A Vigilante Mermaid Manifesto

(a call to arms and a set of rules for walking the awkwardly heroic path of near impossible catastrophe evasion)

The Ocean is the Mother of us All

The Vigilante Mermaid manifesto uses the failing health of our oceans as a focal point for action, but acknowledges the larger planetary climate crisis as inextricable from any conversation about change.  The particular dilemma of plastics pollution in our oceans and waterways underscores and symbolizes our reliance on single use plastics and the commerce of ‘stuff’ that is fueled by primarily by the petroleum industry, and also opens up a conversation about water, temperature, and species and habitat degradation.  Things are no less critical on the terrestrial plane, but without the health of our oceans—our veritable birthplace—we are a species with a dismal future. 

The year 2017 is the year of the Eco-Witch

And she is shrieking, “All hands on deck, bitches!”  This means you sea captains, car wash attendants, Tupperware salespeople, Porta-Potty maintenance crews, debt rehabilitation call center workers, Carmelite nuns, sanctimonious retail-therapy dependent neo-hippies and other eco-trendy posers, subway bilge mechanics, DIY’ers, self appointed shamen, jugglers, librarians (Ganesh be praised), Starbucks high fructose corn syrup-ccino-aholics, go-go dancers (male, female and other-identified), bobble-heads of state, yogis (uh-hum), single parents, Rastafari, black-jack dealers, coke dealers, twelve steppers, silicon breast implant owners, pharmaceutical empire lords, stock market traders, busboys, border patrol agents, ornithologists, whale saving hooka smokers, dental hygienists, network television weather forecasters, hairdressers, socialist carpoolers, gusanos, vegans, Cubanos, pastry chefs, poets, stand up bassists, and jet ski humping manatee killing diet coke chuggers…open up the doors of penitentiary industrial complex, we need all the help we can get! 

Because we have come to this point—this new terrifying crossroads of steamy hotness on this star date, that has never before seen such drastic impacts from our collective consumer madness—and we have a choice to make.  Every new second from here on out is your chance to be a part of the most critical insurgency you will ever join.  This time, the anti-globalization basement bloggers, Burning Man stray dog rescuers, Rainbow Warrior suicide crusaders and vigilante mermaids can’t do it alone. 

You are wanted, each and every one of you. 

Without the biosphere’s delicate balance, little else matters.  Really.

Okay, great, you’re still reading.  But what now?  We’re all in a frothy panic, but there is no really effective government road map, and we are all fatigued on enviro-Armageddon information overload. 

An Honest and Scathing Inventory of Willingness and Real Impact

Independent of who you are and where you sit on the issue of climate change, the stakes are the same.  We are all equally fucked if we don’t attack the crisis and assess in a very adult way what is at risk.  No, this is not a movie starring John Cusack or Will Smith.  This is a very real living motion picture starring you.  You are probably writing the script without really paying attention to how this movie ends. Again, this is not fictionalized drama, but a real-time documentary starring you and the planet one assumes you like as a place to live.

So first, you need to ask yourself how far you are willing to go to support a paradigm shift and take control of your story.  I mean really have that conversation with yourself.  That shit sounds important, and sexy, but do you really have what it takes to save the world?  I mean do you?  Well, of course you do, but you have to own it. 

Warning: there is little glamour, and even less air conditioning in what I’m about to ask you to do

Your great-grand pappy probably had a depression-era handle on zero waste, but we now exist in a complete disconnect from these principles and feel entitled to hot running water, and indoor spaces that are acclimated to 76.5F degrees sans humidity all the time, so it’s not your fault you don’t know how to begin to un-fuck what is now so terribly collapsed.  But, before you go early AWOL from the ranks of the paradigm shift brigade, look quickly what’s at stake:

¬Food

¬Potable Water

¬Predictable and bio-diverse terrestrial and marine vegetation

¬The animal kingdom, including cattle and the burgers they provide

¬Seemingly limitless sources of power, such as electricity and petroleum bi-products (i.e., there may come a day when you can’t charge your i-phone, and that day may come sooner than you think…)

¬Oh, and Air

I won’t bore you with a review of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but this short list should push one or two buttons in your basics g-spot.  I know this might sound crazy, but I’m just going to ask you to believe me on this one.  How do I know?  Well, because people who are a whole lot smarter than me have dedicated their entire lives to studying the climate change phenomena, and they say so.  Check out this list of scary, brilliant and highly researched writing and online reference material by the overwhelming internationally in-agreement scientific and activist community for a quick primer on why this is real. 

What I am asking you to do is to review the following behavioral manifesto, and turn up the volume with deliberation and haste on your engagement with issues of environmental collapse. 

Be

•Inconvenient and relentless as a consumer

•Fearless and informative in the face of denial

•Passionate about cherishing this extraordinary planet

Don’t Be

•Passive in your crucial role as a consumer

•Ignorant of the fun facts and consequences of climate change

•Pretending like you as a human are better than any other organism that also has the privilege of calling Earth home

See more below

***A Special Call to Artists***

Performance and Art as a Change Agent

Governments are hideously slow in creating the kind of change that needs to be enacted urgently.  Non-profit operations—the best of them—often don’t have the wide-reaching industry impact needed to turn things around either on the grand scale or at the speed we are talking about.  Massive individual behavior change may be the secret weapon we need to rely on to save our asses.

Every time we talk about this crisis or doing things differently, we are spreading awareness, and thinking about and posing questions to our fellow humans.  Peer pressure as a tool of manipulation is totally legitimate, by the way.  So, artists that create more images, texts, music and films about these issues are actually infiltrating into spaces that many activist campaigns and government advisories can’t reach.  We artists are everywhere.  We have the poetry to hypnotize and beautifully infiltrate a subconscious, and we can create the heart pumping-hip grinding rhythms that stay in your minds and bodies for days.  We get to break hearts and make laughter erupt one-to-one in intimate spaces of image and visceral transference.  We make rituals, and allow communities to witness new propositions with emotional vulnerability that unites us in our humanity, and in our greater universal connectedness. 

It is one of the best things we do as a species, and expresses our most elevated selves.  Our ability to construct new realities, which shift souls, spark revolutions and appeal to our compassions and higher order inter-relatedness is so perfect for handling a crisis of this magnitude, that it has to play a role in doing what our governments and industries have failed to do.

I encourage and expect artists and other citizens to mount creative demonstrations that examine this emergency in anyway possible.  Yes, if you are an artist, you have the tools and skills to create messages that other people will observe with interest, amazement, disgust or delight, and which will affect them emotionally.  Because we are dealing with the highest level of catastrophe I have been witness to in my lifetime, I’m not afraid to say that I believe it is art’s role to sound the siren call to action on every corner, in every gallery and in every restaurant and bar and park and beach.  Make it beautiful, furious and any size you like. 

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Please continue reading for further instructions

Or

If you currently reside in Portlandia or any other eco-oasis, and/or have a way-high level of zero-waste literacy, you can skip to this link for super cool biking panties

Or you can read on

Attitudes and Actions that are sanctioned by Vigilante Mermaids –

A playbook you might already know, but should re-read:

Agency

Become informed and mobilize with a sense of ownership of the problem in our physical environment caused by human induced climate change and plastics consumption.  Very few of us really understand the complex science behind issues of climate change.  Even fewer can really predict or summarize potential outcomes.  This doesn’t have to be an obstacle for becoming change agents and experts about our own mobilization.  It is essential that each individual feel energized to speak about climate change and model behaviors of change for our families and communities without being an expert in the science.  This is your planet, so therefore you are, de facto, an expert on being an Earthling.  Others can’t do it for you.  Join the army of one and commit to action with agency.

Willingness to Change

If you have read this far, you probably sympathize with the issues, and wouldn’t argue that it’s best to take action.  However, our consumption behaviors are like bad co-dependent relationships…we know they are unhealthy, but we keep going back for more like we are on a  Bisphenol crack-pipe.  It’s one thing to know you can change, and it’s another to be willing to.  Each one of us has to be willing to change the way we shop, the way we eat, the way we consume in public and in the privacy of our home.  But here’s the thing—you have to actually do it.  Actual change is where an idea becomes new behavior, and that’s what you are challenged with.  Try and use less and make a habit of refusing unnecessary plastics in your life.  Only when we are willing to try new ways of inhabiting our environment can we affect change around us.  The forces of a system long conditioned to sell you more than you need in excessive packaging are hard to resist, only you can step out of the way of that plastics avalanche, and little by little its pressure will become weaker, alleviating the crush of so many megatons of unnecessary garbage in your life.

Consuming Less or Almost No Plastic

All of the plastic that has ever been manufactured is still in our biosphere.  It won’t ever biodegrade and re-enter the environment in a normal cycle of composting or organic renovation.  So, we either have to contain it, or recycle it, but one of the best things we can do is to not make any more of it.  The reusable industry is enjoying a high level of hipness right now, so you probably know this playbook, but, just in case, start with the easy things.  Example:  No more plastic shopping bags.  If you don’t have reusable shopping bags, I just bitch slapped you.  It hurt, didn’t it?  Well, now get some—a lot of them—and leave them in your car, in your purse, or wherever they will be easily accessible the next time you shop.  This alone won’t save the planet, but this commitment alone is like doing sit-ups in your new regime.  It’s basic, and builds core strength. 

If you forget one of your reusable bags, buy it at the supermarket or wherever you are shopping, which most likely sells them at the check out.  Even if the cashier starts to bag your groceries or products in plastic before you can proffer your reusable bag, stop them—yes, risk embarrassment—and tell them you don’t need it.  This will be uncomfortable for your cashier who feels you have invaded his/her worker sphere of control, and now has to deviate from their normal pattern, but behold behavior change at work.  This is an act of performance in itself.  Stop the mindless bagging of all things no matter how small-especially if you live in a city where this is still epidemic (read Miami, Florida).  There will be resistance, but you can do it.  Use this script.

Once you feel like you own the plastic bag free lifestyle, move on to more difficult things.  Read here for a more comprehensive list for reducing plastics use.  Do it now…

Compassion

No matter who, or what is identified as the problem, we must act with compassion.  Oh, fuck it.  Compassion takes too long, just kick ass, make change, and collect friends later.

Behavior Not Sanctioned by Vigilante Mermaids (or How to Miss the Bus of Progress)

Pretending there isn’t a problem

We are now protagonists in a climate calamity.  Our oceans are dying.  There is enough evidence and consensus about this among the international scientific community to disprove any tea-bagger global warming naysayers.  If you still don’t believe it, please consult this reading list, which provides solid information on how and why climate change is real and irrefutable, and disastrous to each one of us.  I really wish this wasn’t true, but it is.  And, it is no longer okay to move through life in ignorance of this crisis.  If you can read and write, and you have access to electronic or print media, you are obliged to comprehend that there is a state of emergency, whether you process the science or not.  Pretending you don’t notice to avoid having to shift out of your comfort zone is, well, pretty much human, but it is no longer acceptable.  You simply don’t get a pass on this one.

Shirking Responsibility:  The Insidious Legacy of the Plastics Supremacy

Related to not getting a pass on acknowledging the problem, we must reach back and take responsibility for our collective and ancestral role in the climate crisis.  None of us is individually, directly or wholly responsible for the combustion engine, or the advent and explosion of the plastics industry, or any other multitude of inventions resulting in the mass production of volatile green house gases and mass industry.  Maybe a fractional percentage of us are, but the majority of us have inherited the good and the bad of this legacy via circumstance and not intent.  And yet, we feel entitled to the plastics privileges bestowed on our generation as if they were our birthright, such as easy access to single use-throw away servings that allow us to ignore our waste and put in peril other organisms that don’t/can’t benefit from the same luxuries.

Industrially, we enjoy the medical and scientific benefits of plastics in cleaning and beauty products, pharmaceuticals and large scale chemical treatments that process our drinking water and prevent disease.  This access has been facilitated by relentless and unbridled extraction and manipulation of the Earth’s crust with short-sighted understanding and limited responsibility for how these advances affect and jeopardize all of the other species and systems on the planet.  With this veritable plastics supremacy, we have also set into motion the climate catastrophe, and it is ours collectively.  If you are alive on the planet today, and inhabiting a society that is not exclusively plastic-free-hunter-gatherer, you must take responsibility for this problem. It is no longer acceptable to shirk it. 

Refusing to be an agent of change

If your saw a neighbor’s house was one fire, and you then saw the neighbor standing outside with a hose, you would expect her to attempt to put the fire out.  Not only that, you would feel compelled to help in some way by bringing more water, or calling the fire department, or by making sure her family was safe.  True or False?  True.  Well, now it’s your house that’s on fire—our house—and you need to act or it will be incinerated and all you have and hold dear could perish in the fire, but the difference is that, after this fire, there won’t be anywhere to move to.  That’s the level of emergency we are in.  The fire is already lit, and if we don’t all mobilize to damp it out, our house will burn down.  What would you say to your neighbors or your kids or partner if you just stood there with the hose, and refused to take action?  What kind of human would you be?  The analogy here is that armed with the facts, your resignation and apathy towards action is the same as letting your life go up in flames, which I guarantee you wouldn’t do.  You have to find a way to act and be an agent of change.  There is no excuse not to. 

If you don’t know where to start, here is a list of actions you can take.  You would be surprised at how mind-blowingly simple this is...