My personal story
This isn’t meant to be a gloom and doom post, but rather my attempt at grappling emotionally with the reality of being alive in the 2020s. Welcome to the Anthropocene, the weird new age we find ourselves in; a time where humanity’s impact on life on earth is now so profound and pervasive that it has precipitated a new geological epoch. In all our hundreds of thousands of years of existence as a species, human beings have never had to contend with such an overwhelming challenge – a hyperobject, a term philosopher Timothy Morton has coined for phenomena that are massively beyond our comprehension. It’s way way past being just an issue for environmentalists, or a ‘cause’ among many others. The climate and ecological crisis is the backdrop to everything we do, the context for our lives and for making all important decisions, whether we want it to be so or not. It’s just the reality of life in the 2020s. Anything else is denial at this point.
I feel it’s imperative that we try to come to terms with this new overriding reality, where on our current trajectory, we are looking at the possible and perhaps even likely collapse of our planetary life support systems. This Is what the climate and ecological emergency declared by the UK government actually is referring to, although I’m not sure they understand the scope of what they have declared. The Anthropocene was precipitated by us but it is now out of our control and it marks the end of the false notion that we stand above and outside Nature in dominion over it.
The recent COP 26 in Glasgow was hailed by most media and governments as a qualified success (that is, apart from small low lying island states who are experiencing the reality of their homes disappearing from under their feet). The general tone was that it’s all moving in the right direction with the caveat that of course we need to do more. Reports in the media largely took this line though sometimes at the bottom of the article there would be a short mention of how the temperature rise predicted on current pledges will be catastrophic. I couldn’t shake off this bizarre disconnect: we’re making good progress……. and also it’s catastrophic. According to the independent and highly respected Climate Action Tracker, when governments’ actual policies rather than pledges are analysed, the world’s projected heating is on course for a truly catastrophic 2.7C increase; a rise which would make much of the planet essentially unlivable.
As a lifelong naturalist, I have long been acutely aware of the accelerating destruction of nature and the web of life as we have brought about the 6th Mass Extinction (or more accurately, Mass Extermination) of species. Even among climate activists, relatively few seem to realise that even if we miraculously could limit global temperature rise to the magic 1.5C, this ecocide would not be halted. This is because the biggest cause of biodiversity collapse is not even climate chaos, but agricultural land use, destruction of natural habitat and poisoning land and waterways with pesticides and fertilisers. Climate chaos is only the third biggest cause of biodiversity collapse.
My close association with the natural world has given me a deep sense that I am an integral part of nature and undoubtedly has made the fact of our collective ecocide more emotionally impacting in my case. I’ve watched the sickening declines in biodiversity play out in front of my eyes over at least the last six decades. I know that many other people who don’t have such a lived connection, don’t react with the same heart-rending horror when they hear of the latest extinction of a species or our destruction of yet another natural habitat. And incredibly, ecocide is still legal.
So how can a person deal with the magnitude and planetary scope of such knowledge? Well, I honestly don’t know, but in my case this is how it has been unfolding: it was a little over 3 years ago when I realised that I was feeling ever more anxious with an amorphous sense of dread and I would periodically have episodes of palpitations. I wracked my brain for what was going on; what was I avoiding? What personal trauma was I keeping buried that was now erupting into bodily consciousness? I couldn’t find anything. Then at a certain point, I realised that this wasn’t an issue to do with my personal psyche but rather a reaction to the existential predicament we are all in.
I realised that bombarded daily by my newsfeed diet of largely depressing eco and climate news on every front, I had been bottling it all up for years; eco-anxiety and depression had been building up over a long period. Now I finally began to let in deeper swirling feelings and emotions and it all came to a head. I landed in what I can only call existential grief, which I then realised had been long underlying my angst and anxiety. Why I let it all in at that particular moment, I don’t know. I think I must have just got to a point of bursting, finally unable to keep my deeper emotional response repressed any longer.
It felt like an uncanny and weird spiritual experience – a waking down, rather than a waking up, if you like. Yes, I had always been reasonably informed about climate chaos and the eco emergency, and cared about it, but I hadn’t consciously let it in nor allowed my psyche to be informed – or more accurately, devastated – by it. This was like unplugging and stepping out of the Matrix. And once seen, you can’t unknow it. Nothing can ever be the same again.
I soon realised that grief is a natural response to the impending collapse of our planetary life support systems, to the 6th Mass Extinction of species, to soaring temperatures causing catastrophe in the Global South. In fact, blithely carrying on with ‘normal’ life regardless, once you have been well informed about the Crisis we are in, seems to me to be in the realms of mental disorder. Of course I have sympathy as I know how overwhelming it is, and understandably many people are struggling just to pay bills and stay afloat, without having the time or space to let in or deal with what might sound to them like Doom scenarios.
Except that in my experience it’s not like that. I don’t fight my grief any longer; I feel it to varying degrees regularly, sometimes intensely, but more often gently in the background. I still get anxious of course, but not that formless angst or palpitations any longer. I realised that grief is an expression of caring. Grief is the mirror image of love. Grief is love for the exquisite and precious web of life we are all a part of. It’s not about my personal life or what I stand to lose. I’m 70 years old and I’ll probably get to live out my remaining years in a wealthy northern country without the worst of the likely civilisational collapses which are predicted on the course we are hurtling ahead on, due to our collective refusal to limit fossil fuel, overconsumption and breaking all planetary boundaries. But for young people today, their future even in the wealthy North looks very poor; and for billions in the Global South, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
I’ve found that grief faced gives strength and resilience and paradoxically, the greater vulnerability experienced in grief is also a strength; it opens the heart. I feel more vital and present and able to bear more now. It also faces us with our own mortality, which is healthy since there has been such a momentum in our modern world to try to hide death, to live as if it does not exist. Eventually we can hopefully recover from the grief of the loss of a loved one but the unique feature of ecological grief is that there is no recovery. Only arresting the deterioration and destruction of the web of life on earth can assuage it. For this cannot really be accorded the euphemism of a “loss”; it’s more like murder; it’s ecocide, it’s genocide.
People think that ‘wallowing’ in grief would lead to pessimism and nihilism but that is not my experience. All Life has a will to live and this ought not to be blocked by superficial cynicism. I’m not a ‘doomer’ or a ‘collapsarian’. No one knows for certain what will happen or when. I derive not a shred of grim satisfaction with each flood or fire or drought or other apocalyptic global event. Each tragedy pains me, and I feel them more than I ever did before.
My experience of letting in the stark truth of our collective predicament is just one possible pathway. Grief may well not be the major component in other people’s stories. Others may understandably feel anger more than grief. And while my pathway has been through concern for the natural world and ecosystems, what may impact many others is more likely to be care and concern for one’s children and grandchildren; not to bequeath them with an apocalyptic legacy. Personal experience of a wildfire, flood or other ‘natural’ disaster may precipitate the shift. Or the horror of the famines and droughts in the Global South, made ever more severe and frequent by fossil fuel driven overconsumption in the wealthy North. Or the sheer weight of the scientific climate crisis findings and warnings. Whatever does it. But the question is, what does do it ?
Knowing the facts is often not sufficient. There are relatively few outright climate deniers in the UK these days; the new denial has increasingly become, “Yes, we get it. No need to bang on about it. The UK is leading the way. Go and protest in China instead!” And another common response nowadays is, “Yeah, we’re f…ked, it’s too late, there’s no hope now. What’s the point of trying to do something about it?” But this is a superficial denial; such people haven’t let it impact them and cynicism is always an easy defence.
And then, a far larger majority of people know there is a climate crisis and yet it still hasn’t deeply viscerally hit them yet: you can tell in a few moments if that is the case, from the urgency or lack of it that they express. I don’t blame them. It is way too much to comprehend this hyperobject and people are so busy and stretched just trying to make ends meet; there’s understandably little space or appetite for this kind of existential reckoning.
Meanwhile the media try to keep us constantly distracted from such crucial discussions. A study revealed that “cake” was mentioned 10 times more often on UK television shows than “climate change” in 2020 . The research showed “banana bread” was a more frequently heard term than “wind power” and “solar power” combined.
Recently there’s a burgeoning counselling cottage industry for those suffering from climate anxiety. From what I know of it, there seems to be a tendency to leaven climate anxiety with hopeful news, so as to create a balance. My experience is that It’s not a balance and that the way forward is to let it all in and then act from there. I don’t mean to criticise the valuable work that psychological eco-anxiety practitioners are doing in helping many, especially young people, in coping with our unique existential dilemma; my point being that I believe it’s better to first let in the whole truth as much as possible, and then take the next steps in that light.
I’ve learned that the crucial key is action. To act on what you have seen in some shape or form; to respond. Fortunately for me, a constructive channel was at hand in my dark night of the soul. Extinction Rebellion had just been formed at the very same time in late 2018 and attending XR’s initial ‘Declaration of Rebellion’ at Parliament Square, met a great need in me. The two words, ‘extinction’ and ‘rebellion’ spoke directly to my heart and soul: ‘extinction’ for the grief and love of what we are losing, and ‘rebellion’ for the spirit of life, of acting, resisting, of the will to live.
I knew I had to take action, to act in line with what I had seen and that my anxiety was to quite a large degree due to my bottling up my feelings and natural responses, and consequently feeling disempowered and depressed. There’s no point in naively hoping for the best, or that someone or the government will save us. Real hope comes from action and yet nothing is assured. As Vaclav Havel memorably put it,
“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
This led me to taking direct action and since then I have taken part in innumerable XR actions, especially targeting banks, fossil fuel funders and enablers such as ‘think tanks’ (read industry lobbyers). The last several years have been an eye opening education for me about how the rich North has continued its historical colonial extractivism, impoverishing poorer countries in the Global South and especially indigenous communities. Now they suffer by far the worst of the droughts, famines, sea level rises and wildfires, though they have done the very least to cause them.
More recently I have been involved with Insulate Britain, as I recognised the need for more civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action. Marches and waving placards have become quite ineffectual these days and governments aren’t listening, often beholden to vested interests wedded to the status quo. Since we are fast running out of time, civil disobedience is a time honoured way to effect positive change.
At the same time, I derive hope from the many rewilding projects which are increasingly springing up to help Nature regenerate, and I have redoubled my efforts with small local green initiatives around me. I’ve greened my way of life to align as much as possible within the limits of the system we are part of. I keep myself sane by the literal grounding of allotment gardening and by walking in nature, with Qi gong as a morning practice for health and harmony. And the camaraderie of like minded people is invaluable, especially when I begin to worry that maybe it’s me who is crazy rather than the juggernaut of rapacious growth and overconsumption of our current system.
Our existential predicament does put other matters in perspective: the covid pandemic has been truly tragic and awful with much loss of life, and I follow all precautions to prevent transmission very carefully. I don’t mean to offend anyone or be insensitive to their heartbreaking loss, but really the pandemic, bad as it has been, is a blip in comparison to what is coming down the line with vast disruption to our planetary life support systems. Covid, like three out of four new diseases, is zoonotic – meaning that it jumps from animals to humans. The growing pressures that we exert on once-wild environments and the illegal trade of live wildlife will inevitably contribute to ever more spillover zoonotic diseases, perhaps worse than covid.
Protest, while vital in my opinion, is of course just sounding the alarm; we also desperately need solutions. I’m not suggesting my particular journey into grief and then nonviolent direct action is one that would necessarily be authentic for other people; we each have to find our own way. Yet I do strongly feel that we each have to find a way to come to terms with the metacrisis humanity finds itself in, for our own sanity, if for nothing else. And then there is a pressing need and responsibility to respond in some way, according to our individual skills and interests. For whether we like it or not, or argue with it or deny it, our existential predicament is the default context for all our lives in the 21st Century.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
James Baldwin
