A few weeks ago, on one of those days when kids were released early from school, my husband Cliff and I volunteered to take our granddaughter and a couple of her friends to the Sonoran Desert Museum. The fastest way to get there is to drive over Gates Pass. It is a winding and narrow road that makes its way west from Tucson over the Tucson Mountains. After crossing the pass at the top, the road makes a hairpin turn and then descends along the west side of the mountain, with a hazardous and steep drop off. There are neither shoulder nor guard rails. The traffic was light. It was a beautiful day. The kids were littering the back seat with a bag of chips that I had naively given them.
I was driving and Cliff was just vegging out. All of a sudden, a car coming up hill crossed the centerline and was headed straight for our car. I slammed on the brakes and pulled over as far as I dared, which was not very far, considering that there was a vertical drop to my right. The car kept coming towards us, apparently at full speed. At what seemed like the last moment, it began to swerve back into its own lane. I don’t think it missed us by more than an inch.
I will never know what caused this. Was the other driver distracted, or inattentive, suicidal, or perhaps asleep? The other driver risked the lives of the people in my car and in the other car as well. Needless to say, I was shaking with terror and relief. I almost didn’t believe the other car had actually missed us. I am so thankful that there was no damage to people or vehicles.
This leads me to another thing that should be terrifying me and you as well. It is climate change. We are on the path to a head-on collision with climate change. And the cause of this is that we are continuing to use energy and consume goods at an unprecedented and unsustainable rate. We use fossil fuels to operate most of our cars, to manufacture goods and to transport them. We in the United States are leaders in energy use and consumption. Most of us already have more than we need, more than we can ever use.
The United States is leading this race to mutual suicide. Not only is the average amount of CO2 emissions per capita disproportionately large, the current policies in the United States are either eliminating or undoing efforts to reduce emissions by increasing dependence on fossil fuels.
The result of this are that:
• We are contributing to the ever-increasing rate of climate change that threatens everyone on earth. It is suicide. It is ecocide.
• We spend our own personal time and personal energy taking care of and protecting things that we don’t need and may not even remember that we have.
• At the same time, there are many people who do not have enough. Not enough to eat, not a safe place to live. Not enough to live a dignified life. They are on the streets of our cities, in slums of large cities, in displacement camps. They make up about a quarter of the world population.
What can we do?
Each of us can make the decision to unsuicide. We can start by becoming awake, aware and attentive. We can look at our own patterns of consumption of energy and goods. We can take steps to reduce our impact by choosing a simpler lifestyle. We can do an inventory of how we spend our time and money as well as what we have. I can assure you that local charities can benefit from our excess. (But please call them first if you plan to donate clothing.)
Unlike the example of the car heading toward me, which could be corrected by an individual waking up, this is a global and systemic problem. We cannot solve this by ourselves. Just try living a day without using fossil fuels. Still, changing our own lifestyles will lead to changing our own attitudes and making us satisfied with meeting our real needs.
But that is not enough. In order to unsuicide, we must work to change suicidal policies and work for the common good. We must commit to supporting national and international decisions and actions to reduce emissions and promote sustainable and responsible choices. We really are on track for a head-on collision. We really are all in this together. And together, we can do it.
Jeanette Arnquist is a former Director of the Department of Life, Dignity & Justice for the Diocese of San Bernardino. She is retired and living in Tucson, Arizona where she remains active in social concerns ministries.