View from the Veranda: How Climate Change will Kill us All.

HEART

It’s a beautiful day today. Spring is definitely here in Los Angeles. My son woke us up at six, before the gears of the city really started to churn. The bees are flying in a figure eight and the sky is free of smog. I open up my windows and see geese flying through the canyon and the San Gabriel mountains off in the distance. It’s nice up here on my veranda.

Meanwhile essential workers are going to their morning shift. Grocery store clerks, veterinary technicians, landscapers, trash trucks, I hear them start the day from the comfort of my single-family home. The omnipresent buzzing of the 101 Freeway, for a while seemed to stop. It’s back now.

I jump in my Cadillac Escalade around eight, because we’re still getting Starbucks regularly. Mom is thirsty and the days are long. Less than a mile away, the food lines are already forming. I see a Lexus, Hyundai, and even a new Mercedes queued up today. They are growing.

Perhaps it’s payday, because Starbucks was busy too. I had a nice chat with the young guy at the window. He just had a baby. She is one month old, and he can’t wait to get home and cuddle her. We talked about how he makes the foam for my iced cold brew with salted cream cold foam. “I’m a quick study,” he said. We smile at one another knowingly through our masks and I drive off.

You get it, I’m privileged. But with privilege comes great responsibility.

Not that colonialist I know what’s best for you bull****. I’ve learned that the role of the privileged is to stay in your lane. Full stop. This is bigger than you.

So I’m writing this article to you. The people from District 1 or the Capital in the Hunger Games. The ones who have a high-paying job, or don’t need one because you’re wealthy enough to “live the good life.” Those who have a luxurious place to call home, and are sitting comfortably there while you “do the right thing” in this pandemic.

As a millennial white woman from an affluent neighborhood, with a supportive family and community, I enjoy the privilege of sitting on my veranda while the going gets tough for most others. You see, I am someone who benefits from our current system.

But it doesn’t really work for me either.

HEAD

Now that you understand a little bit about me, let me shift gears for a minute and talk about the bell curve. Yeah, you know, #flattenthecurve. I am not a statistician, but I aced my statistics, multivariate statistics, and research design courses. I, too, am a quick study.

You see, in the social sciences, when looking at change in a population, we test our theories using what is commonly referred to as the “null hypothesis”. In Laymen’s Terms, any hypothesis is tested against an assumption.

The assumption is always: no change. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

In real life, the odds are often stacked against you. For some groups this is far more true than for others. Any attempt at changing that is most likely to fail. Failure, you see, is an important part of learning how to create change.

So about that curve. Or the shape of her sexy curvy body. Let’s talk about normal distribution for a second.

When you zoom out and look at the global population of approximately 8 billion people, we can usually assume that the data is normally distributed. There will be exceptions to this, but bear with me.

Normal distribution is a concept describing the probability that any one person (or variable) will fall somewhere within the bell curve. Most people fall towards the middle. This means most people are average. About 68% of people to be precise. Some people are slightly above or below average. Even fewer people are more above or below average. How far away you are from the middle is measured by standard deviation.

This is a simple phenomenon, observed in all biological systems known to humankind. It is not going to change.

“Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements is taken in hand and marshaled in the order of their magnitude, this unexpected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to have been latent all along. The law … reigns with serenity and complete self-effacement amidst the wildest confusion. The larger the mob and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of unreason” (Galton, 1889, p. 166).

Human systems at any level of analysis — individual, familial, community, political, or economic — are diverse and complex.

They are also self-organizing for their own survival.

There will be individuals, groups, companies, and countries somewhere along the continuum of normal distribution depending on the variable(s) you measure. The more variables, the more complex the analysis and interaction effects. You want to wax poetic about data, be my guest, I’ll play along to the best of my ability.

It behooves me to remind you that there are, on average, 86 Billion neurons in the human brain.

You are a complex system.

One consequence of the complexity within and between us, is that human development is being outpaced by environmental and technological changes. This causes dissonance in our hearts and minds, which leads to acting out behavior.

Dissonance most plainly means discomfort.

People are not effectively coping with the pace of innovation and change happening around them. Instead you drink and eat excessively, take drugs to feel connected, follow false prophets, numb yourself to emotional pain, vilify the other, and deny basic facts about reality. Okay, not everyone is a climate change denier, but ya’ll are straight up lying about drug use to your doctors. Or maybe they’re lying to you?

I digress. You get the point.

The systems of power and privilege that we have created, and continue to maintain, are complicated and unjust. But the solutions to addressing them are fairly simple.

In the synthesis of opposites, truth is known.

The problems we face today are not new. Fear and anxiety rule your HPA-Axis, which is the connection between your endocrine and central nervous systems. Under optimal circumstances this helps you survive, but these are not optimal times.

Generation Z and their Millennial friends feel this fear acutely. Your ability to thrive on this planet is at stake.

Unfortunately, individuals across generational divides are terrified to lose their perceived superiority. You’ve confounded mediocrity with the statistical probability of averages. You think you are special because our society has assigned value to “being at the top”. When in reality, we all fall under the same curve.

When you drill down, we are mostly average people just trying to survive. Privilege allows you to perceive yourself at the top of the pyramid scheme. And while you may have jumped a step, you skipped a step, too.

Your privilege is not an excuse to numb out, sit on the sidelines, or exist in fantasy. Even under the most ideal of circumstances, being human is hard. It is overwhelming and stressful to change systems. Both within ourselves and on a global scale.

ENTER COVID-19

I am not joking when I say that quarantine is, literally, the world’s biggest psychological experiment. Ever. But with that comes the world’s greatest opportunity for change. And we have some serious changes to make.

Let’s apply the null hypothesis to this experiment.

The benchmark we — as a society — are trying to beat is that there will be no real change resulting from this quarantine experiment. No change in our collective behavior. I’m not talking about incidence or prevalence of SARS-COV2. Social distancing policies are working, so stay home and listen to public health officials.

I’m talking about the bigger picture. The ability for humans to thrive in harmony with natural and technological systems on Planet Earth. Remember Her? Your Momma?

It is estimated that 1/3 of the global population is currently living under some type of lock-down or quarantine. That’s 2.6 billion people. In Los Angeles, we’ve been under a “Safer at Home” policy since March 19th. So a bit over a month. I had to look it up, because frankly, I am not 100% “oriented to time” these days. Assuming nothing changes, we are half way through the planned quarantine.

My city has about another month of this. And much grieving ahead. We all do.

COMMITTED ACTION

When families, cities, corporations, and countries gradually lift restrictions, will things go back to business as usual? Or will we beat the null hypothesis? Again, I am not just talking about Covid-19.

One year ago today, I gave birth to our son. I still wipe up his mess every day. It is my privilege to be his mother and raise him. One that I take with great responsibility and humility. I have no delusions about the world he was born into. But I still get irritable, overwhelmed, and burnt-out when he’s on a good one. I am human. I am evolving my internal operating systems just like you.

Yes, the problems facing our society are enormous, overwhelming, and pretty bleak. But they are also incredibly simple to solve.

In the synthesis of opposites, truth is known.

Crisis has always been an opportunity for growth. So focus on what is inside of your control. Get back to basics. Nourish yourself, breathe, sleep, relax if possible. And pay your hired help. Especially if they aren’t working right now.

Start somewhere you feel comfortable and go with that. But learn to lean into your own discomfort, too. Inside of you, within your family, within your community, on the global scale, and over time. Let us use this pandemic as an opportunity to reset our head and heart, take a deep breath, and commit to action.

Because unless we beat the null, we’re all going to die anyway.