On Environmentalism
Why you’re doing it wrong
I live in New York City, the last place on the entire planet that I feel should hold a march for environmentalism. That’s a loaded statement, I know, but hear me out. For a moment please close your eyes, listen for the sounds of brushing pines, cold water coursing thousand year old rock, listen for the oft sought after breeze of fresh air. Do you hear it? Most of you probably do. Even in the suburbs you’ll get two out of three of the aforementioned sounds of nature. However, when I close my eyes in my tiny Manhattan studio apartment all I hear are the bustling streets below, the constant honking of vehicle horns, the occasional siren from a police officer or the louder, more worrisome fire engine or ambulance ringing in my ear.
This past month, not three avenues from where I live, approximately 300,000 people gathered to join the People’s Climate March, a collective effort to raise awareness, and at times demand change to the way humans are living due to the impending doom we face from resource depletion and global warming, among other slightly less concerning issues (usually involving marijuana). The march was joined by the likes of government officials and celebrities, in addition to your everyday tree-hugging hippie. I am an advocate for the message of this cohesive group, we are surely going to find ourselves in trouble if we continue to live as if our ceaselessly tapped resources for production of useless material goods is not checked, but what I am not an advocate for is the way that this message is delivered, and ultimately perceived by the general public.
What movements like this consistently fail to recognize is that your average citizen, whether a resident of a major American metropolis, or some village in eastern Ukraine, they do not want to listen to the ides of revolution from some raucous radical screaming into a microphone. Take feminism for example, a just cause that should be taken seriously by every global citizen, is often chastised and forgotten due to the unsavory leaders behind the charge. Actress Emma Watson gave a moving speech recently as a representative for the United Nations describing this exact failure in the chain, this distaste for an agenda harped on by figures unrelatable to the general public. Ms. Watson was the first woman in my short time following this movement that I’ve seen level with the people who may have always been listening, but have never felt inclined to take action. I applaud her for that, but I digress.
What I mean to call out by citing this example is that as a working, middle-class individual I don’t want to see some hippie who dropped out of high school to chain himself to a tree take the microphone and tell me what I need to do to save the planet. I know that it’s harsh, but it’s exactly this type of behavior that deters me from supporting a cause I very much align with.
I didn’t attend the People’s Climate March, not because I don’t agree with the cause, I do, but the message that was delivered (outside of the social media campaigns) was not a message that I support. In short, these marches for awareness have dwarfed into political strategy campaigns that I could never align with because they take the cause for environmentalism and flip it on its head, calling out political party’s and individual naysayers as the inherent problem, when the real issue lies with the people screaming their abhorrently useless rhetoric through a megaphone.
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I grew up in the outdoors, in a village (seriously) in western Massachusetts, surrounded by country air and farm fields. My summers were spent picking corn and finding rope swings with my friends on the Deerfield river. My family went hiking almost every weekend and I have never lost that will to explore the nature around me. In fact, this past winter I attempted to climb Mt. Washington, a relatively small (in comparison to the Rockies) 6,200 ft. peak in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire, the tallest on the Appalachian trail. This mountain is typically used for training by mountaineers in the winter, individuals looking to prepare themselves for a summit of Mt. Everest in the summer.
I failed to summit Mt. Washington that winter.
My roommates and I had made it above the tree line with relative ease, in fact, we were profusely sweating, because we weren’t aware of how hot it would be under the cover of the pine forest. However, for those who have partaken in this adventure, Mt. Washington dramatically changes when you hit the infamous “Alpine Gardens” portion of the trek. About 50 feet from the last standing pine tree a large boulder is often used to “suit up” with the gear you would need to reach the summit (not an inch of your body should be exposed). Because my friends and I had already done so at the base of the mountain we used this boulder to take a break and catch up with the other climbers out looking for an adrenaline rush that day. That break would be the last bit of relaxation we would have for several hours.
I remember the adrenaline rush that I felt as I peered out into the foggy expanse in front of me. The weather had dramatically changed over the course of the last 50 feet, in fact, while we were climbing we could see for miles and miles behind us, an image that has been seared into my brain for the sheer beauty of the mountain range could not be forgotten; but I could no longer see it at this point as the infamous weather at the base of the summit swiftly shifted menacingly.
The aforementioned boulder was a reboot, I ate some Raisinets, but all of my water was frozen at this point, the Camelbak I thought was a nice add to the trip exploded and the water had frozen to the back of my coat, who doesn’t need a few extra pounds to carry? Despite my lack of hydration I could not wait to set out, in fact I felt more energized than I had the entire trip; this feeling quickly changed. I had never experienced that type of altitude before in my life, and while the initial phase of adrenaline felt like a high, the crash burned through every inch of my body.
I had pushed forward about 75 yards in front of my friends, but I soon found myself stopping to catch my breathe every few moments. For the readers who have experienced this feeling of ultimate exhaustion you know how rattling it can be. I felt as if I had all of the energy in the world, that my body was weightless, but with each step I took the shorter my breathes became. I had not paced myself and was now standing in the middle of an endless valley at the base of the most dangerous mountain on the East Coast of the United States and I couldn’t move more than 5 feet with stopping. Suddenly, and I mean suddenly, the weather changed again (a distinct reason why mountaineers climb Mt. Washington to train for Mt. Everest), and my stop-and-go trekking that was tiring, but ultimately didn’t feel all that dangerous, just became a very serious problem.
I am writing this essay, so naturally you know that I survived, but not without panic. The clouds hovering over Tuckerman’s Ravine began swiftly moving towards me, and the expanse of the pasture to my right (no-mans land) suddenly disappeared; I couldn’t see 5 feet in front of me and I had no idea where my friends were behind me, but the clouds were the least of my problems.
I mentioned earlier that climbers prepare at the base of the Alpine Gardens by covering every inch of skin on their bodies, that means gloves, hat and goggles; no exposure. The reason for this is that while it is painfully cold approaching the summit, the wind chill factor makes it dangerously cold. As I continued to plug along at the pace of an 80 year old man, the wind began to pick up (hence the clouds rolling in). In fact, when I eventually got home and checked the weather report for that day on the Mt. Washington observatory website to see what I had endured, my friends and I weren’t so shocked to find that the wind had peaked that day at 90.6 mph.
While I sank through the snow that continued to cave in by my weight (even though I felt weightless) I remember incessantly wishing to turn around and go home. But, this is why I came, to bring myself to the edge, to experience what nature was truly about, isn’t that how we first explored new frontiers, how we pushed our own boundaries past their proverbial breaking points?
As I said, I never reached the summit, about .25 miles away I was desperate to readjust the boot warmer nestled in the arch of my foot. I very ignorantly removed my glove to untie my boot and replace the cartridge with a new one. Within 30 seconds of my skin meeting the numbing air I lost the feeling in my fingertips and soon began to panic. In an adrenaline fueled attempt I paced quickly back down the jagged rocks and ran desperately for the cover of the pines. While it took me nearly 90 minutes to get from the tree line to the base of the summit on my way up the mountain, within 30 minutes of descending I had jumped for cover beneath the trees and immediately felt warmth resurface throughout my body. I wasn’t going to lose my hand that day, and I never lost my pride either.
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So why did I break an essay right in the middle to talk about my mountaineering adventure up Mt. Washington? It’s simple, I know why these people are fighting, and what it is they are fighting for. This country wouldn’t exist without the fortitude of pioneers bravely moving west to concur the great outdoors. And the reverent feeling one gets when they truly embrace all that this earth has to offer is life changing. I too used to revolve my life around the soul-less marketing of material happiness, but when I finally embraced what it means to be alive and be surrounded by the fresh air and even the danger found in nature, I was contentedly happy.
That being said, I now live in New York City, a genuine departure of the happiness I valued, and a test of my patience. I look at every move I make in life as an experience, and I wouldn’t continue to grow if I failed to challenge myself every day. Living here does just that, but it has also opened my eyes to the depletion of happiness and, more importantly, of resources. So why don’t I believe that NYC should have held this march? The place that so desperately needs change? The place where the sole purpose of life is to buy?
Having the march in NYC defines what is wrong with the movement, it is attacking the responsible party to try to miraculously fix a broken system, it is quite opposite to taking baby steps. People start revolutions angry, which just makes everyone else angry, but not at the cause, at the people supporting the cause.
Do you really think that the money-grubbing residents of this city care what the hippie from California thinks? Not only that, but those same hippies tend to be the ones attacking party lines, which angers even more people. I myself am a Libertarian, and am accordingly a fiscal conservative. While I fully support the original message of the march, when you have people holding signs demanding the adoption of socialism, your root cause is officially null and void. The marchers don’t understand that if they start small, explain articulately what the problem is in a non-demanding fashion, the chance that they have of success is exponentially greater than if they continue to fight and stomp and yell into megaphones that they demand change, that they will force it. Until they understand that the success of their movement is reliant on this adoption, it will continue to fail, which is worrisome for all of us.
