Somewhere there is an old recording of me. I can’t find the tape, but I’ll tell you what I remember.
I’m young — maybe sixth grade — and inexplicably wearing a burgundy blazer. My school is holding some sort of an event for Earth Day. The local TV reporter asks me why I’m participating. “I think it’s important to save the Earth for my children and my children’s children,” I say, my voice shrill and shaking.
Ok, I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember the feeling. I was full of righteous indignation. Grownups seemed intent on fucking up the planet, the planet I was destined to inherit. And I was pissed. “Screw the humans,” I remember thinking. “We have to save the dolphins.”
Back then, environmental issues seemed solvable. Stop throwing trash on the ground. Stop using hairspray in aerosol cans. Stop cutting down the rainforest.
But now I’m the grownup who is fucking up the planet. And the concrete, tractable problems that I remember from my youth have been overshadowed by the mother of all environmental catastrophes — climate change. Who has time to worry about gum wrappers or dolphin-safe tuna when we’ve pumped enough greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere to alter the fate of every being on the planet?
And with each passing week the news gets worse — entire islands swallowed by rising seas, swaths of reef bleached by an acidifying ocean, and then there’s the really scary stuff: dire predictions of disease, famine, drought, wildfires, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
The news is deadly serious and terrifying. But here’s my shameful secret: Although I recently argued that climate change is a story worth covering, I can’t bring myself to read past the headlines. I can’t even bring myself to think about the problem. And I’m not doing much of anything to lessen my carbon footprint.
Science, of course, has an explanation for why people don’t act on their beliefs — several explanations, in fact. In a 2011 article titled “The Dragons of Inaction,” Robert Gifford lists a several in an attempt to explain “the hoary mystery surrounding the fabled gap” between attitude and behavior. His list includes everything from plain old ignorance, denial, and mistrust, to more nuanced ideas. For example, the human brain evolved to deal with immediate threats, not distant ones. “Addressing climate change means taking a very long view,” writes Nathan Collins in Pacific Standard. “For many, weighing the choice between driving and walking to run errands is a matter of convenience, not the state of the climate 100 years from now.”
I think the dragon that best explains my fabled gap is fatalism. Trying to address climate change as an individual seems so utterly futile. Let’s say I make a real effort. I could turn the thermostat down and ditch my window AC. I could sell my Subaru. I could forgo airline travel and meat. I could become an environmental paragon. But all of those sacrifices would be completely negated by the New York City boutique blasting its air conditioning with the front door wide open. Or the sales rep who takes two or three flights a week for work. Or everything going on in India and China. My efforts would be the tiniest drop in the biggest bucket.
This is, of course, the kind of thinking that gives rise to the tragedy of the commons. In this case, however, the commons isn’t a single pasture or a single fishery. It’s the entire planet.
In a 2014 article in The Nation, possibly one of the most depressing things I’ve ever read, Katha Pollitt argues that climate change is an altogether different kind of problem. “It is not something we can vote against or refuse to pay our taxes to protest. Writing letters to our congressperson will not help, nor will recycling our bottles and cans. Individual action—even the individual actions of hundreds of thousands of people in concert—won’t be enough,” she writes.
And then Pollitt conducts a thought experiment:
“Let’s say that if every developed nation were to drastically cut its greenhouse emissions beginning today, our poor old earth would mostly muddle through. Overlooking the rather large fact that these measures would cause the world economy to collapse, think what would have to happen: everyone goes vegetarian, uses cars and planes only for emergencies, gets rid of air conditioning, ceases to cut down forests to build new houses. In short, we radically restrict individual consumption in every conceivable way, while governments force industry, especially the oil, coal and gas industries, to do whatever is necessary to… do whatever is necessary. Given our system, how could any of that happen on the necessary scale, let alone happen in time? Moreover, while we would be cutting back, India, China, Brazil, Indonesia and other formerly poor nations would still be surging forward. And how could we, who are vastly responsible for global warming in the first place, tell them, ‘Sorry, you got rich too late: no steak or family car or air conditioner for you? Go back to your villages and swelter.'”
I have the sinking feeling she’s right. Our solutions won’t be enough, or they’ll come too late. And that’s not the kind of thought that spurs activism.
(This is where you come in, readers. I’ve seriously depressed myself. Tell me I’ve got it all wrong.)
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Image courtesy of Rick&Brenda Beerhorst on Flickr
Sorry Cassandra. I don’t think you’re wrong. I think we’re kinda screwed and barring some kind global epiphany that leads to a short-term sacrifice riddled grand-scale restructuring of the energy economy, the only recourse that’s left is a never-ending battle for adaptation and mitigation.
If you want a glimmer hope, there’s always Costa Rica. They’re doing it right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Costa_Rica
No, I don’t think you’re wrong. The most I hope to accomplish is to delay disaster until it’s no longer an issue for my granddaughter, though she’ll still have to deal with it, and at a higher level of urgency. I don’t worry any more about us doing ourselves in, though: the earth doesn’t really need us, and we’re like a beauty mark that has gone malignant. I worry more about the other species we’ll be taking with us.
Well, how to put this diplomatically? As an engineer and general #offgrid animal, the very sense of desperation and isolation expressed in this piece is emblematic of a wider problem with the interface point between technology and society. Yes, climate change will continue to be a serious problem and there is no immediate “process” solution. However, we do have fifty to one hundred years to take some smart and effective actions to survive as a species and keep as much biome intact as reasonable. In a sense, the waking up from youthful ideas of “how dare they!” and “this is a simple problem” is a step in the right direction.
The bigger issue is reorienting human engineering and economic activity towards a world that is going to continue to warm and just getting smart in the context of a larger population. Further, the news here isn’t all bad. Heat is something humans know how to deal with in terms of thermodynamics?
The real question is, do we have the intelligence to get past this sort of group anxiety and individual fear and spend time talking to each other and then developing an intelligent consensus on a problem that is going to be a factor for the next one hundred to two hundred years? That is always a tough sell for us finite, scared humans?
Some of the less-unenlightened conservatives may respond by saying that, whatever happens, we’re not going to switch to renewables in time to make a serious dent in greenhouse gas production, so what we need to do is concentrate on adapting to the effects — which will be expensive, and require a healthy economy.
I disagree, because that still sounds like a Heartland Institute press release, and I think a Manhattan Project-style approach could make a difference in developing and implementing practical renewables. But I think they’re right about how it’s actually going to transpire. Except that economies will collapse under the strain of upheaving environments anyway, so…hey, told you so, Ghost of Conservative Past.
Germany is a prime example of a country that has made renewable energy a priority and still maintains a healthy economy. It takes political will and for the public to face up to the problem.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-16/germany-just-got-almost-all-of-its-power-from-renewable-energy
I do agree with you in some ways. I mean, look around: We are already facing the first impacts of climate change. It’s horrible and depressing as hell. And it’s only going to get worse.
I don’t agree that we’re doomed to disaster, that we’ve run out of time. That to me is a failure of imagination, a refusal to accept what is already happening around us. This is what climate change looks like: An imperceptible acceleration of the news cycle featuring storms and droughts, disease outbreaks, towns and villages abandoned, refugees seeking asylum. It doesn’t mean global doom; it means local devastation and adaptation. We’re already living it. And life goes on.
I’ve always believed that writers of fiction and nonfiction alike create the future by imagining what could be. And I think environmental and science writers (myself included) have suffered from a failure of imagination. We are failing because we let depression and anxiety overwhelm us; we’re so horrified by what could come that we refuse to look forward.
And so: Every environmental story ends with predicted loss from climate change instead of considering what can be done beyond a global climate agreement. (Bleached coral isn’t dead coral! There’s time still to protect many low-lying islands!) Every story about adaptation to climate impacts is ultimately negative because it means climate change is still a thing. There can be no success, no victory, except a giant band-aid to fix the problem, or so says the ongoing narrative.
It’s a global problem and needs a global solution, right? That would be ideal. But it hasn’t happened yet and doesn’t seem likely soon, and we have little control over that. So the kind of action you decry here—local politics, individual choices—is all that we have.
National agendas reflect local action. While we sit around waiting for a big international dream team to come together and solve climate change, anti-climate governors are continuing to appoint anti-climate public utilities commissioners, who regulate state energy use (as one example). While we demand that others change the world on our behalf, we refuse to make even the smallest concessions to show we’re serious—paying an extra $20 a month (or so) to power our homes with renewable energy (an option available in half of U.S. states!), restricting our driving, eating only vegetables, donating money to environmental causes.
And that’s on us. For ignoring local politics. For refusing to change and make sacrifices. We should know by now: In capitalist democracy, money speaks louder than words. These things can’t stop climate change altogether, but they still can make it less bad in 100 years if we can evolve as a culture one person at a time.
Forging new habits is hard and our psychology resists it. But we must choose to accept what we cannot change and do what we can anyway. Isn’t that what we do each day? Accept the limitations of our existence and choose to live anyway?
So I guess my long-winded answer sums up as: I feel you. We’re all in this together. But buck up. This ride is just getting started. If you’ve already given up the fight, imagine how you’ll feel in 10 years, or 30 years. Imagine if we’re still bound to fossil fuels then. You’ll wish you had gotten rid of your Subaru when it would have made more of a difference.
@Hannah – I’m absolutely not decrying local action. Local action is great. I’m trying to understand why I’m not moved to act. How did I go from being a passionate environmental activist to a head-in-the-sand environmental ignorer? Will I wish I had gotten rid of my Subaru? I’m probably going to wish others had gotten rid of their Hummers. If the only way to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change is for everyone to ditch our cars and go vegan, I’m afraid we really are doomed. What we need are policies that force change. I vote the right way, but beyond that I can’t see myself making the kind of drastic sacrifices you propose because it’s the right thing to do. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but it also makes me pretty normal. I’m not living extravagantly (well, I guess you could argue that most Americans are living pretty extravagantly), but neither am I weighing the climate change impact of every action. I’m too tired. I don’t have the energy to be a good planetary citizen right now. I need policies that make it easy for me to be kind to the earth.
You make a good point about this not being all or nothing. Just because we’re not where we’d like to be with respect to carbon emissions doesn’t mean that we’re doomed.
Thank you for this article. I found it to be refreshing rather than depressing. I consider myself a realist and I feel a certain warped sense of relief when a messy problem like this is honestly characterized rather than obfuscated with false promise. I feel that many of us who spend a significant amount of nervous energy on this topic have, at least at some level, already emotionally realized the enormity of the problems elegantly expressed here. Adding to your list of things that make conservation efforts feel futile, I am reminded of examples where trying to make a difference leads directly to a balancing force of environmental damage due to market and political forces. For example, the Phoenix valley where I am from has a history of rampant, urban sprawl. Decisions on whether new home developments can go forward involve developers demonstrating that sufficient water is available for the project. So in a very real way, if you conserve water in the Phoenix Valley you are contributing to urban sprawl. Hence, an irrational(?) Phoenician strategy to save the Sonoran Desert would be to leave your taps running all the time. Another example of this phenomenon is research showing that innovations in energy efficient, perhaps predictably, just make resource consumption less expensive, which leads to more consumption in one form or another: http://science.time.com/2010/09/30/energy-will-efficiency-lead-to-more-consumption/
These are a few examples of many where conservation actions at a the individual level—even when they do occur—are undermined by political and market forces.
I think the fact that environmental journalists and environmental scientists continue to fly and drive and sometimes eat meat does not mean that we are all horrible, horrible, people. I think, though, that it is clear evidence that the solution to climate change will not be self denial and self renunciation. That is just not going to work. (Though we still can and should do what we can!)
Rather, it will be innovation, technological and cultural, that allows us to do the things we are going to do anyway with fewer or zero emissions. And the good news is that a lot of the technologies are even already available. It is just a question of improving them, incentivizing their use and distribution, and so on. I just read last week about new advances in making synthetic fertilizer without emissions, which would be huge. (https://grist.org/article/the-way-we-make-fertilizer-sucks-but-we-havent-had-a-good-alternative-until-now/) Lab meat is scaling up. Renewable energy continues to improve and there’s always nuclear to consider. There is hope. We (all the planet’s species we) won’t get through this unscathed, but it doesn’t have to be Armageddon.
In short: we won’t solve climate change as consumers, by buying or not buying this or that. We will solve it as citizens, by demanding climate stabilizing innovation and public policy.
I nominate Emma Marris to fix it. Please?
Hi Cassandra – Thanks for replying! I see what you’re saying. I hope my lecture wasn’t too tedious — I did as you asked and told you you’ve got it all wrong!
I think we aren’t moved to act because action is hard. It’s easy to be a child or an adult with opinions. It’s difficult to push back against dominant culture, especially if it seems ineffective. (*shakes fist at the system*) But if even people like us (meaning people who feel some degree of stress over their inability to act) can’t make those sacrifices, then yes we are “doomed”—or rather, we’re going to have to live with the consequences of our lifestyles, maybe suffer and die with them, and probably watch other people suffer and die because of them.
And then blame someone else for it, of course. It wasn’t my Subaru; it was their Hummer. It wasn’t the 1,000 plastic bags I tossed in the past year; it’s the rich owner of the factory that made and sold them. We’ll never change. This is what climate change feels like from the top.
It almost makes me understand climate deniers. They see that it’s all just words and politics flying about, yet another way to demarcate who’s on whose team in that all-too-human way, if we all behave the same way regardless of our beliefs about climate change.
As far as I can see, the only way to get the kind of built-in consequences you describe is to force the hands of politicians and I don’t see that happening anytime soon—not without massive wealth redistribution or overhaul of our political system. (Would that be easier or harder than reducing carbon emissions?) There is a lot of money to be made off of adaptation to climate change so there’s little incentive for them to do anything—except for it being “the right thing to do.” Which, as we’ve established, isn’t enough. (I just read that the insurance industry is already lobbying for safeguards so that they won’t have to pay for sea level-related house destruction. That’s only the beginning.)
The individual actions I noted won’t help climate change unless enough people do them (which as you note is very unlikely). But by making small changes to my lifestyle—not all at once, just one at a time, and only the easy things, it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition—I feel less depressed and anxious. It helps with that feeling. I don’t do it because it’s “the right thing to do;” I do it for myself because it makes me feel better. It might help you too, if the depression gets to be too much to bear. It’s not much. It’s just another attempt to feel not-awful about myself so I can bear to trudge through yet another tedious day on my hopefully long march towards death so I can watch climate change unfold and feel kinda bad about it while blaming truck drivers.
Best to you! This is really hard stuff so thanks for writing, and giving me an opportunity to do the same.
+1 Hannah!
Thanks for the article Cassandra (good name). Here is how this all looks to me: You are right, climate change is a huge problem, and no single person, group or nation is going to solve it. Climate change is happening, and we will not be preventing it. Nor am I seeing any signs that we will be mitigating it, whether by politics or engineering. We will adapt to a new climate. By ‘we’ I am speaking of the various biota that survive whatever calamity is coming to the planet. Evolution will continue. Bearing in mind that the gear that works evolution is extinction.
Enough gloom, then. We are alive now, what to do? I am happy that you have written this piece, because your position is one I see everywhere. I occupy it myself. What to do, and still live in the world? The small things are much easier than we think they are. I ride my bike to my doomed industrial job every day. In snow and cold and heat and rain. I do it because it is my preference. It is much more pleasant to be on a bike getting wet in the rain than to be inside a car. Just try it. Just try one or two of the small things that are more pleasant than the things that are changing the climate. Like hanging laundry on a line, or growing tomatoes. Those small things will not stop climate change. Nothing will stop climate change. Grieving is the appropriate response.
We need a society with whole new set of values. Paying your public utility a small amount so that they can pay a large corporation to produce an industrial product that converts sunlight to electricity is not the kind of new value I am talking about. I am talking about the ways of living that make direct use of the sunlight that falls on our gardens and houses. And no more than that amount. This is not going to get done in our lifetimes. The current fossil fueled megalomania didn’t happen in any one lifetime either. We have to start somewhere, and the sooner the better.
I think the environmental movement of the 1970’s was a wake-up call, but got one vitally important thing exactly wrong. Positive change will not happen because we shame ourselves into giving up things that we want. Change will happen, and much of it will be disastrous, but the good things will come because we see smaller, simpler ways to live that are more pleasant than our current lives of paving the landscape and sitting in traffic.
Let’s go to Czeslaw Milosz – ‘On Angels’ :
“…Day draws near / Another one / Do what you can”
Ok. While I think it’s totally normal to feel overwhelmed by climate change, I think you’re maybe letting yourself off the hook too quickly. As Colleen Patrick-Goudreau often says, “Don’t do nothing because you can’t do everything. Do something. ANYTHING.”
You mentioned how China and India are still polluting, so what does it matter what choices we make in the USA? Quite a lot, actually. In the US we pollute much more per person than other countries (https://www.koshland-science-museum.org/explore-the-science/earth-lab/causes). That means that any change we make, no matter how small, makes a HUGE difference overall.
I think people make the mistake of thinking environmentalism is all or nothing: “I have to give up my car and go vegan.” But there are so, so many shades of gray in there that make a big difference. If you eat meat 3 times a time, why not cut meat out of breakfast? Or give up eating meat on lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays? Or try Meatless Mondays? All those choices are great!
And no, you don’t have to give up your car, but can we make better choices with the cars we have? Absolutely! Combine trips: drive to library and the grocery store in one go. You’ll save gas AND time, so it’s a win-win. Carpool with your friends to dinner. And as for biking, again, you don’t have to bike all the time to make a difference. In my previous city, taking the bus was impractical, but biking was doable. I didn’t bike every day, but I did when the weather was nice. Turns out, biking to work is 100 times more fun!
If all that seems like too much work, rather than giving up A.C. all together, turn the temperature from 72 degrees (or whatever) up to 74-75. Then maybe 76. Again, it makes a huge difference, both in terms of emissions, and in your wallet.
All of those things will help you live your life more in line with your values of preserving the earth for ourselves and our kids. Sure, we could all give up, but when change is so easy, why would we? We can all choose to make a difference today, and it will barely hurt at all.
Thank you for articulating this feeling, I recognize it and know it well. I find myself trying to do more things, recycling more, looking for meatless meals twice a week. We lived in an RV for 14 years, and I always said that our year’s fuels consumption was less than heating the house we used to have in the north, now we are in a small mobile home (by choice) slowly decreasing our footprint, buying and consuming less but I believe Eric’s statement that “Grieving is an appropriate response” to be true. I am working on dealing with it and it is starting to reflect in my art, which, I think is a good thing, or at least something.
I live in a country with a truly terrible environmental record, the highest rate of mammal extinction, and which is already suffering huge losses from climate change (Australia). Every day I am like your childhood self – I am so angry that this is happening. I despair for the unique and adorable woylies, quolls, numbats, potoroos, and other assorted fluffy buggers that will go extinct soon. I do what small things I can – eat vegan, ride a bike, recycle and buy recycled, have a garden – but there’s some things I cannot do – volunteer, give the electricity company more of my money so it stops ruining my environment (wat), install solar panels, make changes to the house I live in. I really feel that with our current society and culture this is impossible to solve. We need to change our fundamental values and I don’t see that happening soon.
Anyway, these are the things that people say to me when I get depressed about climate change, maybe some of them will work for you:
* The last mass extinction resulted in the rise of mammals and humans, so maybe something equally interesting and great will come from this one
* You only hear the bad news and there’s heaps of people doing great things environmentally that you don’t know about
* The media only reports negative things and the environment’s not that bad really
* Everything goes extinct eventually
* It’s your depression that’s causing you to focus on the negative
* Human ingenuity will come through
* A great tragedy will happen and then everyone will realise and work together to prevent further tragedies
* There are radical mycologists breeding special types of mushrooms to eat plastic
* the communist revolution is bound to happen any day soon