Picking up trash is a salve for my worrying over climate change and ecological catastrophe.
Instead of blowing up a plastics factory, I go and gather garbage by myself most days. And occasionally something will occur that happily disproves my dim view of humanity. |
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Whenever I wonder if, given the scale of the environmental carnage we cause as a species, an individual's actions can possibly be meaningful, I often think of David Buckel. |
You probably don't know who Buckel was, which is a point in the "individual actions are futile" column. A prominent L.G.B.T.-rights lawyer, Buckel was as responsible as almost anyone else for making gay marriage the law of the land. Then, in 2018, he set himself on fire in a park in Brooklyn to protest inaction on climate change. |
It was a shocking act, which was obviously what Buckel intended. But even in the midst of doing something most of us can't conceive, he behaved in a rational, meticulous way — he left his ID nearby, allowing his body to be readily identified; formed a circle of dirt around himself, preventing the flames from spreading; and so on. |
This duality is something I recognize in my own feelings and behavior, particularly with regard to the environment, the moral rights of animals, and other subjects. On the very same day, I can write a measured guest essay about my habit of picking up garbage, in the hope that it might inspire others to environmental action, and also find myself incoherent with grief and fury. |
The "incoherent" part is the reason you're reading this essay instead of an altogether different, darker one. What I feel in those moments can't be expressed in language; believe me, I've tried. Anything I write can only ever be half of the story; for the other half, we need to look back at the mute testimony of what David Buckel did to himself on that April morning in 2018. |
| READ RON'S FULL ESSAY HERE | | |
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