Stu's most recent post is about "Mental Health and the Climate Crisis." It struck a responsive chord in me (more like a leaden thud) and I wrote the following comment to his post:
Your post points out a salient and intractable issue with anyone trying to comprehend the current climate crisis. I’m sure climate change is just one of the factors generating the depression to which you refer. Speaking for myself, other factors include: the insanity that spawned the present US (and UK) governments; the ascendency of monied interests in compromising the quality of life—and this includes the travesty that is our health care system and its evil twin, the pharmaceutical mafia. Add to those global issues, one’s own increasing physical limitations of function and energy and the measurement of all predictions against the actuarial tables.
And yet, here we are, each in his own sphere fighting back, or attempting to. We’re doing something.
Not sure of your personal motivation but I’ll tell you mine; it mitigates the horror. Never has the entire human race faced the prospect of imminent catastrophe. It’s one thing to have to cope with personal bodily insult, say, a dire medical diagnosis. It’s quite another to have to include oneself in the “body politic” whose condition has been pronounced “terminal.” It’s… it’s…well, depressing, to echo the theme of your post.
If there’s a bright spot,—and it’s not so bright—it’s that we who have been labeled “The Silent Generation, will not have to bear the terror of full global ignition. We’ll succumb to our own age-related extinction before the race itself feels it as a whole. Small consolation.
Most of us have progeny who will feel the teeth of the onrushing Tiger with its orange and black hunger. I recently became a (not so) great grandfather, ancestor of someone who will probably look back at the map of his family tree and plant a dagger beside my name. I have no defense—other than lack of attention (caused by the exigencies of life as a citizen, parent, employee, slow-evolver.) I have known for decades that the planet is being sabotaged in the interests of “the economy, stupid.” And “peace.”
So, you and I, and our ilk are off the hook, ignominiously, but still sentient (more or less). Sentient but almost flat-line depressed. My children, grandchildren, and now, greatgrandchildren, are inheriting our legacy of burning coals. From us. Dammit FROM US!
I know you’re going to meet a lot of environmentalists next weekend in Minneapolis. Do us a favor, Stu. Take the psychic temperature of those attending, especially those giving presentations. Tell us what you detect in their psyches. Are they optimistic, and if so, why? My guess is that if they’re honest they’ll be pessimistic. Like me, and maybe you. If so, should we at least shut the door and mumble into our beards (virtual or not), that we give up? Tell us, if you have evidence (as opposed to rhetoric) why we should not be depressed, why we should not slam the door on hope. What skyhooks are out there that will lift us out of this cauldron and its attendant depression?
While it may make some of us feel virtuous, even proactive, to recycle our trash into the seven or ten categories the recycling companies desire in order to make a go of their business, we know these individual efforts—from a limited number of individuals anyway—are not what’s going to produce the kind of change that will turn around the mega-ship of earth. It takes a strong arm of global proportions to do that. Any observer of human history and psychology knows that the most effective motivator for humans is FEAR. And the only way to attain the level of fear that will lead to even the feeblest counter to the effects of today’s pace of climate change is outright catastrophe. People won’t act until they’re scared, damned scared—scared shitless. When you’re in the jaws of the Tiger, you have no alternative than to act, even futiley.
So, thanks for this post, and its diagnosis of my persistent foul mood.
