To the leaders of the developed world.
It would be folly to begin making any appeal for change without first naming the truth on the ground, the way it is, openly and transparently.
There is no doubt that following the recent Copenhagen summit, the overwhelming mood within the environmental movement at this time is one of disappointment. It seems that no matter how erudite the speaker’s plea for sanity, or how brilliant the analysis of the way forward, it has still not been enough to sway the naysayers once and for all.
Of course you know this, because many of you, at different times, have made such pleas or analyses in search of understanding, and yet no common ground has truly ever been found.
And it is to address this lack of common ground between the vast range of groups and interests who have a stake in the climate change debate that I am writing to you all today.
It is clear to me that the common ground we all seek will not be defined by the data sets and statistical analysis of climate change science alone, and that we need a new frame in which our conversations can truly be aligned around a purpose which is bigger than our vested and narrow interests.
Fortunately, words will not be required: although a new experience will be.
What I want to propose to you all, along with every business man and woman, change agent and community leader worldwide, indeed every human on this bright green and blue planet we call home, is to increase your sensory contact with Nature.
Simply, for you to be seen to step out of the synthetic environments – the conference suites, TV Studios, private rooms and lecture halls – in which your conversations have unfolded to date; and start to feel your relationship with the Earth and Nature’s cycles anew, at a deeper more fundamental level than before.
That you all switch off your mobile phones and pagers, and take the time to tend to the gardens surrounding your presidential and ministerial homes. To pull the muddy root vegetables that you have seeded and tended yourself; to marvel at the vibrancy of natural colour of what you have grown; to shell a pea from a pod picked straight from the plant, and savour its sweetness. And that you tend to these gardens throughout the seasons long enough to know within your heart that the mystery we call life springs from the simple marriage of earth, water, air and sunlight.
Perhaps then, one clement morning you will step barefoot out onto your lawn sparkling with sun kissed dew, and in the still, quiet of the dawn, you will feel as strongly about protecting the grass beneath your feet as you do your children, or grandchildren.
And that you will feel this strongly about the grass beneath your feet, because you know deep down inside your heart, that you have glimpsed the unbreakable, sacred pattern which connects life together into one unifying web of cause and effect: the indescribable sense of awe and wonder of Nature’s intrinsic beauty, which has captivated artists, scientists and leaders of social change for hundreds of years.
Is it romantic to ask you to align around a stake for our future, defined only by awe and wonder over economic continuity and national security?
It may be that it is.
But with your example, of how to forge a deeper and more authentic connection with Nature, it is my hope that others too will seek too to tread more gently upon this Earth.
Then we truly will have something worth talking about.
It will not matter whether we have been moved by the moonlight dancing on the ocean at night, or the flash of brilliant red of a Cardinal as it flies through mountain forests, or, the simple dance of a Bumblebee as it pollinates our gardens, our common ground will be defined by our common experience of Nature’s intrinsic beauty.
Indeed, it is my belief, that it is only this sense of awe and wonder which will sufficiently move people emotionally to take the kind of decisive action the world so desperately needs.
Ultimately, it is who we are being in the world that defines what we do in the world.
It is claimed, that after camping in the open air in Yosemite Valley with naturalist John Muir, in 1903, US President Theodore Roosevelt, was more receptive to addressing the state mismanagement of the valley and rampant exploitation of the valley’s resources.
The first snow fell on them, the night they camped there, near Glacier Point, and it was, according to President Roosevelt, the greatest day of his life: “There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods’ he said. ‘…And our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred.”
It is my hope to hear you speak such words one day soon in service of our common future.
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just loved this
Comprehensive and interesting comments on an important subject which I support.
Truly beautiful – and SUCH an important perspective, one that I hadn’t really heard before I read this from you. Thank you Nick.
very well written – I was out there on the grass! – I do hope you actually SEND this to lots of CEO’s, Politicians etc – they are all human, and can therefore be moved, emotionally. I would condense the beginning and end slightly though – attention span et al..