Serious About Climate Change? Do This!

If it matters, it'll be a special part of the program. So if we, as a nation, are serious about changing our culture to combat the challenges of climate change, we'll create an infrastructure that permeates our programs from civic planning to regulative policy to education.

What better way to get students thinking about it than by having a very visible Student Climate Convention at all levels of school: Middle, High, College.  Whether aligned with city/county/State, or by State and National representative districts, gathering students for conventions at all levels of government organization would be a great way to involve a significant portion of our next generation.

Every homeroom is represented in a school-wide club who's purpose is to increase awareness of how our lives are connected to both the current environment at so many levels, and what we do on a local scale can contribute to helping and hurting.  [Colleges could do it by major.] The schools would elect a representative team from their school to attend the county convention.  That convention could be a 2-way communication from the scientific/academic, industrial, and government entities pushing the latest findings and initiatives, The schools would present the initiatives at their schools, and elect a team to represent them at the state level.  The state convention would have county representation and do the same thing at that level.  Finally, the states would send an elected team to the national convention.  It could garner the same sort of media interest as the states came together to gather opinions and trends, pick some best practices, collect the information and publish the results and findings in an Annual Youth Climate Change State of the Union.

That's just an initial idea -- there are lots of ways to cascade from school to national levels, and there are lots of different formats to build it.  If we can do March Madness with something as inconsequential as collegiate basketball and the college bowls with football, we can certainly do something similar with human relations.  Wait, I mean climate change.  Add a competitive component?  A prize component?  Ask some producers how they could make this meaningful.  Having educators who are sponsoring student groups would be like the coaches for sports teams.  Building capacity within each school to bring that intimate connection between our individual lives and the whole earth to all of our areas of endeavor is not such a stretch.  We can do this.

When You're Done Praying. . .

When you get up off your knees, let the prayers from your heart live through your legs and hands.  Prayers are like souls trapped in limbo until you activate them with a committed course of action.  Saying you're "sending prayers and thoughts" is not the same as actually sending prayers.  A real prayer inspires actual action.  Which means work.  Calculated, deliberate, detailed, intentional, full-on work.

Stop asking how we stop the violence, and get out there and stop it.  Take some of your TV and Minecraft and clubbing and fantasy football and blogging and facebook/twitter/tumblr  and texting time and volunteer at your local middle and high school as a mentor for youth.  Not just the troubled and delinquent, but the quiet and disenfranchised and confused and healthy and overpressured.  Don't know how?  Read some books, enroll in a training course or degree program or discussion group.  Get involved through another organization like the local PTA (even if you don't have a kid there), and find ways to spackle the cracks in the schools' ability to reach EVERY child in a deep and life-changing way.  Join Big Brother/Big Sister. Participate in your employer's partnership with a school.  If they don't have one, initiate one.  If you have one, recruit more colleagues.  Strong-arm them or sweet-talk them or bribe them.  Is the cause worthy?  Could it possibly prevent some future heartache?  Maybe. How would you know?  Get involved in your local community in a personal and immediate and sustained way.

If you can't do it yourself for whatever reason, when you're done sharing your opinion, shut your mouth and open your wallet.  If you can't be a direct part of the solution because [you're antisocial, or agoraphobic, to busy being successful, or  ...], and if you REALLY care (as opposed to wishing you cared or pretending to care or equate caring with clicking "share"), go to the next local school site council meeting and see if you can underwrite a couple (more?) social workers so they can serve the kids who need it, or fund a music program ($70K for a teacher w/ beneifts, $30K for instruments) so those students who have huge empty spaces in their souls for whatever reason can fill it with some music.  Or pay for their anti-bullying program so they can do more than a single assembly once a year.  Donate part of the funds to support another school psychologist who can help identify and treat students who escape notice because they don't act out overtly but still need somebody to talk to who can really HEAR them and knows what supports might help them find some alternative to the dark thoughts speaking to them.  There's no character development curriculum program at your neighborhood school?  Propose one and rally the financial support to pay for it.  Call up some friends, host a little cabal and hatch a plan to make a difference in your sphere of influence.  Join a group that already does this sort of work and ask how you can help.

Know that we won't be able to stop the violence.  There are 350 MILLION complicated people in this wonderful but chaotic and confusing and confounding and complex society.  Some of them will be damaged or undone or defective in ways that we cannot foresee and it will manifest itself in some terrible ways.  But with an order of magnitude greater level of support and , we can certainly prevent MANY of the killing rampages that would have otherwise occurred.  But if we finally start taking mental health seriously, what is now too common (though still rare), we will FOR SURE make it rarer. Perhaps MUCH rarer.

As relatively rare as it is, the damage done by such a rampage is so much more than the already overwhelming death and heartache of the victims. It propagates locally through the normal close relationships each of those victims had, and globally through the web and national and international news stories.  When Mount Saint Helens erupted in 1980, I was a thousand miles away in North Dakota.  But there was a thin but disconcerting layer of ash covering our town.  These events lays this veil of fear or despair over everyone for awhile , and some of the more sensitive among us, will instigate a long-term anxiety about things like going to school or a midnight movie.  Because it impacts us all, it deserves some attention from us all.

So the most important and pressing question coming from these tragedies has always been:  "What are YOU going to DO about it?"  All those other questions depend on the answer to this one.  As long as you remain one of the beseeching voices, there little will change.

But there's more.  Even if you don't individually contribute to preventing another horrifying trauma, being more involved in nurturing the mental health and well-being will make your life more satisfying.  If enough of us sign up for something that helps our neighbors, I'm convinced there will be a tangible and significant improvement in our communities and country.

One last word.  Those of you who already make it your life work to reach out to others and be a force for good, continue to strive to do your very best, and bring an open heart to your vocation along with your head and hands.  For those busy raising children, if you don't have the capacity to do more outside your homes right now, take a moment to think about how you nurture that sense of family, connectedness, and belonging in the family, and know your children.  Get them help when you're at a loss, get yourself help when you need it.  You are a powerful force in the overall health of our nation, and keeping yourself up to the task by keeping yourself informed and daring to know your kids and yourself better.

This is not something we can eliminate, but there are things we can do to diminish the tragic, so we must.