Lizard people, cars, motivation, and vacation
Conspiracy theories and cynicism trick you into thinking your actions don’t matter.
Cars are THE single largest energy user in America today, which means to stop Climate Change, we need to make it easier for people to choose transportation options beyond cars like walking, biking, and transit. We need to make it so more people have more mobility options rather than having them be stuck needing to drive every time they want to get somewhere. Think of where you live now– is driving your only option to get to the grocery store or go for a night out or head to the park or work? What would need to be different for you to have more choices?
The answer to that question isn’t waiting to be discovered in some lab. You probably know the answer to that question. It’s probably some combo of:
Make it safe & comfortable for you to bike/scooter/e-cargo bike to where you want to go
Have frequent & reliable transit service that connects you to your destinations
Make it easy for your destinations to be set up by you (or for you to move near them)
A few other things (let me know in the comments!)
A wonderful thing about this is that these are all pretty much local road & land-use decisions which are set by your mayor & city councilmembers. In other words, the elected officials who you matter most to are the ones with the biggest control over your community's largest source of carbon emissions. That’s really convenient!
While a bank you’re asking to divest from fossil fuels; or a foreign politician you’re asking to stop an oil pipeline might view you as just another face in the crowd– to your city councilmember you are about 1 in 40,000. And your councilmember has the ability to change your community’s roads to lower the overall demand for fossil fuel investments (while also increasing mobility, economic vibrancy and street safety in your community!)
Reducing the demand for fossil fuels by changing your community might feel like a drop in the bucket in terms of shifting global oil demand– but changing your community is work that you can do and those changes are the ones you can most easily win because you are the one pushing for them as a member of the community.
If 1 in 40,000 sounds like you’re just another face in the crowd, think about how many people you interact with in a day. Seriously– take a second and think through every person you came in contact with in-person or online today. It adds up! Now imagine if you were intentionally trying to chat with as many people as you could in your community in one month. It’s not 40,000, but you can make a sizable dent. Think of how many people you could get an idea in front of if you got other people involved in helping spread the message. If you do that, then 40,000 in a couple of months starts feeling pretty doable. And if you’re like me, realizing something is “doable” can feel pretty motivating and being motivated is generally a pretty good thing.
Because in the face of enormous problems where it feels like progress is impossible, it’s tempting to give up. It’s tempting to seek comfort in cynicism or conspiracy theories because believing that it’s hopeless can help you tell yourself that you are absolved from the responsibility to act. If “Big Oil” or “The Senate” or “Lizard People” won’t let you win, then why bother trying? It can be tempting to give up because it can be heartbreaking to allow yourself to care. It can be heartbreaking to know that a better world is possible but to feel like we just can’t get there from here.
Winning is not easy, but it is possible— and as long as it’s possible, it’s on us to keep trying.
We have to keep trying to win the changes we can win, to win the biggest changes we can win and to win changes that make even bigger wins possible. We have to scale-up our ability to make the world better and make it easier for more people to step up and contribute in the ways they can contribute.
And if you’re like me and maybe a little bit too motivated for your own good– it’s good to remember to rest. Both because without rest we cannot keep up the work, but also because life is more than work and rest is great in its own right. At least, that’s what I’ll try to remind myself as I go on my first long vacation in years! I’ll be back at the start of June and will likely post a few times between now and then, but I won’t be hosting training sessions till June. So, in the meantime— you are more powerful than you know, you can win bigger changes locally then you might think even though it’s hard and I look forward to helping you win the changes you want to win once I get some R&R!
Want to strengthen your advocacy skills? Let me know and we can schedule a session (for June!)– email me at Carter@carterlavin.
Free upcoming online events!
6/14 @ 5:30pm PT— Bike Activism Training: How to pick a goal you can win and chart a path to victory. Learn more and register here.
6/20 @ 5:30pm PT— Join your fellow transportation advocates at the June Open Discussion Zoom Happy Hour! This month’s topic: "Navigating dynamics between transit agencies and transit activists" Come share your thoughts and learn from allies. Register here.
Interested in sponsoring the training of an activist working on an issue you’re passionate about? Let’s chat. Carter@carterlavin.com
Thanks for reading, thanks for forwarding this along, and most importantly– thanks for working to make the world better!
Sincerely,
Carter Lavin