Let’s Talk About Peace

Imagine waking up full of excitement for the day ahead.

Imagine that you, as a high school student, already have a job to do.  A job which gives you a deep sense of purpose.  You are learning every day, you are exploring every day, you are meeting challenges every day, and you are looking for new solutions every day.  You are not just writing a bunch of stuff in your notebook while your teacher delivers yet another lecture based on a textbook . . . so that you can pass the exam.  You are doing the research yourself, so that you can figure things out with your own quick mind.  You get better and better at your job every day, and you feel—as you have never felt before—a growing glow of happiness. 

You are meeting an entirely new group of people.  Some of them are your classmates, with whom—you now understand—you were barely acquainted.  Some of them are older than you, from backgrounds very different from yours, and yet you share the spirit of being on the same team.  When you are working with them, you are never bored.  You feel a fresh energy, and a vision of the future which becomes increasingly clear.  Best of all, you are going to build that future, together.

You find your voice, the voice that has been waiting deep inside you for so long.  The kid who sat in class in numb silence, watching the clock, never raising your hand, now speaks with confidence to a dairy farmer with a kind look in his blue eyes as he discusses with you the difficulties of supporting his growing family—with three young grandchildren now—in such a “flip-flop economy.”  

You speak with a community health specialist who works with troubled teenagers; they struggle with depression, with anger, with a lack of self-confidence, all of which you know well from years of experience.  

You speak with a feisty woman fresh out of law school, who can quote the laws that should be protecting a lake and the streams that feed into that lake, and the wetlands that should be protecting those streams, so that the lake, after over half a century of chemical pollution, can finally be cleaned up . . . so that the kids in town can go swimming in the summer.

The Climate Crisis is still real, but at least you are finally doing something about it.

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Book categories: Climate Change and Clean Energy