It’s hard not to feel nihilistic. Especially because even in the worst case scenario, it’s extremely unlikely that humans will become extinct. No, the worst case scenario is worse than that: the people who are most responsible for exacerbating the climate crisis will also be the ones with the resources available to shield themselves from the devastation. Even if society as we know it completely collapses, people will survive, and on our current trajectory, those people will be the worst of us.
For me, it’s less about saving the planet from the climate crisis, more about doing what little I can to maximise the likelihood that the people who inherit the earth aren’t the assholes who are willfully profiting from human misery — the ones who see themselves as the greater good.
Sometimes when I feel hopeless about humanity’s chance to liberate ourselves before climate catastrophe truly rolls in, I wonder whether it’d be better if humans were gone entirely. Maybe I’d rather see the world burn completely than for it to go to the disgusting people who make me ashamed to be human. Ultimately, I don’t believe this — I’d be dead already if I did. I don’t think my life matters all that much, but I’m not one of the people who would be deemed worth saving by the billionaires and autocrats, so I might as well stick around and fight for, and with all the other forsaken people to build things that are worth preserving; I figure that communities and solidarity will be even more crucial in the future than now.
A few years ago, my best friend was in a coma and on a ventilator for a few months, before eventually dying. The hardest part of that period was when we didn’t know whether he would survive or not, because I had to go about my life despite his absence, and yet I couldn’t grieve yet. That feels sort of like how climate change feels now. I want to grieve, but I can’t, because there’s still work to do. The earth isn’t dead yet, and unlike when my friend was in hospital, my actions do have an impact on the end outcome. The analogy breaks down though, because I did get the chance to grieve my friend’s death, there won’t be a checkpoint like that for me, because the world won’t end, per se. The only thing that’ll be ending is my ability to impact the world, when I’m too dead to grieve for anything.
I imagine my desire to see the world burn rather than hand it over to the undeserving probably stems from a desperate desire to grieve what has already been lost, and what has not yet been lost, but will be. I wish I could allow myself the chance to despair, because that can be healing, eventually, but there simply isn’t time to do that precisely because this isn’t about me and my grief. There’s still work to do, and I can’t let myself collapse now, lest even more of our descendants future is eroded. I feel hopeful for the future because I have to in order to survive long enough to give the people who come after me a better shot at building something I never could. It’s a tremendous amount of pressure though.
It’s hard not to feel nihilistic. Especially because even in the worst case scenario, it’s extremely unlikely that humans will become extinct. No, the worst case scenario is worse than that: the people who are most responsible for exacerbating the climate crisis will also be the ones with the resources available to shield themselves from the devastation. Even if society as we know it completely collapses, people will survive, and on our current trajectory, those people will be the worst of us.
For me, it’s less about saving the planet from the climate crisis, more about doing what little I can to maximise the likelihood that the people who inherit the earth aren’t the assholes who are willfully profiting from human misery — the ones who see themselves as the greater good.
Sometimes when I feel hopeless about humanity’s chance to liberate ourselves before climate catastrophe truly rolls in, I wonder whether it’d be better if humans were gone entirely. Maybe I’d rather see the world burn completely than for it to go to the disgusting people who make me ashamed to be human. Ultimately, I don’t believe this — I’d be dead already if I did. I don’t think my life matters all that much, but I’m not one of the people who would be deemed worth saving by the billionaires and autocrats, so I might as well stick around and fight for, and with all the other forsaken people to build things that are worth preserving; I figure that communities and solidarity will be even more crucial in the future than now.
A few years ago, my best friend was in a coma and on a ventilator for a few months, before eventually dying. The hardest part of that period was when we didn’t know whether he would survive or not, because I had to go about my life despite his absence, and yet I couldn’t grieve yet. That feels sort of like how climate change feels now. I want to grieve, but I can’t, because there’s still work to do. The earth isn’t dead yet, and unlike when my friend was in hospital, my actions do have an impact on the end outcome. The analogy breaks down though, because I did get the chance to grieve my friend’s death, there won’t be a checkpoint like that for me, because the world won’t end, per se. The only thing that’ll be ending is my ability to impact the world, when I’m too dead to grieve for anything.
I imagine my desire to see the world burn rather than hand it over to the undeserving probably stems from a desperate desire to grieve what has already been lost, and what has not yet been lost, but will be. I wish I could allow myself the chance to despair, because that can be healing, eventually, but there simply isn’t time to do that precisely because this isn’t about me and my grief. There’s still work to do, and I can’t let myself collapse now, lest even more of our descendants future is eroded. I feel hopeful for the future because I have to in order to survive long enough to give the people who come after me a better shot at building something I never could. It’s a tremendous amount of pressure though.