Have you ever heard of “sunny day flooding”?  

 

I’m walking through my Bronx neighborhood, listening to “If Miami Will Be Underwater, Why is Construction Booming?” from How to Save a Planet.  It’s a fair question, and now that it’s been posed, I want an answer.  Like all good storytellers, the host offers a little context that drives home the gravity of the situation:  she describes a phenomenon whereby water seeps up through the ground, flooding Miami on sunny days. She nonchalantly adds, “It’s wild and sometimes sea life comes up with the water. So like there will be an octopus in a parking garage for no reason.”

 

I’m sorry what?

 

I pull my body to the side because I’m not that person who stops on the sidewalk mid-stride.  Slide out my phone, and fumble for the touches that’ll put this baby on pause.  Then I open a new tab and google “miami octopus parking garage.”

 

Dude, for real, the environment is so effed up that octopi show up on sunny days in Miami parking garages.  Go ahead.  Google it.  Look, I’m not over here trying to convince my Midwestern Uncle that the climate crisis is real.  I played that game in my 30s.  I’m 42.  But as I stand on this sidewalk, looking at a real picture of an octopus chilling in a parking garage, what I do want to know is :  why don’t we believers – in particular, we with income and privilege – change our behavior?  Why do I ride a bike sometimes but not always?  Why do I cringe when I place an Amazon order but place it nonetheless?  How in the world can I chow down on squid while Kate articulates the horrors of farming salmon in Eating our Way to Extinction?

 

I’m nearly finished reading Don’t Even Think About It:  Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall.  In it, he pretty much tries to explain why I avoid meat rather than eliminate it altogether.  He points out that it can’t be inherent in the subject of climate:  “the answer must lie elsewhere – not with the issue itself but with the way it has been told.”  He goes on, “It must be something about the way the story of climate change has been constructed and communicated, the people who tell it, and how it has attached itself to their values.”  Yes!  I don’t need businessmen, billionaires, or politicians educating me on e-vehicles, deforestation, or climate treaties.  Give me Phoebe.  Give me Jaden.  Hell, I’ll even take a Karen. Marshall goes on to frame climate change as a wicked problem (highly recommend googling this too – it’s a cool concept) and then finishes:  “What climate change really needs are the voices of ordinary people who might not be fluent speakers or skilled orators but can bring an authenticity and genuine sense of common ownership to the issue … The answer to the partisan deadlock and public disinterest starts, I am convinced, with finding new messengers rather than finding new messages, and then creating the means for them to be heard.”    

 

This resonates with me.  Once the climate crisis finds new messengers, I can more easily choose my bike, delete Amazon (it legit took me a minute to type that), and fast during Kate’s documentary.

 

Actually, no.  But also, yes.  Here’s how I think it works.

 

Phoebe, Jaden, and Karen are more real to me than Elon, Jeff, and Bernie.  So as they speak to me – “Right now, I’m just trying to ride my bike more,” and “I’ve committed to shopping at the farmer’s market,” and “Maybe we should watch Don’t Look Up” – their messages maintain a fluidity obtained only once money, celebrity, or political party is filtered out.  Like the NYC A train, the message screeches into my mind, and I deftly transfer from uptown rational to downtown emotional.  And here’s why that matters:  because to solve wicked problems like the climate crisis (seriously, google it), we need to activate the emotional half of our brain.  Because that’s where our imagination lives.  And if we can bring ourselves to imagine – to really imagine – what the world can look like in 30 years, then we’ll change our behavior.

 

But right now, we ordinary people aren’t interested, and our imaginations are weak.  In fact, we aren’t even talking.  According to Marshall, a quarter of us have never discussed climate change with anyone at all.  

 

**

 

I want to fill the emotional half of your mind with the phrases, metaphors, images you need to exercise your imagination so that the next time we see a gorgeous, green mountain of avocados, we’ll see the 70 liters of fresh water it took for a farmer to grow just one; we’ll feel it wash all over us.  It smells like hose water on summer cement.   But in a world that’s seen and that sees everything, where do I start?

I said earlier that I was eating squid while watching Eating our Way to Extinction.  I wasn’t.  I was eating octopus (and yes, there’s a difference).  When you cook octopus in boiling water, the water turns purple.  It’s actually beautiful, and as I watched my husband pour the steaming, rich purple liquid into our sink that day, I thought simply:  this is beautiful.  But now?  Now I’m simply thinking:  all that incredible water, where in the world will it all go?