Two years later, with more complicated perspectives

Two years ago, I created this blog to communicate about the issue of climate change. It was part class assignment, and part attempt to contribute to the conversation about climate change in America. I felt very strongly about the issue as a 19-year-old environmentalist, and these feelings are still the foundation of what drives me today.

I only kept this blog for one month, creating 19 entries—a diary, really, about my experiences at an United Nations meeting in Denmark. When the meeting ended I stopped updating the site, because the initial reason for its creation was finished.

But now, two years later, I can see that the reason for my writing will never expire. This is a process of growth for me as a young person. Refining my ideas and presenting them on a public forum (whether anyone reads them or not) is an intellectual exercise that I relish. And on a broader scale, I think an open dialogue about an issue as relevant as climate change is very healthy and even necessary in a democratic society. (Yes, climate change is relevant—whether you think it is human-caused, a natural process, or complete scientific and intellectual fiction—because it has, as a concept, entered human consciousness enough to have changed human systems already. And it will continue to do so moving into the future.) So in the name of democratic discussion, intellectual growth (remember that growth, physical or intellectual, involves inherent moments of pain), and societal relevance, I will restart this process and start writing again.

So, since it has been two years since I’ve last written, let me re-introduce myself and tell you about some things about me that have changed with time:

I am a young Montanan with a deep and personal conservation ethic. As a current student at the University of Montana, I am enrolled in the Environmental Studies and Climate Change Studies programs. In 2009, I was funded by the University of Montana to attend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, Denmark. In many ways, this was the beginning of an experiential and intellectual journey that has involved a lot of social, intellectual, scientific, and political engagement with the issue of global climate change.

While I have my own personal convictions and emotions regarding environmental issues, I have also experienced enough over the last two years to know that my personal beliefs have many of their own logical and practical limits. I have experienced the political process—local, state, federal, and international—and I know that everything there is weighted by countless opposite (and valid) interests. Everything in American politics is slowed by the burden (and beauty!) of compromise. Therefore, I no longer work for some vision of a sustainable utopia. I work only for continued progress and a better world.

I now make a concerted effort to avoid actions as an ideologue or a purist. I believe in compromise and complicated contradictions in the social, intellectual, and political spheres. I only offer my thoughts and ideas for what they are—the developing worldview of a twenty-something-year-old thinker and active citizen.

In the words of Montana historian and intellectual K. Ross Toole:

"This place [the University, and the process of intellectual growth], this unique context, this system is designed only as a beginning. It is designed to open minds a little, not to produce a final product, educated men and women. That takes the rest of their lives. It is designed to create intelligent skepticism, not to turn out cynics or doctrinaire dogmatists. It's job is to create a respect for complexities, not to render complexities simple. It is supposed to point up the worthiness of the pursuit of truth, not to serve up, neatly wrapped, the truth itself. And, the student himself is the key to whether it succeeds or fails."

I hope that my diverse experiences within the environmental movement over the last few years have instilled within me this "respect for complexities." For I am not a cynic, and I hope to never become a rigid ideologue. So take my words with a grain of salt, and feel free to chime in where you see fit. I am so enjoying this journey, so I hope that you too enjoy some of what I am able to share.