🦺 Renewable Energy

Welcome to the tenth edition of Safe For Work. A story inspired by renewables.

In my future, I let myself stand barefoot in the stream at noon, and just gently remember. 

I remember you. 

I try to remember all the good things– and mostly, I do. I remember laughing together, like the water laughs over my toes. And I remember pressing our foreheads softly together, like the sunshine on my face. And your hands like the breeze through my hair. There’s power in these things, remembering them. They make me feel strong. 

But I can’t help remembering the rest. The other things. 

The way it ended.

All the different ways it ended. 

A hole in the ozone, raw sunlight scorching and burning– crops withering, devastation– the afternoon turned against us. Or the breeze, becoming a wind, becoming a terrible storm, ripping through our lives again and again, tearing up houses, tearing apart families. The oceans, rising to swallow us whole, the rivers running over, the dams bursting. Smog, choking the air, choking our lungs. Cancer from the exhaust– cancer from the sunshine– diseases festering in the standing water of the floods. All the different ways it ended, I remember, as gently as I can. I lost you in a hospital room, and I lost you in another– I lost you in a dozen hospital rooms, at least. I lost you in the rubble. I lost you beneath the waves, your head and hands vanishing out of sight before I could grab you. I lost you to the famine. I lost you to the drought. I lost you to the forest-fires, and the red tide. And in my future, I let myself stand barefoot in the stream at noon, and I try my best to breathe as I remember: the hundred-thousand different ways you were taken from me. 

I breathe, and I breathe. The clean air. That breeze, through my hair… through the blades of the windmills in the far distance, towering white and beautiful, pillars of “not again” and “not anymore”, slowly turning. The sunshine, sparkling, kind and sweet like orange juice, not harsh or cruel. It presses gently through my closed eyelids, warms my blind sight. It scatters like diamonds off the panels like thousands of gathered mirrors, or a purseful of coins all laid out across the fields. And the stream, it tickles my feet like we would have tickled the feet of the child we would have had, you and I– I’m sure of that. If we’d just had a little longer together. If things had just been fixed a little sooner, we would have…

But it’s alright. There are things that happen, and that you need to accept in your life, and then you need to breathe the clean air and feel the gentle sunshine, and let the laughing stream tickle your feet, let it run pure around you, let it turn the turbines, let it send the electrons dancing. Let it wash away those hundred-thousand different ways you were taken away.

In the water, in the breeze, and in the sunshine… these are the ways that you come back. Forgiveness. These are the ways that we renew each other.

In my future, after I have stood for a time, gently remembering, I turn, and I make my way back home, towards the city that once was ours– that now is just mine, maybe. Or that is still ours. Don’t you live on in the soil? Don’t you live on in the sea? The electric hum of my truck carries me away from you and towards you. 

Above me, the sky is perfectly blue and clear. 

Already, there are people who have lost their lives to climate change. Already, there are people who have lost their loved ones, or even their entire communities. Even now, despite efforts to improve, smog blurs the distances of Mumbai and New Delhi, Beijing and Los Angeles. 

There are some ways in which we really can’t turn back. There are some losses that can’t be reversed– some raises in temperature which can’t be lowered again, some species gone that can’t simply be replaced. 

But this, more than anything, is the greatest reason to push forwards. To rebuild our world with a more sustainable– and indeed, renewable– focus. To honor the memory of what has been lost. And to ensure, as much as we can, that nothing else joins that list. What commitments is your company making towards using renewable energy sources? What are some workplace initiatives you and your peers could perhaps take up to push things further in that direction? 

What about in your own life? How much of the power used to run your own house comes from renewable sources? What efforts are there in your community to increase usage and access to renewables? Are there programs in your area to help install solar panels on residential roofs?-- do you qualify? Do your neighbors qualify? Are there campaigns to construct wind-farms?

As individuals, it is easy to feel powerless in the face of all this– the scale of all the damage that has already been done, to say nothing of the scale of the work still to do: the work to slow the damage, stop the damage, and– where possible– to reverse it. We are all ants trying to move a mountain. But don’t let yourself be crushed by the weight. Don’t forget that we have powerful things on our side.

Don’t forget to feel the sunshine on your face. 

Don’t forget to feel the breeze through your hair.

Don’t forget to feel the gentle stream over your bare feet in the afternoon, as you gently remember.

And don’t forget to stop and smell the roses.

See you next week as we explore Dr. Who. Stay safe.