My Story: Bill Miller, D.Min.

I’m a retired palliative care chaplain and recovering advertising creative. I first became aware of global warming in the late ‘80s when it burst into mainstream media for a few years then faded away. Back then, I naively assumed it was being taken care of by the adults in charge until I started graduate school in 1999 and was introduced to the writings of Bill McKibben and Dr. James Hansen and was surprised to discover that any serious future climate policy had been abandoned for today’s “economy” and that we were heading towards a cataclysmic collapse. I was deeply concerned but had other things to do and still figured the system would self-correct because the stakes were so high.

I then lost myself in my work with the dying for a decade until retiring and returning to Reno, where, lumbering in from Spokane in our U-Haul caravan, I was horrified to see the city’s newly formed, exponential sprawl spread out before me—after just a dozen years away. I felt utterly hopeless and depressed by this sight, as if it were a terminal malignancy, unseen and unchecked, its horrifying yet inevitable end never to be spoken aloud.  Clearly, the system was not self-correcting.

That despair led me to seek out a local base of climate support. I am not a natural activist, more of an introvert and contemplative, but my alarm was so urgent that I pushed through my reticence and discovered a local chapter of CCL. Joining them has been an unexpected antidote to my despondency; CCL has an ingenious, practical plan and strategy for implementing it; the chapter volunteers are smart, serious, engaged, knowledgeable and funny; and their vision and actions offered me a profound sense of purpose and meaning that helped soothe my existential despair. I got involved and I got my hope back.