My feelings are “meh. This is all stupid. Go away. Practice what you preach”. Of course, this is CNN, which has a giant carbon footprint from all their world wide operations
Why facing our feelings is essential for tackling our climate crisis
Thirty years ago, I sat in a darkened lecture hall listening to what was happening to our Earth because of the decisions people had made. Climate change, toxic contamination, species loss, forest fires, soil depletion: it was a litany of all the ways humans had gone very wrong. At least, that’s how it felt to me, at age 19. Human behavior was directly influencing the globe’s weather patterns. It was almost unthinkable.
Apparently, it was so unthinkable for those around me — that people were literally not thinking about it.
There’s a big difference between not thinking about it because they’re worried and not thinking about it because they don’t give a rat’s ass, which is the reality. ‘Climate change’ is important in theory, not reality.
Meanwhile, my world was turned upside down, forcing me to reassess almost everything — how I traveled, what I ate, wore, what I drank out of, slept in, even put on my face — surprisingly intimate things. It also made me think about who I was in the world, and who I wanted to be. I did not identify as a scientist, activist or “radical.” Yet, at that time, those seemed to be the only people who understood our lethal and dangerous trajectory.
You don’t “identify” as a scientist: you either are or aren’t. This isn’t like their idiotic gender crap.
I tried talking with other people about it. I wanted to understand what I was feeling, and why others seemed somehow immune. Was it grief? Was it a unique, new kind of anxiety? A crisis of “epistemic trust” — the helplessness Dr. Daniel Siegel calls when the world no longer seems trustworthy?
It was all of the above. Yet at that time, not many people wanted to talk about it. This is now changing. And that’s a good thing, because it’s the ticket to our collective survival.
We are seeing huge numbers of people starting to bravely name their feelings, openly: I am scared. I feel overwhelmed. I feel powerlessness. I feel angry. Such as Hugh, who struggles with anxiety and wrote into CNN before the climate town hall, “I’ve been losing sleep after reading a report that talks about how climate change could lead to the collapse of civilization by 2050.” A few years ago, this comment would have seemed extreme. This is no longer the case. It just hasn’t been acknowledged as openly — until now. And that’s a very good thing, especially in this uncertain, anxious and precarious time.
I have a suggestion
The screed keeps going and going. Have at it if you want to.
