Introduction

“The times they are a-changin’.”  — Bob Dylan

I’m not really a fan of Bob Dylan, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like his music, and he’s certainly had a huge impact on American culture.  His line about changing times has always been relevant, both then and now, but I think it’s only grown in significance since then.  In many ways, change is the norm, and if things are changing, that really means everything is stable.  From politics to pop culture to the contours of the ocean shore, change is the order of the day.  The “balance of nature” is a popular misconception.  Nature is always in movement, always organizing and then falling into chaos, always evolving (yes, I used the “E” word).  But some changes really are significant, drastic, irreversible.  Some changes don’t cause fluctuations within the system, but rather they change the system itself.  It could be for better or for worse (or a bit of both), but either way, nothing’s ever the same again.  The development of the Internet.  The Civil Rights movement.  The American Revolution.  And so on.

Those caught up in the midst of such a dramatic change may not realize it at first, or if they do, they may not understand the full significance of it.  It often takes an outside perspective, from another place or a future time, to really see how the system itself is transforming.  Events may be happening too slowly, or they may be too subtle, or too grand in scale, to be able to understand when you’re in the middle of them.  If you were able, however, to grasp the significance of such a period of substantial, world-shaping events, then you would be in a position to take an active role in those events, to shape them, direct them, slow them down or speed them up.  You could participate in the systemic overhaul, and help guide it towards whatever goal you thought was most beneficial.  You could change lives.  You could save them, or you could ruin them.  If you do nothing, however, then you just get caught up in the flow.  You become a target of change, rather than an agent of change.  Once it starts, there’s no stopping it, so wouldn’t it be better to participate in it?  To help the movement along, to mitigate the losses and maximize the benefits?  Once change on this sort of scale gets going, there’s no stopping it.  You can either observe as things take their course (or perhaps continue on blindly, oblivious to what’s happening), or else you can wade in, get your hands dirty, and see what can be done.

The times certainly are a-changin’, and in a way that’s never happened before in modern human history.  The entire world is changing, and in a very literal sense.  We are in the midst of a revolution, a transformation, each of us, every day, and most of us don’t know, don’t care, or actively deny any involvement.  It doesn’t matter if it’s for the better or worse, if it’s natural or man-made, who the heroes or villains are.  It’s happening.  Global climate change, mass extinctions, and habitat destruction are all moving along at increasing rates.  The global environment is changing, and we’re in that precious position of being able to have a say in how it turns out.  Those of us who are aware that change is coming spend much of our time arguing over what has caused it, how it started, or how far things might go before it stabilizes.

None of that matters.

All that matters is, what are we going to do about it?  We can bicker all day and all night over whether or not the current shifting climate is a natural fluctuation of the global weather system, something artificially induced by human activities, or some blend of both.  However, the one argument you rarely hear anymore, is whether or not climate change is happening at all.  Even most opponents of environmentalism acknowledge that it’s happening, at least to some extent.  Likewise, few people, if any, argue that we aren’t driving many species to extinction every day.  You never hear someone claim that old growth rainforests are not becoming more and more rare, or that our oceans are not overfished.  Most people, when faced with the evidence, have to agree that all of these things, and more, are going on, and that the trends indicate that they are worsening.  If we can all agree, regardless of politics, that the global climate IS changing, that species ARE going extinct, that the face of this planet is being irrevocably altered at an unprecedented, rapid pace, then the only important question is, what are we going to do about it?  Who CARES if it’s a natural phenomenon or a man-made tragedy?  If the results are harmful, then shouldn’t we still do something about it, regardless of the cause?  When your house is on fire, you don’t stand around and try to figure how it started.  You do whatever you can to save the house and the lives of those within it.  Later, you can take a breath and try to understand how it started.  It won’t change what happened, of course, but understanding the cause may help you avoid another fire in the future.

I’m not saying that understanding the origins of change is unimportant.  Far from it.  I am, however, suggesting that it’s the wrong place to be focusing our energies at the moment.  We are living in a time of change, of action.  Environmental transformation has been set in motion, but the end results are not yet set in stone.  We need to decide what we’re going to do to influence those end results.  Even if we end up just doing nothing, letting events unfold on their own, we still need to actively decide to do that.  Then we’ll at least be able to take some responsibility for the results.  If we never make any decisions, if we just stand around and argue over who is to blame, then we’ve become nothing more than helpless victims.  We, as a people, as a species, are stronger than that.  Global climate change is happening.  The extinction crisis is ongoing.  We can at least try to do something about these things.  We can try to stop them, or to at least minimize the damage.  Or we can shout and argue and say that it’s not our fault, while the house burns down around us.