What's An Adult to Do? Coal, Climate and the Children

Rob Lewis is a house painter and poet living in Fairhaven. He crafts words for the wordless in the hopes of bringing greater human understanding of and empathy for the not human.

A while back a friend’s daughter, Kayla, knowing I was against the “Gateway Pacific” coal terminal, brought me a bumper sticker with the word COAL crossed out with a big red X. We went to the curb and affixed it to the front of my work van. I asked her if she understood what was happening with the climate. “Kind of,” she answered shyly. I thought about explaining it to her, that this might be one of those “teachable moments.” But I stopped. It is such a dark subject, and she stood there in the sun, happy and bright and genuinely care-free. I let it go.

But I was left with a terrible set of questions. If what’s happening to the climate is too terrible to want to explain to a child, what was I doing just standing there? Why was I not throwing myself onto the tracks? And then the broader question: how are we, the adults of the world at this critical time, letting such a thing happen? How have we become so paralyzed?

These are of course easy questions to ask, but they’re not easy to answer. It’s true that we are up against very powerful forces of greed, and they have been effective in thwarting any real human progress against this very human catastrophe. They represent the obvious obstruction, concrete and identifiable.

But there is more at work here, something within us that is stymied, overwhelmed, unable to find a foothold. We lack both the language and precedence with which to even approach this crisis, for no human generation has generated anything like it. This not-seen-before aspect of climate change is just one of the many layers of invisibility that cloak it from our perception. There is also the invisibility of the green house gasses themselves; to which we can add invisibility in time. The breakdown of our climate is not an event but a process. It is something approaching, still beyond the horizon of daily appearances. And even as its first waves arrive, in the form of forest fires (seasoned forest-fire fighters now talk of a “new fire reality,”) floods, drought and super-storms, it’s still impossible to tease apart that which is climate change and that which is natural weather variation. Thus we face yet another layer of invisibility.

Understandably, we try to pierce this invisibility with science. We draw representations with graphs and tables. We analyze it with the most powerful instruments and computer models. We elucidate it in the most precise technical terms.

The science is extraordinary; its theories and predictions now being proven by actual events. But only some people seem able to “see” it. Too many, unfortunately, are not fluent enough in the language or principles of science to picture what the research is pointing to. And so the greatest crisis to face humanity remains strangely invisible to us. And though science can help us design the technical strategies and devices for getting us out of this mess, they can’t help us with our cultural malaise, our political stalemates, or our own inward obstacles.

But maybe the children can. When we look at a child we may not be able to see climate change, but we can see the stakes. We may not know what actions to take, but we feel compelled to take action. In this way children clarify the world for adults. They evoke in us a certain protective stance; a standard of caution born of care.

It’s a standard to which we already adhere. Driving a car alone, for example, we might slouch in the seat, one hand draped over the wheel, elbow out the window. But if there’s a little one aboard, we’ll take the care to secure them in a child safety seat in the back, and drive cautiously, alert, both hands on the wheel, ten o’clock and two o’clock. When a new baby comes into a household, mom and dad go about child proofing the house. They don’t require any scientific proof of risk. They act instinctively; something precious has arrived, and all care must be taken.

But somehow this stance is lost when it comes to the climate. The caution and care we reserve for children in our private lives is dismissed in the broad public realm. It’s as if we’re expected to just drop our kids on the seat beside us and go barreling down the free market freeway, carelessly following whatever schemes the corporate “powers in towers” bring forth. They want us to view their plans in strictly technical and economic terms, hoping to convince us of some rational formula by which economic benefit exceeds environmental impact. The coming generations meanwhile are kept well out of the calculations, for once allowed in the entire equation changes. Caution becomes the operant logic, and all sums must include the future.

It’s extremely disappointing that this standard — caution born of care--hasn’t come to bear more on our response to the climate crisis. It seems it should. After all, children are the ones who are going to inherit the brunt of the storms, and the droughts, and … well, we can fill in the rest. And we should remember, in the heat of ‘round-the-clock partisanship, children remain blessedly pre-partisan. Not one is born Republican or Democratic. And they stay that way for a good many years too. They are like natural bridges for awkward, ideologically near-sighted adults.

The love of a parent for a child is also non partisan (we should add the love of grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends of the family.) The feeling in the heart of the liberal and the feeling in the heart of the conservative are the same, and this feeling happens to be one of the most powerful forces on earth. If anything could bring us together and inspire us to action, wouldn’t this be it?

It may be starting to happen. Although our modern, consumer culture is fractured and distracted, we are not alone. Voices once dismissed, considered relics of a conquered time, are reemerging with fresh relevance and clarity. At least, this is what I have observed here locally, in the struggle against those trying to turn Cherry Point into a coal terminal.

On Friday, September 21, 2012, the Lummi Nation hosted a Xwe’ chi’ eXen Gathering at Cherry Point. Xwe’ chi’ eXen is the Lummi word for Cherry Point, and the Lummi had invited the public to hear them speak on the proposed coal terminal. It was a humble ceremony. Tribal leaders stood on the beach, ceremonial blankets over their shoulders, the bay opening out to the islands behind them. Each spoke first in the Lummi native tongue. It is a water-made language, full of soft sliding sounds, resonant with the waves and light wind. I couldn’t understand what was being said, but I could follow along. They would motion to the bay, then their hearts, then the forested bluff, then their children, then their hearts ….

When they then translated to English for non-native listeners, I heard my language but the words were new. This was not the language of environmentalism or the language of economics. This was the language of the heart, and it circled again and again around the children. Tribal Chairman Cliff Cultee made a point of calling up various youth from his and neighboring tribes to stand behind him. He wanted to make it very clear who this was about. Beside them on an easel in the sand, a giant mock-up of a check made out in the amount of “NOT EVEN MILLIONS UNLIMITED” was stamped in dripping red letters: “NON-NEGOTIABLE.” A fire burned nearby on the beach. After speeches and song Chairman Cultee asked the young men and women behind him to carry it over and set it on the flames as the elders solemnly watched it burn. No one now could possibly doubt the gravity of the Lummi’s decision or their commitment to the next generation. (See Whatcom Watch, “Day to Remember,” Oct.-Nov. issue, 2012)

I would see this intergenerational commitment again about a year later, when the House of Tears carvers, led by Jewell Praying Wolf James, returned to Xwe’ chi’ eXen as part of a totem pole journey called kwel ‘hoy, “We Draw the Line.” Again, over and over, they spoke of the children, and I realized for them it’s second nature. This commitment to the next generation lay at the very center of their culture. There is power in it, and they speak in a manner capable of carrying that power.

It was here I heard Jewell James call out Warrior Up! Warrior Up! He was standing on the back of the flatbed truck that carried the totem pole. It was bitter cold and there was a biting wind, but a fire had been lit inside me. Later at another gathering he would tell of how he first heard that call from an elder of the Tsleil-Waututh tribe, a grandmother. She was specifically speaking to the men of her tribe, calling on them to stand up and protect the earth for their children. Here it was again, the generations weaving through each other, as though chording a very long and sturdy rope.

I realize now the reason I couldn’t tell Kayla about climate change is that I didn’t have the heart to. I didn’t believe at that time there was much hope in humans coming together and really doing something about it. Now I don’t permit myself that pessimism. I think that’s what Jewell James was saying. He didn’t mean to “warrior up” in a violent sense. He was calling on us to lift our minds and hearts to the challenge, to not give in to apathy and disillusionment, to wade straight into the battle and not look back. He was calling on us to protect the earth for the children.

If I was to tell Kayla today about “what’s happening with the climate,” I would say something like this:

“For a long while human beings didn’t realize that burning coal and oil would hurt the climate. But now we know, and we’re learning our lesson. It’s a big challenge, but we’re going to meet it. We’re becoming new men and new women now, and it’s all for you.”

Coal for the Children

They arrive and arrive.

Over playgrounds and nurseries

swing sets and tiny school desks

our carbon wager gathers.

coal for the children

markets for the money men

melting poles for newborn souls

rising seas for the ones to come

Each is an open hand

an equal face under the sky.

They receive and receive.

Toward them, all our dues accrue.

coal for the children

trains from Armageddon

paper profits for powers in towers

vanishing songbirds for the criers in the cribs

With the sea behind him

and his children gathered around

the Native Man calls out across the world.

Warrior up! Warrior up!

coal for the Children

summons from the sun

flames of clarity flaring in the eyes

of new men and new women.