Billings Climate Change Speech

Billings Climate Change Speech

You may have heard that Iceland recently grieved the loss of a 700 year-old, six mile glacier-the loss a result of climate change. This glacier was their grandmother.  Where that glacier once was, a plaque was placed, a message to future generations, which said, "This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and we know what needs to be done.  Only you know if we did it." Find something you know is going to die and attach yourself to it.  Be willing to grieve.  We will experience grief as we experience tremendous losses during this time of climate crisis.  Any healing that occurs will happen because we make grief our companion and walk with it rather than severing our connection to avoid our grief.

Speak and articulate your grief in a way that becomes real and whole for others.  Bear witness to the loss.  Do not let others silence your grief.  As the planet burns, let your grief become a testimony to being human.  In my faith tradition, being human means being of fertile soil and divine breath.  Be human in such a way that allows for the possibility of something more that cruel and barren economics, unceasing and death-giving war, destructive and oppressive violence, and policies and practices that sever the connection Creator intended for this good earth.  These policies and practices occur because we believe the lie we are disconnected. 

Don't believe the lie.  We are connected.  So that when the glaciers melt, I grieve.  When the bee population is poisoned, I grieve.  When the river is polluted and dries up, I grieve.  These are my sisters and brothers, my siblings and cousins.  I grieve.  For actions I have done or not done.  Fora ctions my country now does over and over.

And my grief moves from sadness to anger to a resoluteness to join with Creator to say, "No more.  NO MORE!"  And Creator opens my eyes to to beauty once again, and I rise up, I raise my head, and I see you, you beautiful people, and I join hands with you, with Mother Earth, and say, "No more.  Rise up.  NO MORE!  RISE UP!"  Look at you, beautiful people.  Look at you!  Look at this earth, our kin,our sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins.

Do not sever the connection.  No more.  Rise up.  Vaclav Havel said, "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.”  This is worth doing.

Greta Thurnberg recently said, "Wherever I go I seem to be surrounded by fairytales. Business leaders, elected officials all across the political spectrum spending their time making up and telling bedtime stories that soothe us, that make us go back to sleep. These are ‘feel-good’ stories about how we are going to fix everything. How wonderful everything is going to be when we have ‘solved’ everything. But the problem we are facing is not that we lack the ability to dream, or to imagine a better world. The problem now is that we need to wake up. It’s time to face the reality, the facts, the science. And the science doesn’t mainly speak of ‘great opportunities to create the society we always wanted’. It tells of unspoken human sufferings, which will get worse and worse the longer we delay action – unless we start to act now. And yes, of course a sustainable transformed world will include lots of new benefits. But you have to understand. This is not primarily an opportunity to create new green jobs, new businesses or green economic growth. This is above all an emergency, and not just any emergency. This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced.

No more.  Rise up.  No more fairytales.  No more bedtime stories that soothe us.  Grieve, beautiful people.  Grieve.  And then act.