I am beginning to read the book, “Smoke Screen” Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and our Climate by Chad Hanson. While this book is about wildfires and “saving the world”, I came upon a couple of sentences that I would like to quote here because they might have a much more universal applicability. Here they are:

“Now for the good news: you are being deceived. If everything you were told almost daily about forests, wildfires, and climate were true, there would be little hope. The truth, however, is that hope lies just beyond the falsehoods.” The paragraph continues with, “There is still time to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis if we act with urgency and purpose to rapidly transition beyond carbon fuel consumption, dramatically increase forest protection, and simultaneously enact adaptation measures to help the most vulnerable communities. For this three-tier path forward to work, we much be willing to question long-held myths and assumptions that are acting as impediments to meaningful progress.”

I found this to be interesting because perhaps it contains a kind of universal truth about what keeps us (whoever you define as “us”) from finding effective solutions to the myriad of problems that keep frustrating us in our goals to “make the world a better place.” Perhaps we hide the solutions from ourselves because we are so locked into our myths and assumptions that we can’t see another way.