The Story of Verdant Growth
Growing Up Kinda Outdoorsy
While I wouldn’t say I was a kid with a passion for nature and the environment, I definitely enjoyed spending time in nature: I was a boy scout. I used to go camping all over California. We would go canoeing, swimming, hiking, backpacking…I have a lot of fond memories being outdoors. I remember riding a bike from the campsite to the local camp general store. It was one of my first memories of feeling independent and free, speeding through the trees with 5 dollars in my pocket to go buy an ice cream. All by myself. No adults. In the freest of places: the great outdoors. It was an amazing feeling that doesn’t come often and I can still recall it to this day.
In college, I liked physics and studied engineering, and after graduating I moved to Asia for the life experience. I always wanted to return to a career in engineering, and knew I wanted to help people, but in what way, I didn’t know how. It was more of a vague, “want to do good for others” aspiration.
Climate Change is BIG
When it came time to move back to the states, I started to think about what jobs I wanted. I recognized that climate change was one of the biggest problems facing modern humanity, and I thought helping the world transition to renewable energy would be good to help stop climate change, starting me down the rabbit hole of climate change. I started to learn how high the stakes are, and that within the next few decades we could start to see some real “wrath of god” scale catastrophes. Unprecedented wildfires that burn down entire states, storms and flooding forcing massive migrations away from coastlines on a scale we’ve never seen, and species extinction rivaling the meteor that killed the dinosaurs and most everything else on earth.
I also learned that solving climate change was so much more than just switching to renewable energy. It’s not just an energy problem, it’s a cultural one. Solving climate change doesn’t mean just switching to electric cars and putting solar panels on your house. It means a cultural shift at an unprecedented speed. It means learning to go back to a world without the “convenience” that fossil fuels have given us: learning to grow our own foods again, finding joy and happiness in connection with each other and the natural world instead of material things, and connecting with and cooperating with our neighbors and building strong communities that rely on each other, not capitalist infrastructure that gives us everything we want at the push of a button.
Don’t just understand the problem, feel the problem
I understood all of this at the level of “Wow. This is a big problem. We need to fix this.” It was my ‘thinking brain’ identifying a problem and recognizing that the scale of the problem is immense and will require wide-spread systematic change to every system humans rely on.
I didn’t feel it.
Not until the Summer of 2020.
The California wildfires that year were particularly bad, though they’re becoming the “new normal” now…And I remember scanning the news on my phone and opening up a news article about the wildfires going through one of the areas I used to go camping as a kid. The article loaded up and I nearly dropped my phone. The photo at the top of the page…The headline image…It was that general store. The one from the campsite. The one I used to go buy ice cream from. It was burned down completely to the ground. The only thing remaining were a couple handrails, the foundation, and the brick chimney, still standing, black and burned.
That was the first time climate change hit me right in the feels. I remember the feeling of the shock. I tear up a bit even just thinking about it now. This was the first time I felt climate change first-hand.
We need major change
That was when I decided that I had to do more. Humans didn’t need just renewable energy. It needed a whole new way of living. Renewables aren’t going to save us. We’ve come too far. We’ve learned to live in extreme and excessive comfort. A world where you can have anything and everything you want right from your smartphone in your pocket. Need a pizza? Uber eats. Need a new desk? Amazon. Need a girlfriend? Tinder, or whatever app they’re using these days. Need tropical fruits even though it’s the middle of winter in Ohio? We’ve got major supermarket chains bringing in every kind of food from all over the world.
This is NOT normal.
Or I should say, it SHOULDN’T be normal. We’re heading light speed to the world of Wall-E, where we can just live in little pods and don’t even have to walk or lift our arms to eat. Don’t even start on the Metaverse. Real-life Matrix, anyone? Future evil robots don’t have to force us into those pods. We’re going to enter them willingly. Because it’s gonna be easy and convenient.
I had to do whatever I can. I had no idea what was the right thing to do. I still don’t. But I couldn’t just sit and do nothing. So I made Verdant Growth. A blog, a YouTube channel, an Instagram, a Twitter, an online eco-goods store…All with a goal of trying to shift culture as much as possible a tiny bit in the direction of saving the world from climate change.
The birth of Verdant Growth: Live ECO
My goal is first to change my own life to be more sustainable, and then show others how to as well. As I’ve made changes to my life, I’ve found that what most people think of as sacrifice, ends up leading me to finding more joy, connection with people, and fulfillment with my own life. Sure, the changes are always hard at the beginning, but they end up feeling satisfying by the end.
Just like learning to play the piano, it’s hard and takes years of practice, but when you finally start to feel competent in it, you feel the joy and satisfaction of accomplishing something that has made your life more enriching to you and to others around you. Sustainability takes practice.
To me, this starts with what I call living ECO, a shortened version of “Environmentally COnscious.” Living ECO means that you learn and increase your awareness and be mindful of the environment around you. Find connections that come from your actions. Connections to the people around you (your family, friends, and community), the world you live in (the water, the air, the trees), and other living things (animals from algae to elephants).
By Living ECO, you become aware of how the things that you do always impact others, and by being aware of those impacts, you won’t feel like you have to change, you will want to change.
And I hope you do!
Conclusion
Today I just wanted a moment to write about the origin story of Verdant Growth. It makes it clear to you, the reader, what I’m trying to do and why, but it also makes my mission more clear to me. It reminds me of what I’m here to do, and what I really want.
All I want to do is change human culture.
…No problem.
Thanks for reading, everyone!
