What radicalized you?
A question I was recently asked and am interested to hear what others have to say.
Photo by: Ethan Swope/AP
Today, someone asked me why I am passionate about sustainability. It’s such a deep and simple question, with an answer I feel I am constantly living + breathing, but had never taken a moment to actually answer until now. I believe that life experiences and exposure to information radicalizes people about sustainability, so I'll list a few touch points of my personal journey:
-playing in nature and living by the rhythms of the seasons as a child
-snorkeling in the Caribbean, once in 2001 and once in 2004, and feeling devastated by marked differences in the coral reef
-attending a watch party of An Inconvenient Truth
-observing the fracking boom change the landscape + culture of my hometown before my eyes
-connecting the dots between polyester, plastic, petroleum, natural gas, and fracking
Today we wake up to another day of headlines + images of human-caused environmental disaster- another moment that compels me to turn my back on the corporations that are destroying our planet and focus more on thrifting, swapping, and mutual aid.
I’m so curious to hear, why are you here? What are the personal and cultural touch points that have made you compelled to be part of a more sustainable future?
Mine might seem tangential at first - I was working at an AI commerce startup, and the founder’s premise was “shopping on your phone is hard / harder than web & we’re here to solve that”. I thought.. I can buy just about anything in the entire world on my phone in literally 2 clicks, it is objectively NOT hard - and something is wildly wrong with the world if THAT is a problem that’s getting $50M in series A funding to be ‘solved’ …
Definitely my dad giving me Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States of America” in middle school. And Hey Arnold.