IT'S AS IF WE'RE IN A CAR THAT IS BLAZING ALONG. We are on cruise control as we hit a crossroads. We desperately need to make a turn. But instead of slowing down or turning the wheel, we're going full-speed ahead. The passengers are a diverse and knowledgeable bunch, but all we're doing is talking, arguing, and fighting amongst ourselves—no one is making the turn. As we barrel straight forward, what lies ahead of us is the edge of a cliff.
Those of us not in the driver's seat yet bear the most responsibility, for we are the last generations to make any significant change in the direction we take. It's a crippling feeling for many of us. Just as we become conscious of the state of our world, that world is stampeding toward a demise of our own making. It's not that we're apathetic, despite being told that we are. Rather, it's simply that we do not know what to do.
Our parents before us tried to steer humanity away from the edge decades ago, but here we are ever closer to it. It's certainly not for a lack of trying on their part. They did, after all, create an environmental revolution in the 20th century, full of civil disobedience and consciousness changing that shifted Westerners' relationship to the planet.
But their movement dwindled and grew old as they did. Their tactics rarely work anymore; their faces and voices rarely connect with us; and their stories, though still inspiring, are not our own.
We need revolutionaries now more desperately than ever. With the tipping point we face from climate change, as well as an assortment of global issues, the world is calling out for the next eco-warriors.
Many believe they don't even exist. Al Gore said to The New York Times in 2007, “I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.”
It's a disappointing sentiment, shared by many. Yet it's also the inspiration for this book: because I know the doubters are wrong. For at the same time when Gore made that comment, a group of young people had already started blocking bulldozers, and many more would follow. The next eco-warriors are here. They are alive and kicking.
There is little dialogue about them, however, so it's no surprise few seem to know of their existence. This must change. For as a collective, they represent a new movement in the 21st century. It's a global movement, not just a Western green movement. It is a movement that is evolving beyond banner waving into a colorful mosaic of change. And it is a movement that is redefining the word activism.
The word activist is no longer held hostage to mean only a protester or an “eco-terrorist” (though these forms of activism still have their place). Instead, the next eco-warriors embrace a technicolor rainbow of strategic tactics. They use an assortment of their own talents, skills, and abilities (in some cases, paid work) to stimulate the engines of social change.
Furthermore, instead of adopting the limited notion that only those on top of the power pyramid can change the world—leaders such as president Barack Obama—this new movement reminds us that the world of revolution is open to anyone and everyone who wants to make a substantial difference. After all, it's usually people at the bottom who make the greatest change.
It is also a movement that is as diverse as nature itself. It is people from around the world who are shifting minds, policies, and the axes of old tyrannies. No longer is this movement owned and operated by the global North. Instead, it's pushing boundaries, becoming a movement for all of us, managed by multifaceted cultures and peoples from the farthest corners of the Earth.
The faces of this movement include people like Enei Begaye, a Diné woman who is changing what is possible for her Navajo community in A rizona, from coal jobs to green jobs; Wen Bo, a Chinese student who dared to become an eco-activist just after the Tiananmen Square massacre; A merican Elizabeth Redmond, who is reinventing renewable technology by using our feet to generate power; Kevin Ochieng, a Kenyan youth who is leading a climate movement with underprivileged youth across Africa; and New York City native Tanya Fields, who resists oppression through guerilla gardening.
Together they fight an eco-war. But let's not be shy about it—it is a war.
It is a war for the last of the Amazon rainforest. It is a war to end our own grave digging in coal and oil mining. It is a war to defend the people caught in the cross fires of industrial pulverization. It is a war to defend the rights to life for nonhumans. And it is a war for the creation of a new world, one with renewable energy and a sustainable economy.
This war is being fought against the misinformers, denialists, and old guard of the fossil fuel regime that care only about profit, even at the expense of shortening our time here on Earth.
In short, it is a war for survival.
I believe it is appropriate to think of it as a war. Climate change alone is probably the greatest challenge humans have ever faced throughout our entire existence. The challenge is so great because the battle is not with external enemies but a war within ourselves. It is a war where we must stop ourselves in time to survive ourselves, with the planet as we know it hanging in the balance.
Our weapons for this battle are not daggers, firearms, or nukes but tools for social change, such as “mind bombs” of consciousness raising, energy alternatives, creativity to breed new solutions, and our fiery spirits for justice that brings humanity to new horizons. And the warriors themselves are not unwilling conscripts but willing participants who want to make a better world even in the face of great personal sacrifice, risks, and even at times personal endangerment.
This eco-war I speak of may seem of mythic proportions, yet it is the stark reality we must face, that we are in time of a war—a war for the planet and a war for ourselves. I think many of us know this ugly reality one way or another: we can feel the crumbling of the edge beneath our feet. We feel it with almost daily news of “weird” weather events like the flooding of Pakistan, the raging fires of Russia or the vanishing poles. It can make you feel as if the show is already over (for some of us, over before it even really began).
PHOTO BY EMILY HUNTER
But it doesn't have to be this way. We can turn away from that edge. There is still time left—though precious little, and less every day. Some of us are trying to do this by pledging to be this new generation of eco-warriors, fighting for something better.
Therefore, in this book, I share with you the stories of men and women who have taken up this battle. This is by no means a how-to guide to save the planet: social change was never brought about through manuals or step-by-steps. Activism is a deeply personal journey and cannot be condensed into something so simplistic. Instead, many before me and many after me will note that the x factor for social change is storytelling. Stories are what have shaped our world and continue to shape it, whether through books, movies, or folktelling. And in continuing this effort of storytelling, this book provides just that: Stories from the next eco-warriors. Stories that attempt to reclaim hope in a world that seems to have very little.
These are the stories of the next eco-warriors. Read it, and know that this is your revolution too.
—EMILY HUNTER
Twenty-six Canada Media Frontliner
PHOTO BY VANESA LARKEY