We’ve successfully navigated through our Year-End Appeal season with deep gratitude for those who got behind our work, and supported us with donations, endorsements, “likes,” and “shares.” All of this moves us forward.
We stepped up our game considerably last year, largely due to the efforts of Daniela Huson, our communications director. A combination between our inertia, and her ability to bring our work into the limelight of our visible field; highlighting our relationships with the ocean, and more importantly, why it matters.
In these environmentally violent times it would be an easy reach to be screeching “FIRE!!!” all the time. Many are doing this, and with good reason. But we all have the opportunity, even the responsibility, to care for each other’s emotional health.
But we have been here before; where the seemingly inevitable momentum of inimical forces ended up stranded in their own cul-de-sacs. The Robber Barons of 1928 and the plundering corporate polluters of 1969 did not see what was coming in 1933 and 1972, respectively. The “New Deal” and the raft of environmental laws after corporate over-reach had pissed off the public so much that there was no going back.
And while it took 40 years in both instances for the corporatists to bend governance back to their favor, many gains were made: Economic regulations, public safety, labor, and environmental laws picked up a lot of points, are now in the canon of public discussion, and will not just go back in the box.
It has been another 40 years, so we’re due for a realignment. But we have to show up. We’re doing our best – I’ll be unpacking the proposed NEPA revisions in the next few weeks, and we’ll be doing a lot of analysis on the seismic and zooplankton data we collected last autumn – which at first brush does seem to bolster our cases for precaution.
Stay tuned, and hold on to your hats; it promises to be a wild ride!
