Imagination allows us to travel to a world that ought to be. Through that journey we can bring back ideas and creative solutions for addressing climate change. I’m tempted to look in the rearview as well. To acknowledge all of the work it took to move the dial ahead. To thank those who came before us for their sacrifices and their imagination. This can be complicated as we learn about our relatives and our own histories more fully. Especially when we discover things that conflict with the way we imagine the world ought to be. But to prepare for and weather a changing climate we need both the wisdom of the past and the imagination of the future.
My grandfather spent most of his life driving semi-trucks and logging old growth forests in Oregon. He also spent every moment he could hunting and recreating in wild spaces. He had a farm and loved being in the woods. I don’t find this particularly paradoxical. But I do wonder how to reckon or make peace with ancestors who made mistakes? How do we draw knowledge from the flawed human beings that came before us? Especially when their livelihoods, their politics, their ways of being don’t necessarily reflect the world we live in, or one that we want to see? After all, these are people we loved and who cared for us, and shaped our view of the world.
There are huge swaths of land scarred by industrial logging in Oregon. Places where mud slides into the ocean and where second growth is so dense it’s hard to move. Not unlike some places in Southeast Alaska. I’ll never know if my grandfather regretted the days he spent logging. And I’m not sure that matters. We aren’t beholden to the past our ancestors were a part of. It’s possible to hold the weight of their actions and not vilify them or ourselves. We can pick and choose the lessons and values we want to bring forward into the future. And hope our own children pick and choose from the lessons and values we leave them with.
This is not to suggest we try to reimagine the past. It can be painful acknowledging the actions of the people who came before us. In my own familial history I think of plundering the landscape, displacing other human beings, and so much extraction. It can be easy to let guilt and shame consume us. But I don’t think that is where we should spend our energy. I learned many other things from my grandfather- like how to wink and how to cry while giving a toast. Most importantly, I learned that the world isn’t made up of tree huggers and loggers. Our choices, the reasons we choose certain professions, are complicated. If we can hold space for all these contradictions and challenge false binaries we can radically imagine and therefore move towards a better world.
We can acknowledge the past without letting guilt drive us toward inaction. We can join decolonization movements, support carbon offset programs, and consider paying reparations to groups impacted by white supremacy and colonization. There are many ways we can embody being a good ancestor, a good steward for the future, right now.
-Callie Simmons is a member of the Citizens Climate Lobby