Climate Change Requires Consciousness Change

The Goodreads book giveaway will be going on until November 30th, 2014.  Click here to enter.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, everyone talks about climate change but no one does anything about it. No one, particularly those in power, wants to make the necessary sacrifices. For example, the US government refuses to comply with international environmental agreements. And the Japanese government recently announced that CO2 emissions there would be increasing rather than decreasing as promised.

Clearly we need a global reordering of priorities, away from short-term economic gains and towards long-term sustainability. But we’ve known this for decades, and the problem continues to worsen although scientists insist we could solve it if we had the will. Generating the will to make these changes, both in our personal lives and in the economic structures we are caught in, is going to require a change of consciousness.

My new book, Wellsprings: A Fable of Consciousness, approaches ecology from that dimension. The novel is set in 2026 as the earth’s ecosystem has broken down under human abuse. Water supplies are shrinking. Rain is rare, and North America is gripped in the Great Drought with crops withering and forests dying. In the midst of environmental and social collapse, an old woman and a young man set out to heal nature and reactivate the cycle of flow by using techniques of higher consciousness. But the corporations that control the remaining water lash out to stop them.

In the story water is analogous to consciousness. People are out of contact with their own inner wellsprings of consciousness, so their lives are withering. And their ignorant actions have driven the earth’s water deep underground, so nature is withering. Human life and the earth’s life are trapped in suffering. The book shows the two main characters evolving their consciousness to a level where they can sense the water and restore its natural flow for humanity and the earth. A blend of adventure, ecology, and mystic wisdom, Wellsprings: A Fable of Consciousness is a frightening but hopeful look into a future that is looming closer every day. The book begins with the narrator, Bob, getting ready to leave his hometown in California after graduating from high school: Long Beach Pack my rucksack and get out of this place. Like the song says, “I’m leavin’ LA, baby. Don’t you know this smog has got me down.” Taj Mahal, a blues singer. I found his album — one of those old black discs — in a box with a bunch of others in granddad’s garage. Old record player with it, kind that goes around and ’round. Been listening to them ever since — all gramp’s favorites from the sixties and seventies when he was a kid. Great songs … despite the scratches. He said the smog then was nothing compared to what we got now. They didn’t have alkali smog back then. We’re breathing borax and potash blown in with the dust. Granddad died of emphysema but he never smoked. The doc said some people are more sensitive than others. I got his heredity. Mom and dad coughing, especially when they wake up. Even hear the neighbors coughing. Gotta get outta here. “We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do.” Another song — The Animals. Animals now are dying even in the zoos. Birds gone. Like to take all his old records with me, but no room in the rucksack. They’ll be here when I come back … if I come back. Mom and dad will be pissed I just left them a letter. But if I told them, they’d just pressure me into staying again, like they did last time I told them I wanted to go. No money for college. They want me to get some shit job here. If I’m going to have a shit job, I want it to be at least some place where I can breathe. Rucksack’s pretty heavy. Outta here. Little bungalow house like the others. Dust on all the window sills. Sand in the drain spouts. Hasn’t rained this year. Wind patterns have changed so it rains over the ocean but hardly ever over the land. Grass died, then even the weeds died. At least the dirt won’t die. The Great Drought, they call it. I don’t know what’s so great about it. Strap the pack on the back of the little Honda 250 bike, spark it alive. So long, Long Beach. Miles of bungalows, fourplex apartments, gas stations, strip malls. Sand on the road, sand in the gutters, sky cloudless but gray. Plenty of water for people who can afford it, but there’s fewer and fewer of those. Outta here. The first three chapters are available at www.peacewriter.org.

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William T. Hathaway’s first novel, A World of Hurt, won a Rinehart Foundation Award. He has also published a young-adult novel, CD-Ring, and a nonfiction book, Radical Peace: People Refusing War. Currently he is an adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. Wellsprings – A Fable of Consciousness by William T. Hathaway, published by Cosmic Egg (an imprint of John Hunt Publishing, September 2013. ISBN: 978-1-78099-994-4 Paperback (100PP) $12.95  |  £6.99 September 2013 EISBN: 978-1-78099-993-7 (eBook) £3.99 $6.95