This is one in a series of posts sharing the stories of grandparents, parents and young people who are joining the Walk for Our Grandchildren, July 19th-27th.
This week-long, 100-mile walk will bring an intergenerational message of hope from Camp David to the White House to demand that President Obama reject the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline and confront the growing crisis of climate change. You can join us for a day on the trail, or join walkers and thousands of others for a culminating rally at the White House on July 27th. Click here to learn more and sign up.
 

By Greg Yost

I admit it’s a bit odd. Climate change is daunting—rising temperatures, extreme weather, powerful political and economic forces which work against finding solutions—and I’m proposing to do something about this by taking a walk? It wouldn’t surprise me to have someone point and laugh, but there’s more going on with this Walk For Our Grandchildren than meets the eye.
I used to be isolated. I’d sit in front of a computer screen and read scientists’ predictions about the consequences of carbon pollution and I’d feel so low, not just because the predictions were depressing, but also because it seemed no one was paying attention. It was difficult to talk about, to be that guy who brought it up to friends and family, at work or at church. Good, otherwise emotionally healthy people have filters in place to screen the stuff that is depressing or scary, and especially if they feel like there’s nothing they can do about it, anyway. For a long time, climate change was simply getting caught in the filters.
But that’s been changing. At some point in the last few years I feel like the tiny little trickle of awareness I had about the enormity of the climate challenge became one tributary to a gathering river of people. These folks aren’t just worrying or wringing their hands, either. Like any good river, they’re moving. We’re taking action. I’ve even learned how to do it myself and it’s actually not so hard. You just empty your hands, setting aside a few parts of your life for a moment to ready yourself for work that needs doing. Then you think about what you love and want to protect, you roll up your sleeves, and you wade in.

I’ll be walking on this Walk with one of the things I love, my fourteen year old daughter, Anna. She and my son, Will, are reason enough for me to make any sacrifice I need to make in order to know they’ll live lives safe from catastrophic climate disruption. But the reasons I’ll walk don’t end there. I’m a public school teacher who just completed his first year in the classroom. Unlike my own kids who’ve grown up with a daddy who rambles at the dinner table about Keeling curves and ocean acidification, my students are as yet largely and blissfully unaware of such things. And I don’t begrudge them that. I love it when they shyly tell me of their dreams of becoming a marine biologist, a nurse, or a chaplain. It didn’t take many days in my new job for me to realize that the least part of my calling is teaching them algebra. My real job is leaving them a world in which such dreams as they have can still come true.
Here, to me, is the meaning of this Walk: it’s not about what will be said by us, or about us, or how someone important will pay attention and do what we ask with respect to the Keystone XL, or how our voices may get lost in the clamor of the moment. It’s that I’m marking a moment in my personal history when my intentions began to align themselves with my knowledge and my convictions. It’s about marking a larger historical moment, based not on wishful thinking but rather on mounting evidence, that a critical mass of my fellow citizens are on a similar path. Protest is a word that doesn’t even begin to capture the seriousness of my intent. I am walking because I mean to leave behind a time when I was the willing and pliant accomplice to corporate ecocide. I and those I’ll be walking with intend much more than what our sweaty, sunburned faces will suggest we’re capable of. Using the proven power of nonviolence in action, we aim to dismantle those institutions and petty, profit-grubbing kingdoms which entertain such insanity as part of their agenda.
We’re not fools. We know it won’t happen on July 27, 2013 when we reach the White House. But our journey doesn’t end at the White House. Yet neither will it extend into some far flung, quasi-mythical future of human perfection. Because we understand somewhat the physics of greenhouse gases on a warming planet; we also understand the rules of this game. Like the fossil fuel mega-corporations which are the principal architects of our climatic ruin, we know we’ll be going all in. Win or lose, we’ll be laying down our cards very soon. So that’s why I’m walking. I’m building this hand that we’re going to play.