If your house was smoldering you could use water from a hose with weak pressure. If your house was just starting to burn you would need to call the fire department. But if your house was being consumed by fire you would need to sound all alarms and call in multiple fire departments. How many Greta’s will it take for the majority of leaders and people to realize our house is burning down? How many moderate responses to an environment catastrophe can we continue to tolerate? I am inspired by the words of Martin Luther King Jr. who was very frustrated with white moderates.
“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice [...]
That is exactly how I have felt about environmental moderates. They are our greatest stumbling blocks to doing right by the earth. Those who will not even discuss human numbers and how overpopulation is a driving force behind the flames, frustrate me more than those who deny human caused climate change. They never use their microphone for educating people how people are not going to survive if we don’t stop converting the planet to a place just for us and our billions.
MLK further said “ …a white moderate is someone who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom." Such a person is, according to King, someone "who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.'"
As a self proclaimed and proud overpopulation activist, I have personally been told to wait to push this issue because other issues are more pressing. Well waiting gets us an additional 1 million passengers every 4.5 days to find water for, clothe, house, feed and employ. We are already at least 5.5 billion overpopulated compared to our resources and the pollution resulting during their extraction. The environmental moderates also operate by a mythical timetable, one in which renewable energy and cloth bags will save us.
Ultimately, King wrote that "shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." Thank you MLK, you just described perfectly how it feels to be in a world where most environmental organizations have a moderate approach to saving the world when you know it is like bringing a garden hose to a house fire.