Page 6 - North American Clean Energy July/August 2020 Issue

editor's note
news bites
TO WHOMEVER RANG IN 2020
wishing for a year full of new and exciting changes: You may want
to consider quarantining yourself over to Greenland until that
big target on your back fades – possibly by next January. Yup, it’s been a weird year so far. You may have seen social media memes abounding with outrageous scenarios for the next big surprise coming our way, everything from flying ants that breathe fire to black holes appearing on the shoreline. We all have been forced to cope with myriad changes thrown at us, sometimes daily, depending on the latest news/studies/developments. Yet for many people, change can be anathema. Take my son, for example - trying to get him to break his routine can be as much fun as bathing a cat. And,
in light of the extended lockdowns, I would wager a good number of you working from home might not freely admit to “forgetting” to change your clothes every day.
While the pain of 9/11 is still relatively fresh in my mind, it’s startling to meet adults today with no memory of that recent national horror. They have little awareness of how drastically that single event forever changed our lives. One particular account from a survivor illustrates the life-saving potential of embracing the discomfort
of change. In his book, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves, psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz tells the story of Marissa Panigrosso, who worked on the 98th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. She recalled that, when the first plane hit the North Tower on September 11, 2001, a wave of hot air came through her glass windows as intense as opening a pizza oven.
She did not hesitate. She didn't even pick up her purse, make
a phone call or turn off her computer. She walked quickly to the nearest emergency exit, pushed through the door, and began the ninety-eight-stairway decent to the ground. What she found curious is that far more people chose to stay right where they were. They made outside calls, and an entire group of colleagues went into their previously scheduled meeting. Why would they choose to stay in such a vulnerable place in such an extreme circumstance? Because they were human beings, and human beings find change to be extremely difficult, practically impossible. To leave without being instructed to leave was a risk. What were the chances of another plane hitting their tower, really? And if they did leave, wouldn't their colleagues think that they were over-reacting, running in fear? They should stay calm and wait for help, maintain an even keel. And that's
what they did. I probably would have too.
Grosz suggests that the reason every single person in
the South Tower didn't immediately leave the building
is that they did not have a familiar story in their minds
to guide them. We want to know what new story we're stepping into before we exit the old one. We don't want
an exit if we don't know exactly where it is going to take us, even (or perhaps especially) in an emergency. Even among those people who chose to leave, there were some who went back to the floor to retrieve personal belongings they couldn't bear to part with. One woman was walking down alongside Marissa Panigrosso when she stopped herself and went back upstairs to get the baby pictures of her children left on her desk. To lose them was too much for her to accept. Her decision was fatal.
Our impulse is to stay safe by doing what we've always done. To change our course of action seems far riskier than to keep going. To change anything about our lives, even our choice of toothpaste, can cause great anxiety.1
When it comes to clean energy, we’re doing a pretty
good job adapting and embracing the latest ideas and technologies. But, as with most things in our lives, we know there is room for improvement. Getting people to change their behavior is no easy task. You’ll read a lot of numbers in this issue that attest to some of the changes our industry has accomplished so far, as well as our hopes and expectations that we can, in fact, encourage enough change worldwide to make the planet cleaner and safer for all.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”
– Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882)
Meg
1 https://www.mybodytutor.com
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Contributing to a
greener future
EVBox has been able to help replant trees all around the globe while looking to establish a more sustainable future by promoting eMobility. To celebrate their 2019 milestone of installing over 100,000 charging points across the world, they pledged to give back to the planet by planting one tree for every new EVBox charging point placed with their OneChargerOneTree initiative.
To turn this promise into a reality, they teamed up with global reforestation charity, OneTreePlanted. Over the remainder of 2019, they planted
over 6000 trees to help clean the air and absorb harmful carbon from
the atmosphere. To account for the chargers they placed in 2018, they also planted 15,000 trees across California and Portugal, and even sent some passionate EVBoxers to Portugal to help reach this target.
EVBox /// www.evbox.com
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JULY•AUGUST 2020 ///
www.nacleanenergy.com