If you’ve ever participated in a tug of war, you know how it goes.  You pull for your side.  The others pull for theirs.  If they pull harder you pull harder.  Add more to your side and they will add more to theirs.  The amount of tension and force continues to go up and up.  No movement.  No results.  If you’re lucky no one gets hurt.

We’re in a virtual tug of war and the planet is the rope.  It has become automatic:  if A says “left” then B says “right.”  If B says “up” then A says “down.”  Energy is totally wasted with no results.  Just like in a physical tug of war.

How do we get out of this?  The answer is so simple.  Stop focusing on what we’re against. Stop focusing on who we oppose.

But let’s face it – it’s easier to push against what we don’t want.  It takes much more energy to create something from nothing, to create what we DO want.

One of the ways to clarify what we’re FOR is to identify what we’re against.  So let’s use that.  Let’s be against something together.

Climate change can create the enemy we need.  We can create a group identity to be against climate change and NOT against each other.

Let’s agree on what we oppose.  We don’t want ever-increasing hurricanes, floods, rampant wildfires, disappearing coastlines. We don’t want bad air quality, extreme temperatures, droughts.  We don’t want parched or flooded land, ruined crops, homes destroyed, insects rampant.

We also don’t want an economic downturn.  We don’t want businesses and livelihoods destroyed.  We don’t want tugs of war for resources.

Once we agree on what we’re against, we can clarify what we’re for, such as:

• A Balanced Energy Economy, with traditional and alternative forms of energy reducing and counteracting CO₂ equivalent emissions as quickly as possible
• An Energy Economy that easily and abundantly flows throughout all corners of society
• Unity, Cooperation, Celebration
• A Healthy Planet, Healthy Cities, Healthy Lives

We can define what that means, and each of us has a role in getting us there. Alienation and division will NOT get us to where we want to be.  It takes all of us on the planet to create a healthy environmental and social future for our planet.

We don’t need to drop the rope.  We cannot. We need to turn to move forward side by side towards a bright future.  We might even surprise ourselves about how easily and quickly we can get there.