I don’t have a slogan or a campaign to put it in, but if I did, here’s what it might be.
SUMMARY
I write summaries for people who have to marshal their time and attention.
First, an event
More about Bonita Eloise Ford, who’s doing the event with me
Meg Ruttan, “renoviction,” climate, and housing
“Even This Guy 2025”
A bill/ballot measure/policy exercise
TODAY (Monday, 10/21), 8pm Eastern US time, remotely: Please join Bonita Eloise Ford, Elissa Teles Muñoz and me for an Instagram Live conversation on how to live kindly and fairly as climate change makes that harder. We won’t make you feel shittier than you already do.
Bonita’s book, Embers of Hope, includes—like mine—some characterizations of the climate crisis, some insight and vision shared by others, some accounts of her own transformations with the people and land around her, and some exercises to guide readers into their own transformations: who do you need to be in this time? Which versions of yourself do the living beings and systems around you want you to be? I particularly appreciate Bonita writing about planting, growing and gardening: how a garden teaches you each year what it can and will do, not what you think it should do. It’s a way to practice being guided by new information even when it doesn’t confirm your expectations, which I think most of us could probably get better at.
Embers of Hope is also similar to Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth in that its primary audience has a high proportion of people who recognize climate change as an escalating situation that won’t go away, are struggling with their own responses to it, and want those responses to be more caring, purposeful and just. In both books, there’s a presumed gap between what readers know about the climate crisis and what they’re doing to respond to it, and a presumption that they want to close that gap. While this isn’t true for everyone, my years at the booth have shown me that it’s true for enough people that it’s worth discussing how, and that’s part of what Bonita and I will talk about with you tonight.
One way to close that gap between feeling and action is to show the potential for climate and environmental justice within other efforts for justice that people are making. That’s the approach that Meg Ruttan has been taking, bringing climate considerations into her work for tenants’ rights and against displacement. Housing shortages and climate impacts interact in a bunch of ways, and addressing both at once often means you can get more people on board: as distinct from our needs for livable climatic conditions, which can fade into the background unless they’re sharply interrupted, housing is something that everyone knows, intimately and urgently, that they need.
And because of that, organizing for housing justice and tenants’ rights pretty quickly brings you into contact with, and reminds you of the reality and the needs of, some pretty serious jerks. Jerks need housing too. I have pointed out before that working with people means working with annoying people, because they have yet to invent a non-annoying person. But some of the people you’ll find yourself working with and working for if you work on housing are more than annoying: they might be mean, hateful, or even dangerous to the people they live with. They still deserve a safe and dignified dwelling place. So do the people who live with them (which might mean, probably does mean, a place without them). So do you. So does everyone.
The guy who dreams of being on the right-wing radio show, the tenants who lived across the street from me and had screaming fights every night, my friend’s housemate who’s impossible to live with and impossible to evict—it should be easy for Even This Guy to find a safe, dignified dwelling place. Not just This Guy, obviously. Good organizing, good planning, good policy, doesn’t coddle This Guy or have him running things or treat him like a Missing Stair, but it chooses goals that make provision for him, even for him. The annoying, the abrasive, the difficult, the dangerous: some of them would still be assholes if they had what they needed. But they would have what they need. And so would the people who might otherwise depend on This Guy for what they need. And so will you.
QUESTION: As you’re evaluating policies and bills and ballot measures over the coming season, which of them improve or equalize conditions for the people you can’t stand because they improve or equalize conditions for everyone?
PRACTICE: When you’ve found a few, pick one to follow, stay with, advocate for, or join with others about. The timeline will vary somewhat——for example, if you live in the US and are trying to get a ballot measure or referendum passed, there will be a lot of work in the next couple weeks—but even something that apparently goes through will still need oversight and nudging to make sure it’s not sliding away from the people it’s supposed to serve——Even This Guy.
I wrote a book, LESSONS FROM THE CLIMATE ANXIETY COUNSELING BOOTH: HOW TO LIVE WITH CARE AND PURPOSE IN AN ENDANGERED WORLD (Hachette Go, 2024). This newsletter holds the ways that what's in it has branched out: new reflections, events and workshops, unresolved questions, further reading, ways to connect and act. I'm glad to be here on earth with you.