Over the March Break, I took my daughter and her friend to The Art of Banksy exhibit in Vancouver.

Banksy is a street artist. He sprays stenciled art on public walls, and you never know when or where his next piece will pop up. His work is anonymous — and illegal. But unlike your average hoodie-clad graffiti artist, he’s gained international renown for using simple, stark images to make profound public commentary about things he sees wrong in the world.

Before we went, I showed the girls this YouTube video so they’d have the basics:

When we arrived, the kids got right into it. I loved listening to their 9-year-old interpretations of what the abstract images might mean. They even had heated arguments about a couple of them.

What I wasn’t expecting was to be so moved myself. I went into that day feeling bleak about the world. Any small gains our society has made toward a sustainable way forward are being undone at an alarming rate by Donald Trump. It’s like he’s using the U.N.’s sustainable development goals as a checklist of what to destroy. I was also glum on a selfish level, since we’d just canceled a family trip to Disney World, with my parents and siblings and all of their kids, that we’d been planning for over a year. We hated disappointing all the kids, but going on vacation in Trump’s America felt like dancing in a war zone while handing the enemy more weapons (our money).

But a quote from Banksy — the title of this post — gave me a challenge I could rise to. “If you can, why wouldn’t you?”

This week’s sustainable step is about how each of us can use the tools we have — where our skill sets and passion intertwine — to be soldiers for positive change.

All About Sustainability

Banksy’s work is a collage of recurring themes. I asked the girls which concepts they noticed coming up most frequently, and together, we observed:

• Consumerism — society’s obsession with material goods
• Wealth Gap — how some of us have so much more than we need when others are clamouring to survive
• Climate Change — how we dance along to the beat of our destructive habits
• Police Brutality — how unfair the law enforcement system can be to minorities
• War — the senseless deaths that don’t achieve anything of value
• Racism/Intolerance — especially related to immigration and refugees
• Animal Welfare — how we treat animals like they’re here for our convenience, not part of an ecosystem that we share with them

It might seem like a hodgepodge, but each of Banksy’s pet issues is a fundamental cornerstone of creating a sustainable world.

His work is big on problems and short on solutions, and could very easily take us down a dark hole if it weren’t for the messages of hope peppered throughout.

Bleak, yet hopeful.

Banksy says that “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

With three of his images, he comforted me that day.

His “Dismaland” display, a satirical depiction of this “theme park unsuitable for children” illustrated what a first world problem it is to postpone a Disney vacation when most people worldwide aren’t able to do more than dream about it.

The imagery of “Stop Esso, 2000” shows three people laughing on a beach, one in the midst of lighting a cigarette, while a gasoline can pokes out from the sand below. Canceling our trip might not have saved any lives, but it sure felt like not lighting that cigarette.

An image my daughter found hilarious was a picture of the words “I don’t believe in climate change” partially submerged in water. (As she pointed out, if that’s not Florida, what is?)

And then he gave me a challenge that made me feel less powerless in the face of all the destruction: “If you can, why wouldn’t you?”

If you can WHAT?

The what is different for each of us.

None of us can save our species alone. But if each one of us picks up our paint brush, our pen, our gardening gloves, or our microphone — whatever tool we’re really, really good at using — then together, our collection of separate skills can do a whole lot of good.

All those seemingly disparate issues that Banksy highlights — which I think boil down to sustainability — can maybe be best summarized by the United Nations with their Sustainable Development Goals. These goals, in the crudest summary, are:

1. No Poverty – End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
2. Zero Hunger – End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.
3. Good Health and Well-being – Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
4. Quality Education – Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
5. Gender Equality – Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
6. Clean Water and Sanitation – Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
7. Affordable and Clean Energy – Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth – Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all.
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure – Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation.
10. Reduced Inequality – Reduce inequality within and among countries.
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.
12. Responsible Consumption and Production – Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
13. Climate Action – Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
14. Life Below Water – Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.
15. Life on Land – Protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions – Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels.
17. Partnerships for the Goals – Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development.

Anything we can do to further any of these goals contributes to the prosperity and longevity of our species. None of us can do it alone. But together, each taking on a small piece of the puzzle, we really can be an army. It’s why I started Sustainable Steps — to spread a message of hope and to arm people with ideas for steps we can take toward the solutions.

So what CAN we do?

I believe that our best community service is done when we’re enjoying it. Find something you love to do, and use that passion to promote positive change — in any one or more of those 17 categories.

For me, it’s words. My passion is fiction writing, where my characters are unbounded in the ways they can fight for justice. I’m working on two different novels right now — one alone, and one with a partner — and in both cases, the characters are a lot bolder than I am in real life as they struggle against the machine and find ways to help mitigate climate change. My hope is that both of these books will be fun, engaging reads that encourage readers to pick up their tools and join the fight, too.

If you’re an artist, use your art — whether it’s visual, musical, or poetic — to shake up perception and point people in the right direction.

If you’re a stay-at-home mom, engage with your kids — and their friends — to help raise a generation with both climate and social consciousness.

If you’re a teacher, try a climate challenge with your class. My daughter is currently doing one in her grade 4 class, and while I thought we had pretty decent eco-habits in our house, she’s found a few ways to educate us about water use and meat consumption through the process.

If there’s an election going on, host a candidate in your home and invite friends to be part of the conversation. We did this last weekend, for our local Green Party candidate, and I’m still buoyed by all the open-minded dialogue in the room. It’s empowering to be around others who care.

If you’re on social media, include messages you find clever or funny that highlight the problem while keeping hope for a solution.

If you’re a lawyer, you’re probably already doing pro bono work that’s helping make the world better. If you can, do even more!

If you work in an office, look for ways to lose the single-use plastics or purify the air with interesting plants.

If you’re a letter writer, write letters to politicians. A well-written letter will work way more often than you might think.

If you’re a gardener, host workshops or teach others how to plant with the environment in mind.

If you have time to volunteer, find a cause that’s exciting for you. When I was a teenager, my grandma used to take me reading with kids in inner city neighborhoods, which both opened my world and helped marginalized kids get excited about all the fun things inside books (aka literacy, which helps lift people out of poverty).

If you’re a shopper, shop Canadian. As long as Trump is in power, systematically destroying the climate along with every human right he can, I want to do my utmost to give him less power. Since money and words are basically my only weapons, one of the things we’re doing in our house is boycotting American products — even my daughter is willing to forego her beloved Amy’s Mexican Casserole for as long as it’s important. What I love is that SO MANY MORE Canadians are doing the same thing. It’s a quiet revolution that’s having actual impact on American manufacturing — and is shaking the faith of the Republican voters whose net worth is being affected.

This sustainable step is a challenge to look inside yourself and find a way to use what’s unique about you to either chip away at one of those sustainable development goals, inspire others to join the climate movement, or both. Just make sure you have fun with it.

Each one of us has power. When we use it for good, we all win.

Because we can. So why wouldn’t we?