Climate change, despair, and hope


I recently got a comment from a reader who was feeling pretty hopeless about our future under climate change. Whether you’re thinking about the ways that higher temperatures will hurt agriculture, the direct human impact of ever-worsening heat waves, mass migration from rising sea levels, or the oceanic collapse that seems to be the likely outcome of rising temperatures and acidity, it’s easy to feel like the future is just going to be endlessly escalating misery, leading to extinction. As this introduction may have indicated, I am not immune to those fears. I think there’s a degree to which despair is the most logical conclusion when faced with the scale of the problem; even more so when you consider the ways in which the global political and economic landscape seems almost designed to guide us to the worst of all possible futures. It’s the biggest problem ever faced by humanity, at a time when it feels like all the resources we need to respond to it are committed to stroking the egos of the ruling class.

I’ve mentioned before that the original purpose of this blog was to provide a bit of perspective on what the worst-case scenarios of climate change looked like. At the time, activists I interacted with were still mostly caught up in the idea that we could somehow prevent the climate from changing in any major way, and those not active on the issue seemed to think it was a problem that could be put off for a century or two. The problem with researching worst-case scenarios is that it’s easy to feel that it’s all hopeless. It also made it easy to see how, once denial became impossible, those who wanted to prevent a systemic response to the problem would switch from “it’s not happening” to “there’s nothing we can do about it”.

Denial and doubt are powerful demotivators, but I fear they’re downright harmless when compared to despair.

With all the focus on the myriad of ways in which our future was likely to be horrible, there were definitely times when it seemed like there was no way out. In trying to deal with that, I struck on a metaphor that still resonates with me. It’s not hard to spark fear, and cause people to run away from a threat. The problem is that the future is unfamiliar territory. If you start fleeing for your life, and you don’t know where you’re going, the odds of going the wrong way are pretty high. You might run into a dead end, or toward an even greater danger. If you have some prospect of safety, however, you can run with that in mind.

I don’t just want to tell people what they need to avoid, though we should never forget that aspect of the situation. I want people to have some notion that running away can lead to more than just surviving until we can’t run anymore. The future doesn’t have to be terror, misery and death, if we work now to build what we’ll need for safety, community, and joy.

We need to build something that has never been built before, and it’s hard to get people to join in an effort like that if they can’t see what that has to offer. As it stands, the choice is less between good or bad futures, and more between two unknowns. Even as more and more people become convinced that one path leads towards hell on earth, if the other path leads into darkness, it’s not hard to imagine that it could be worse.

And we have people whose full-time job is telling us about all the horrors that might lurk in that darkness. Now that a lot of folks have realized that the planet’s going to keep warming, probably for generations to come, it now seems like the dark path is not just unknown, it’s the unknown plus all the horrors of the path we can see more clearly.

So, if I want to help people take action on climate change, and work with me to build a better future, I can’t just tell them what we’re avoiding. Blind panic won’t do us any good – it’s just as likely to lead to people seeking out the “comfort” of totalitarianism. Maybe more likely. What we need is to convince people that a better future is within our reach – that something different is possible, and good. The future is, without question, going to be terrifying in a lot of ways. But there’s a very real possibility that it could be wonderful, if we’re able, as a species, to stop clinging to the past and commit ourselves to something better.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

  -Antoine de Saint Exupéry

It’s tempting to compare the emotional reaction to climate change with the challenges of coping with depression. When you’re suffering from depression, it’s a bit like being stuck in thick fog. Even if you know it’s not your fault that you’re there, and that there are other people there with you, you still can’t see anything but endless, formless gray. The difference is that because other people have found ways to treat depression, and overcome it, we can hear voices telling us that the fog isn’t endless. There’s a way out, and they can try to help us find it. It gives us something to work towards.

When a country faces a problem like America’s nightmarish healthcare system, we can look to other countries, and see how they’ve tackled similar problems. We can see that there are better ways to do it. We can talk to people who’ve experienced both systems, and hear about the differences. We have something concrete to work towards, and the knowledge that even if the general solution is the same – universal healthcare – we can do it in our own way, if that’s important. We can try to do what others have done, and to improve on it.

Climate change is global, and there’s nobody on the other side of it. We’re all in the fog together, some people have discovered that the water’s rising, and told us which way is likely to lead to higher ground, but nobody can really see it, or claim for certain that it’s there. Nobody’s been there, and some people seem convinced that the water’s not rising, the higher ground doesn’t exist, and if we go looking for it, we’ll fall off a cliff or get eaten by monsters hiding in the fog.

We need to organize all of humanity to do something that’s never been done before. While I think it’s important for me to write about climate science, it may be more important for me to take a more speculative approach. I have a vision – or a hundred visions – of what a better future could look like, and it’s my job to try to share that with other people, and work with them to sort through the myriad of possible futures, and to work towards those that seem best. It’s difficult to do, because I don’t know what the future will look like either, and it’s much easier to conjure an image that strikes the viewer as impossible than it is to conjure one that we can believe is within our reach.

I also want to do that without misleading anyone about the gravity of our situation, or the difficulty of the work ahead.

 “The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned … I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”

   -Antonio Gramsci

It’s common, in atheist circles, to point out that one cannot choose one’s beliefs. It’s not really possible to simply decide one day that you will begin to believe something. That said, I think it is possible for us to indoctrinate ourselves to some degree. That’s the truth behind the advice of “fake it till you make it” sometimes given to those who don’t believe but feel they should. If you’re surrounded by people who reinforce a certain belief, and you keep reinforcing it to yourself, you may come to actually believe it in time. This trait leaves us vulnerable to propaganda and malicious indoctrination campaigns, but it is also a tool that we should be able to make use of, not to mislead ourselves, but to convince ourselves of things that we may know to be true, without feeling to be true.

I’m not sure, but I think the version of this with which the most people are familiar is fear of the dark. For all the rational reasons behind it, there are times when that fear is, quite simply, not founded in reality. And so when forced to cope with darkness, many of us have resorted to reminding ourselves that there’s nothing to fear, or spinning narratives that cast the goblins of our imagination as incompetent, or having to follow strange, arbitrary rules that will provide us with safety if we step carefully.

Because darkness is something most people have to deal with from time to time, most of us learn to lose our fear of it, or to cope with that fear if it never goes away.

Similarly, I think there’s good evidence that we can not only survive climate change, but that we can build a world that allows us to thrive despite it. I do actually believe that, most of the time. The biggest obstacles are political, hence the frequency with which I write about politics. In this area, I think there’s also cause for both pessimism and optimism. Massive political changes have occurred throughout history, even against obstacles that seemed insurmountable.

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

As hopeful as that quote is, it’s also worth remembering that most of the changes that can be compared to what’s needed today were not peaceful changes. Those who make the accumulation of wealth and power their life’s work are rarely willing to just give that up, and would rather destroy everything than lose their power over other people. That is dangerous, particularly in a world with so many tools and weapons available to the powerful. That said, their power still relies on the general population. I think overcoming global capitalism is necessary for humanity’s survival, and while that is a profoundly dangerous project, it is also entirely within our power. The fact that the capitalist class spends so much money convincing people that change is impossible, is an indication that they really do need to have most of the population either opposed to change, or unwilling to commit themselves to it. They’re willing to let go of some of their hoards to keep us passive, because they know that without our consent, they will not be able to keep those hoards.

That means that just as a better future is technologically possible, it is also politically possible. The question is figuring out how to make it happen. There’s a degree to which studying things like the labor movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the socialist and communist movements of the same era can provide us with many useful ideas, but the world has changed radically in the last few decades, and both the obstacles to change, and the available tools were unthinkable during those movements. There is no perfect formula that will solve the problem. While we need global change, we also need to accept that the exact form of that change is going to look different in different parts of the world. Humanity is too contrary and diverse for a one-size-fits-all approach. That said, we’re also all the same species, and more similar than we often think.

One size won’t fit all, but a basic pattern can be adapted to suit a wide variety of needs. I don’t think any one person can design that pattern, so my approach has been an attempt to piece together an eternal work in progress from the efforts and expertise of others.

If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve moved from talking about the emotions surrounding climate change, to the kinds of work we need to be doing. There’s a reason for that. It’s a lot easier to feel like something is possible when you’re actively involved in working to make it happen. The problem is that for really big problems, we often don’t know where to even start, and it’s hard to see how the miniscule accomplishments of a single person, even working for an entire year, can make a difference. That’s the other aim of the direct action piece I just linked – while I believe that it can form at least part of the foundation for a global change, it’s also designed to provide the means for individual and community-level change. It helps me to know that if the grocery store runs out of food, I can feed my household for a while, as we figure out new sources. Even more, it helps me to know that I can help to feed my neighbors, so that we’re all able to work together toward solving that problem.

And I also know that I can convince others to accumulate a store of food for the same reasons, which further extends our ability to survive as a group. Focus on the things you can change personally, not because that’s enough, but because it puts you in a better position to tackle larger changes, and because it can connect you with others who are doing the same work. Do the work where you live, and I will do it where I live. Communicate with those around you. Communicate with those, like me, who live hundreds, or thousands of miles away. In the last few years I’ve helped people I will probably never meet, and been helped in turn. It gives me hope to see people contributing a little to the work I’m trying to do, not just because I like being able to make ends meet, but because it also means that they are doing well enough themselves that they’re able to do so. It gives me hope to know that there are people reading this blog in the US, and in Europe, and in Australia, and in other parts of the world, because that means that even with my tiny audience, there is a network of people who are at least thinking along similar lines, while they read these words. The problem is global in scale, but so is our ability to respond to it.

My direct action plan is not enough. Not nearly. But neither is it the only effort at dealing with the problem. My plan isn’t even “mine” – it is, itself, a collection of the efforts and thoughts of other people, in other parts of the world, who are almost certainly doing more than I am.

My “pessimism of the intellect” comes from a sober analysis of our circumstances. My “optimism of the will” comes from reminding myself, day after day, that there are people all over the world who are working on this problem, and who are helping others to do the same right now.

I would honestly be shocked if the planet didn’t continue warming for the rest of my life, but, self-indoctrination or no, I also believe that we can build lives worth living for an ever-expanding proportion of humanity as part of our effort to survive that warming.


This blog is currently my only source of income. If you’d like to support the work I do, feed my dog, or help offset the costs of our upcoming move, please head over to patreon.com/oceanoxia, and join the Oceanoxia collective. My patrons have kept my household fed and housed during this crazy year, and while I’ll continue looking for wage labor, I really like writing for you all, and would love to be able to continue dedicating most of my time to that endeavor. If you have the means and the desire to do so, please give according to your ability, that I might survive, according to my needs!

Comments

  1. says

    I feel like a link to this article should be pinned to the top or direct linked in the sidebar. Sometimes when you talk about resisting despair I think WHAT. HOW. and this is a useful look at your position.

  2. says

    Thank you for saying so!

    You are, of course more than welcome to share it around with anyone you think might find it useful. I’ve been thinking about organizing/categorizing this blog to make it a bit easier to navigate, and mental health will probably be one of the sections.

  3. klatu says

    I have a creeping suspicion that you wrote (some of) this article in response to my very doomster comment on a recent post of yours.
    If not: Excuse me for being a conceited fool. Ignore me.
    Else: I’m pleased you at least took me seriously. Because my concerns are serious, too.

    I concede that it is very, VERY easy to fall to despair in the face of dark predictions. But what to do if all the predictions ARE dark? The trend toward climate doom is steady and unfaltering. Every time (in past 10-20 years or so) that predictions have gotten more accurate, they have also gotten more dire. Show me that things are improving and so will my mood.
    All the environmenal news I see every day are BAD. Insects dying. Entire ecosystems collapsing. Goodbye amazonas rain-forest in about 15 years. Maybe 60 years of agriculture and then world soils are spent?
    Optimism is good and nice, when it is justified. I don’t want to be unfair. This is not your fault, Abe. If anything, you are helping more than most. More than me, for sure. I just don’t see a positive trend.

    We need to organize all of humanity to do something that’s never been done before.

    This is actually the part I have the least faith in. Economists, in particular, are religiously trained to thinks in terms of growth and competition. Apart from the occasional outlier, like Richard D. Wolff, most economists that currently advice governments are extremely orthodox (ie. they operate at room temperature IQ). With just 2% economc growth, the economy doubles in just 35 years or so. Everyone with a smartphone or even an abacus can verify this. Almost every elementary schooler can tell your what’s wrong with an ever-growing economy on a fitine planet. We just don’t have the time to correc for these fundamental errors anymore.

    Need I go on? Probably not. You know this. Guess who doesn’t? Every government ever. Because electoralism is a Darwinian dead-end. You do what “the people” want and you get elected. God forbid you ever run on a platform promoting ascetism or simply consuming less. Good luck getting any votes at all!

    As pessimistic as I may personally be, I also try to be realistic. Everything is not bad. I have nieces and nephews myself. They are not particularly politically active or anything. But they realize that their generation and their children’s generation (if that’s even still ethical to do in a dying world), will face an immeasurable back-log of cost. And that’s the high crime that people like Trump and Bolsonaro should be tried for in a global climate tribunal: Putting an undue economic burden on people who don’t even exist yet.
    And that’s the really screwed up thing. Normally, I would dismiss such arguments out of hand, because they sound like speculative nonsense. Who cares about peope that don’t even exist?
    But in this case, it’s simply a matter of extrapolation. I may not care. But people in the future will. A universalist approach (which, imo, is the only rational approach to ethics) forces me to concede that even as of yet unborn people have rights greater than or equal to mine.

    If those people are likely to outnumber us, do their voices not count more than ours? If we are bound to add another 3 billion people by 2050 to this already straining world, then we have to be prepared to provide for them. As a matter of base-line justice and equity, if nothing else.

    But what the fuck am I even doing? I know I’m preachig to the choir here.

    It’s just frustrating how little of this reached actual policy anywhere in the world.

    Keep it up, though, Abe. I love your work. I wish I had the money to support you.

  4. says

    @Klatu – No need to be suspicious, this is a direct response to your comment. I wasn’t sure if you were comfortable being singled out, and I know for a fact that you’re nowhere close to alone in the feelings you described.

    Those concerns with the way society is currently run are why I’ve been developing the direct action post – it’s possible to get change through existing legislative processes, but it has taken over half a century to just get this far. That was time we could not afford to lose, and we’re already starting to pay for it in blood.

    So we need to take more direct action. It’s my hope that in preparing ourselves for a hotter planet at the individual and community level, and taking a community approach to simply running day to day life, we’ll also build the collective power to force the political and systemic change we need.

    They key is building connections with the people who live around us, and using the internet to tie those small networks together into something global.

    I appreciate your comments and support. Don’t worry about the money – the point of crowdfunding is that people give according to their ability, and the reason we need change is that lots of people don’t have that ability. I’m not great at self-promotion – it feels weird to me – but sharing posts you like around would definitely be helpful. The more people read, the more encouraged I get to write, and the more likely some of them will be able to fund my work.

    Hang in there, take care of yourself, and you’re always welcome to vent here

  5. klatu says

    You said:

    […]you’re always welcome to vent here

    Ok. My life sucks, everything is bad, and all living things eventually DIE!

    I’m joking.

    I’ve been giving this some more thought.

    The notion that societies can rather quickly affect massice structural change rings true. It has happened before.

    The difficulty in particular, I think, is that climate change carries its costs at an extremely delayed pace, in human-societal terms. We don’t tend to think in centuries or even decades. Even four-year cycles can seem eternal.

    The point is: With most problems, us humans will take into account (fairly competently) almost all the cost and benefits of a particular solution to a particular problem. We’re actually really smart about it, on average.

    Except when the costs are delayed or compounding. Then you can just write it off into the future. Eh. The “future people” will deal with our “current debt”. Be it economic or environmental.
    And those future generations, too, can do the exact same “life-hack” without experiencing any negative consequences themselves. It’s monkey brains solving banana problems. And we’re absolutely failing this course with respects to sustainability.

    It’s all very reminiscent of the old Skinner Box experiments. Do thing, get reward. But what if the reward (the result of your action) only occurs after you’re dead? In that case, no conditioning can even happen. The next gen will just randomly get something. Good or bad.

    The thing about climate change that really hasn’t penetrated the mainstream at all is that the date 2100 is pretty arbitrary. It’s just the point after which computations become rather inaccurate/expensive. But it holds no inherent meaning.

    It’s not that nothing can be said about what to expect after that date. The basic failure in public education here, the thing the geneal public is really not being told enough, is about what to expect in 3100. Climate processes can take thousands or even tens of thousands of years to complete/cycle through.

    And these are problems that banana-obsessed monkey brains are really stupid about.

    I’m sure ther are many climate scientists that would be eager to talk about this.
    So why is 2100 our “let’s not even bother thinking about it”-date? Can we maybe extend this by a few hundred years and extend our sell-by date, to boot?

  6. says

    Arbitrary dates and other milestones are how we tend to think about things in general. I don’t have a problem with that so much as with the way it’s being used, and the way it has been lied about over the last few decades.

    But yeah, that’s why I try to keep the focus on surviving the warming that we can’t avoid.

    I think we’ve entered the age of permanent recovery – there’s never going to be a point BETWEEN dealing with disasters – they’re causing too much damage, and coming too quickly. The one small “silver lining” that may give us, is that it will get easier, going forward, to convince people that we need to take action to get “ahead” of things.

    The danger there is that it’s a situation that can be exploited by fascists just as easily.

    We’ve got a lot of work to do, no mistake.

    I’ve been watching videos from a Vietnamese youtube channel called “Luna oi!”, and she recently gave a quote from Ho Chi Minh. I’m paraphrasing, but basically, he said that in order to have a communist society, you need to teach people to think like communists, and have communist values, and so on.

    I think to a lot of folks in capitalist countries, that sounds like some kind of dystopian brainwashing system or something, but it’s honestly the same as what every country does. Americans are taught to think capitalist thoughts, and rely on capitalist motivations and expectations. Part of what we need to do is help people think about things differently.

    It seems daunting, but there’s a degree to which that happens all the time – when people gain a new understanding of evolution, they start seeing it everywhere, and thinking about how the organisms and behaviors they’re seeing in day to day life fit into the broader picture of the evolution of that species. Likewise, if you teach someone about fractal geometry, they’ll start seeing fractals everywhere.

    We need to push hard on policy, and get as much done as we can with the way things are NOW, but at the same time, we need to be changing how people see the world, their fellow humans, their actions, and so on.

    My primary solace is that a project of that scale really does need people of all types and skillsets. There’s no one approach that will deprogram or persuade EVERYBODY, so hopefully the work I’m doing will find those who’re most likely to be convinced by my approach, and the work of others will do the same.

    At this point, we don’t really have the option to NOT trust that we can achieve change through collective effort.

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