have made it harder, not easier, to economically reach people with substantive messages such as ours, which are not reinforced from existing centers of political power and authority and which (unlike most of the narratives which flood social media these days), do not fall into the major party duopoly. We need financial resources to engage with political leaders near and far, and in our communities, in the coming year.

We still have $1,000 left to be matched in a 1:1 matching fund. Can you contribute toward this? Or, can you be the next matching donor?

• Please keep those letters to editors (LTEs) coming, against plutonium pit production, against your community's (and specific councilperson's!) participation in the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities (RCLC). There are a lot of other initiatives you can take on these fronts. Don't wait for us. We are up to our eyeballs in consequential work only we can do.
  

• We urgently need to open fresh avenues of dialog with and among the progressive community and environmental groups. The New Mexico chapter of 350.org kindly invited me to speak at a recent meeting. The short version of that talk (omitting background nuclear slides) is here. We have a lot more to show and to say on climate and energy issues; we only scratched the surface. We would like to put together a panel early in the new year to better get at some of the most critical issues.

We really are very concerned that the new administration and legislature will fail to advance the state's long-term interests, as Governor Richardson failed during his two terms in office. In particular, we are very concerned that the main environmental groups are not approaching climate and energy issues with a sufficient sense of emergency on the one hand, and with sufficient attention to job creation in vulnerable communities and overall, on the other. See below ("Midterms") for a little more explanation.

At the same time we are very concerned that our New Mexico progressive and environmental groups are giving "aid and comfort" -- greenwashing -- to some of the worst nuclear militarists in Congress. (Hear Senator Heinrich in action last week on plutonium pits, for example; his and LANL's influence on ranking member Jack Reed audible here.) Can you imagine adequate investment in climate change mitigation at the same time as a, oh, $1 trillion/year budget for the military, all things included? With a $1.2 trillion nuclear weapons modernization and deployment program? Neither can we. The only outcome consistent with our senators' nuclear and military priorities is social and environmental collapse.

• It is time for direct action. If you think you might want to be involved in any way, please call or write. We should meet. You may be following the Extinction Rebellion (XR), as we are. We need to talk. The battle royale for the social contract is "on."
  

• Volunteer. At present, the only way this works for us is with some considerable commitment of time, on the order of 20 hours per week. Call us. Such a commitment would be extremely valuable.

• Midterms
  

The mid-term elections are over, thankfully. Unfortunately no candidates in New Mexico -- or in any of the better-publicized races nationally that came to our attention -- ran on anything like an anti-war, nuclear disarmament or arms control stance, or reality-based leadership in climate change mitigation. We got slogan-level gestures from some.

In New Mexico, we also did not see strong commitments to distributed, locally-owned renewable energy, aggressive energy efficiency, sustainable, equitable transportation, or to the resilient, renewed communities such commitments could build.

As we wrote in a comment to a Santa Fe New Mexican editorial, a broad "we" will need to work hard to bring priorities like these into the coming state administration, legislature, and law.

As [was] quoted here [in the New Mexican editorial], the governor-elect is a POTENTIAL climate hawk. She will need help and fast from we in the NGO community, who have our own hot air and denial a-plenty. The key to bipartisan buy-in is probably the design and elucidation of clear economic benefits for households, businesses, and the fiscal health of the state. All of us have our work cut out for us. In the meantime we all need to understand that state policy won't be enough, just as federal policy won't be. We have to work locally and creatively, in government and out. Sacrifice and a kind of divine, creative madness, if you will, is needed. We need to get out of our own way. Collapse of our way of life is now certain -- though nobody knows the "how" and the "when" and "how much;" the "who" being always and forever the vulnerable and the poor -- but our attitudes and efforts, and the solidarity and joy we bring, are under our own control.

We are going to have to set aside the liberal ego in favor of some old-fashioned ideas and loves, and open ourselves to greater "verticality" in our worldview [i.e. a moral and spiritual renewal, ala Solzhenitsyn 1978]. As ever we must fashion policies with the most vulnerable in mind.

Renewable energy, unless it is locally owned, built, managed, arising within our own communities with social goals uppermost, will not help New Mexico. Neither will policies that do not gently close the wrong doors while opening others. This editorial is of a piece with the ["soft"] climate denial that the recently-elected Democrats bring to office. We need to wake from that.

Very best wishes to all of you as we enter the holiday season. You will hear from us again this week, in a Bulletin, and after that.

Thank you all,

Greg and Trish, for the Study Group