Pretend Blog, or, Crazy Kindness

In the early hours of Tuesday, July 28th, 13 men and women suspended themselves from the St. Johns Bridge, 205 feet above the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. There they would spend the next 40 hours, alternating between cold nights and 100-plus degree days, only abandoning their positions when forcibly removed by the police. Although the 13 aerial activists were members of the group Greenpeace, they were joined in the water, quite spontaneously, by hundreds of kayakers, inner tubers, and even swimmers, who felt compelled to join their mission—a mission that briefly succeeded. That mission was to stop oil giant Shell from drilling in the Artic.

The St. Johns Bridge is the last bridge on the Willamette before it empties into the Columbia, and although there are two remaining bridges between Portland and the open ocean, the St. Johns affords the last best opportunity for preventing a ship from reaching that ocean.

Why might one wish to prevent a ship from reaching that ocean? In the case of Shell, the answer is simple, even if largely symbolic: 98-plus percent of climate scientists agree that if we are to have any hope of containing global warming at a near-catastrophic 2 degrees Celsius, we need to leave 80% of oil reserves alone. Drilling in the Arctic carries the additional “duh” factor of the absolute stupidity of drilling in conditions virtually guaranteed to cause a major spill, plus the “eccch” factor of drilling in the homes of polar bears facing extinction directly because of global warming.

Although Shell was ready to drill for oil up in Alaska, it needed its icebreaker ship, the Fennica, in order to do so, and the Fennica had been sent into drydock in Portland for patches to its hull. On Thursday morning the repaired Fennica left its dock and bore down on the frail human web that had spun itself under the St. Johns bridge. For a moment it appeared that it might crash right through. This would have been as easy as a hand brushing away a cobweb, except in this case at the cost of human lives.

But it did not. Instead the Fennica turned around and headed back to port. It would return, later, with the full weight of an armed police and Coast Guard force that lifted swimmers from the water and Greenpeace volunteers from the air in order to wedge its way through and out to the Pacific. But for a brief moment, the spiders won. The giant had been turned back.

I watched all this, as it were, via email updates and web searches from the comfort of my armchair. The comfort is tenuous. I’m acutely aware of my own existence as a member of the most eco-destructive lifeform that evolution has ever visited on its own planet. When we moved to Port Angeles, LL and I thought we’d at least said goodbye to the forest fire smoke that is now a given for summers in Omak. But the Olympics received 6% of their usual snowfall last year. Fires raging in British Columbia a few weeks ago sent a massive smokecloud down to us, and parts of the Peninsula itself are on fire for the first time in recorded human history. Human-caused global warming is real. It is here and only going to get worse, and speaking for myself, in my daily life it is difficult to find the time and energy to make a meaningful difference against this unfolding disaster. I am a physician and a parent, and though I bike to work, compost my butternut squash peels, recycle my empty coconut milk cans, and even make efforts to think and write about “the big picture” (as it were!)…it seems small. I am not out on in that fragile space between St. Johns and the Willamette.

I know, I know, I know, that I have to still find peace within myself, that I have to, as the Dalai Lama reminded me the other day when I came across a quote of his, “be kind to myself.” In fact, it was that kindness to myself that allowed me to go to bed a couple nights ago instead of staying up extra late to write this blog just because it was the end of the month. I was kind to self. I slept. Now, I write. I write this blog which isn’t really a blog, in order to not go crazy, in order, maybe, to stay crazy, to stay crazy enough, kind enough, revolutionarily happy enough, that I can carry on, to have fun, to make the work of revolution fun, to love myself, to love LL, to love my kids, to love the world, to make a difference. That is why we are here. Is it not?