Environmental melancholia

June 15, 2018 6:56 AM

Climate change is creating a new kind of grief, and we’re completely unprepared for it. Quartz's Jeremy Deaton looks at the gathering psychological crises caused by environmental collapse.
posted by ryanshepard (38 comments total)

I see the cruelty of unregulated unrestrained capitalism, with no morals or decency, just a commitment to maximizing profits for shareholders and top management. Working class people can't afford housing, health care, or education. The supports that might help them are being cut. Laws in the US are being altered to aid the very wealthy and the very large corporations, to the detraction of the working class and the poor, the environment, and, basically, plain honesty and decency. Looming climate change will affect the lives of my child and his children and who knows what the world will look like. The worst perpetrator of carbon emissions hand-waves it away because, profits. If I had no feelings about it, I'd be a different person. It seems that most Americans are hiding their heads in the sand because it's overwhelming and they feel helpless. She sounds pretty awesome, and has found a way to take her stand. I'd pony up .05.
posted by theora55 at 7:34 AM on June 15, 2018 [21 favorites]

Project Drawdown offers a good triage of whats the most inpactful responses.

Lester Brown's Plan B is sadly up to version 4.0 because we have failed to act in time for versions 1-3;

Human individuals are weak, easily overcome and often work at cross purposes, change will not come from individuals. Groups of humans cooperating have power and resilience and can work coherently toward goals.
Find a group, join, volunteer, get marching orders, march to victory.

One can no more be apolitical than they can be aphysical; you are a person in this world, affected by the actions of others, effecting others with your actions, everything you do is political, the question is whose politics are you serving with your (in)actions. The economy is made of people, the power structure is made of people, our problems and their solutions are made of people. Educate, Organize, Fight Back!
posted by Anchorite_of_Palgrave at 8:03 AM on June 15, 2018 [18 favorites]

I keep hoping that more people will start taking small grassroots movements and networking seriously and create trade networks and communities that produce self sustaining communities. Even though this would not and should not be 100% self sustaining as trade is important, it would create a buffer through which people with less income might be able to afford consuming and producing in ways that are healthier to the environment and each other instead of at the mercy of large corporations. I think because many activists involved in these things tended to promote them as the most extreme version possible, people not able or ready to live some extreme zero waste lifestyle which is not only not realistic but frequently not physically possible for many were not welcome and could not keep up. As a harm reductionist I keep seeing ways that we could achieve so much more if we make these changes more possible and provide more aid to those struggling with it either on a financial or physical level.
posted by xarnop at 8:03 AM on June 15, 2018 [6 favorites]

We are on the verge of massively reducing the carrying capacity of the earth. At the same time, unrestrained capitalism and advances in technology have created a situation in which the extremely high living standard of the top tier of society can be maintained with a vastly reduced labor force.

I'm beginning to suspect that the elites have concluded that a) a post-climate change world will still be able to sustain a smaller human population in comfort, and b) most of the human population is no longer necessary to maintain their standard of living, either on the production side by working for them or the consumption side by buying their products. Indeed by reducing demand for resources, reducing the environmental side effects of the agriculture and industrial production needed to support them, and simply reducing overcrowding of particularly desirable locations, a huge reduction in the population on lower socioeconomic strata would actually benefit them greatly.

I don't think the people best positioned to stop climate change want to stop it.
posted by Naberius at 8:06 AM on June 15, 2018 [48 favorites]

This article, especially the forlorn young man in the beginning, calls to mind the excellent new film First Reformed, which grapples with this very issue in a very serious, thoughtful, and arresting manner. It's very much worth seeing, though it is in no way a fun watch.

Also, I wonder if it would be more helpful in discussing this topic to separate out the views in the US and those of the world at large. This article and the comments so far talk in global terms, but the US is fairly unique in its approach to climate change and the presence of a largely successful climate denial campaign (I think among developed nations only Australia really has a comparable denialist camp). Thanks to this campaign, very large parts of the US population aren't suppressing anxiety or melancholy over climate change, they flat-out think it's a lie or a hoax.

I wonder if the psychological effects of climate change are therefore different in the US than they would be in the rest of the world.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:10 AM on June 15, 2018 [5 favorites]

On a similar note, it is interesting how crises in the environment, economy, and society can compound in conspiracy theories, blurring boundaries between the psychosomatic and 'real':

While the effects of the [Greek financial] crisis are often described publicly through metaphors of bodily and psychological illness, spraying is blamed for tangible symptoms that include weakness, fatigue, headaches, respiratory problems, and psychological malaise. These symptoms are said to undermine people’s capacities for protest and resistance against measures and policies that rob them of their livelihood. (Bakalaki, "Chemtrails, Crisis, and Loss in an Interconnected World," 14)

posted by 3zra at 8:13 AM on June 15, 2018

Despair is a form of pollution too, that poisons our ability to work with others and escape the status quo-murder-suicide pact of capitalism and heirarchy.

No matter how far you drive in he wrong direction, it is always better to turn around and start going the right way, than to just declare that you've gone so far down the wrong path that you might as well just get lost even further. Yes, its too late to avoid the pain, to enjoy the party, to pretend that it was just a close call. Its not too late to ensure something of this life survives, to ensure that more people, more knowledge more species makes it through the long emergency. Now is always the right time to swallow your pride admit the pain, make the u-turn and race back toward the direction we all need to move in.
posted by Anchorite_of_Palgrave at 8:14 AM on June 15, 2018 [24 favorites]

I was twelve, in the late '80s, when I first started learning about climate change, deforestation, desertification, and so many of the other environmental crimes we slowly but surely inflict on this world.

I've never really recovered from the horror and despair of that realization. I just try not to let it overwhelm me. Usually, I succeed.

Usually.
posted by dendritejungle at 8:23 AM on June 15, 2018 [12 favorites]

Was the fear of nuclear war during the Cold War really that different? Sense of helplessness, "we won't be here in 5 years", pervasive dread...I'm not convinced that this is a new kind of grief creating novel psychological crises.
posted by allegedly at 8:24 AM on June 15, 2018 [4 favorites]

The nukes here are mid-flight.
posted by Artw at 8:27 AM on June 15, 2018 [27 favorites]

You make a good point, Allegedly, which might point to some psychological resources we could build on to help us in the current moment.

The big difference between the two situations, of course, if that while we could negotiate with the Soviets, and both sides could decide they didn't want to kill themselves and their offspring, we can't negotiate in the same way with the physics of nature.
posted by PhineasGage at 8:33 AM on June 15, 2018 [6 favorites]

That's an interesting question, allegedly. I certainly remember the Cold War fears, but something about the environment struck me much harder. I think it was the universality of the environment, and the sense of innocence of nature.

With nukes, it felt (as a kid) like we'd be destroying our selves and cities, and natural sites might be lost but overall the planet and its species would recover.

But with the environment, it's so pervasive that (a) it affects entire ecosystems planet-wide and (b) climate change in particular perversely affects many societies who have contributed far less to the problem far worse. So it feels fundamentally more unfair, farther reaching and - being so much more intangible - far harder to stop.

(Or on review, what PhineasGage said.)
posted by dendritejungle at 8:35 AM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

To the extent that there's a breakthrough to be had here, it's in realizing, as in a recent review of William T. Vollman's new book on the subject, that the question is not "Are we fucked?" but "How fucked will we be?" Already it's increasingly likely the most dire scenarios of a 6 degree temperature rise won't pan out. And there are promising signs that renewable energy is routing coal and even natural gas on price, suggesting that decarbonization could happen more rapidly than we expect. Yet this is all happening against a backdrop of general fuckedness that we can't undo. Learning to inhabit that space of action and even progress while still acknowledging the loss of so much is something we're all going to have to do.
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:43 AM on June 15, 2018 [10 favorites]

And there are promising signs that renewable energy is routing coal and even natural gas on price, suggesting that decarbonization could happen more rapidly than we expect.

Except in the US, of course, where we're now subsidizing coal plants to prop them up...
posted by Naberius at 8:45 AM on June 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

the forlorn young man in the beginning

I thought that guy needs real mental health help, not ad hoc counseling from an English instructor
posted by thelonius at 8:45 AM on June 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

Thanks for this.
I'm expecting to see two phenomena within say 5 years
1 - A global daesh-like movement but largely secular and focussed on stopping Capitalism / starting forms of (possibly disasterous) '' planet repair.

2 - an encrypted app/messaging system enabling mass coordination around user-voted 'tasks'.

This may not even need a myth or story, protecting Earth may be sufficient.

1 & 2 may come together.
posted by unearthed at 8:50 AM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

I don't think the people best positioned to stop climate change want to stop it.

As is usually the case in such things, Gibson was there a while ago -- see The Peripheral.

...and the answer is no, they do not wish to stop it because yes, it will massively reduce the human population. The elites are going to live their future lives in luxury, surrounded by extremely sophisticated equipment in a largely depopulated world. Gibson has the "Jackpot" events eliminate ~80% of humanity; I'm thinking our real version might be higher. The real version probably won't end up with as much cool nano-technologies, alas, and definitely no quantum universe stuff, just tacky gold-plated electronics and carefully engineered plant groves surrounded by a ruined world knee-deep in bones.
posted by aramaic at 9:01 AM on June 15, 2018 [5 favorites]

This article and the comments so far talk in global terms, but the US is fairly unique in its approach to climate change and the presence of a largely successful climate denial campaign (I think among developed nations only Australia really has a comparable denialist camp).

I realized: I have no ideas of the differing levels of climate change awareness, belief in anthropocentric climate change, and perceived threat. So I googled, and found these interesting tables and maps on Wikipedia.

Australia: 97% awareness, 46% believe caused by humans, 75% perceive as "serious personal threat".

The numbers aren't so different from those for the United Kingdom or the United States (both also large(ish) anglophone majority countries) - except for the perceived threat, which is higher.

United Kingdom: 97% awareness, 48% believe caused by humans, 69% perceive as "serious personal threat".
United States: 97% awareness, 49% believe caused by humans, 63% perceive as "serious personal threat".

In terms of belief that climate change is caused by humans, Canada is a bit higher - but not so different from Germany or France (both of whom are lower than I had expected), and similar to Australia for the level of perceived threat.

Canada: 95% awareness, 61% believe caused by humans, 74% perceive as "serious personal threat".
Germany: 96% awareness, 59% believe caused by humans, 60% perceive as "serious personal threat".
France: 93% awareness, 63% believe caused by humans, 75% perceive as "serious personal threat".

Looking specifically at belief in anthropogenic climate change, it's not so much Australia that's an outlier among the richer nations, but South Korean and Japan for their high levels of belief - 92% and 91% respectively. The rest of the nations where 80% or more believe that humans have caused climate change are middle-income and lower-income countries: Costa Rica (87%), Greece (84%), Argentina, Ecuador and Tajikistan (81%), and Brazil (80%).

Whereas the United States (49%) and Australia (46%) are keeping coming with Denmark (49%), Norway (47%), the Netherlands and Singapore (44%), among other countries.
posted by jb at 9:14 AM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

Note: these numbers are all from a Gallup Poll in 2007-2008, so may have all changed significantly.
posted by jb at 9:15 AM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

Except Australia - which is from 2015.
posted by jb at 9:16 AM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

...and the answer is no, they do not wish to stop it because yes, it will massively reduce the human population. The elites are going to live their future lives in luxury, surrounded by extremely sophisticated equipment in a largely depopulated world.

I think moreso the truly rich and powerful, who are predominantly men over the age of 50, know they're going to die long before the climate wrath is going to personally affect them and their money will shield them from anything scarcity-related in the interim.

I suspect from the few wealthy people that I know that the predominant factor in their answers on climate change has nothing to do with belief and everything to do with not wanting to give anything up for a world 50 years from now they won't be a part of regardless. They just don't care what happens to us.
posted by notorious medium at 9:19 AM on June 15, 2018 [10 favorites]

I find that table a bit misleading, given their qualification that:

Responding yes when asked, "Temperature rise is part of global warming or climate change. Do you think rising temperatures are [...] a result of human activities?" Note: the other answer option was "a result of natural causes," but respondents were also allowed to indicate "both" (or "no opinion"). People voting "both" are not included in the numbers.

I imagine one could believe in anthropogenic climate change but still believe that the climate is warming both due to human actions and some natural cycle?
posted by 3zra at 9:20 AM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

What do Australia, the US, and the U.K. have in common that Canada lacks?

Murdoch.
posted by jamjam at 9:58 AM on June 15, 2018 [15 favorites]

A joint project between NASA and the ESA just released a study-of-studies on the Antarctic ice sheet and has estimated that the annual net ice loss increased from ~43 gigatons yearly during the period 1992-2002 up to ~220 gigatons per year between 2012 and 2017. DOI 10.1038/s41586-018-0179-y.

I'm an atheist but I feel like, as far as emotional tools go, some pieces might be drawn from religion... it all has some congruence to a failure to honor the gods and revere the ancestors enough, plus some righteous outrage at the wicked while remembering that we're all sinners. The challenge is to not let any opiate-of-the-masses aspects develop, I guess.

In the interest of trying to not be totally depressing, perhaps a new sort of burnt offering is on the horizon:

Maybe we can afford to suck CO₂ out of the sky after all
A new analysis shows that air capture could cost less than $100 a ton.

posted by XMLicious at 10:04 AM on June 15, 2018 [5 favorites]

Was the fear of nuclear war during the Cold War really that different?

Yeah, it was.

See, everybody understands that nobody does OK in a nuclear war. With climate change, the rich still think that they and their families will do just fine. Well, as long as they don't want to go scuba diving on the Reef - but who cares about the Reef? We'll always have cocaine.

Nobody actually supported nuclear war. People supported nuclear weapons, but not their actual use (except against Australians and Pacific Islanders). There was nowhere near the sheer scale of pro-threat organization and propaganda we see for climate change.
posted by flabdablet at 12:55 PM on June 15, 2018 [8 favorites]

Donna Haraway writes in her most recent book, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene: “Grief is a path to understanding entangled shared living and dying; human beings must grieve with, because we are in and of this fabric of undoing. Without sustained remembrance, we cannot learn to live with ghosts and so cannot think (p 39).”

That is in order to move forward and find ways to persist, we need to mourn what we are losing and have lost. We need to “cultivate ongoingness.” And that in finding fellow mourners we strengthen our capacities to go on together: “it is not just human people who mourn the loss of loved ones, of place, of lifeways; other beings mourn as well.” (self link)
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:35 PM on June 15, 2018

Was the fear of nuclear war during the Cold War really that different?

One difference was that nuclear war could have been something that happened that day or the next - fallout shelters, drills, government pamphlets, etc. You could see it in the missiles and planes and military bases.

Climate change, is something that is happening in some vague future.
posted by carter at 4:59 PM on June 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

Climate change, is something that is happening in some vague future.

Nuclear war was a hypothetical, not something I saw daily, whereas I can feel and see climate change all around me, constantly.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:15 PM on June 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

Having lived through the 1980s, when anxiety about the nuclear arms race was pretty high, I'm more optimistic about climate change. It's a slow-motion problem.

Cooperation, even in the face of a clear threat, is surprisingly difficult; but we know it's not impossible.

Global warming is a collective action problem: The costs of acting are borne by the individual, while the benefits are spread over a much larger group. Sacrificing my use of fossil fuels (e.g. not driving my daughter to school this morning) would be a large cost to me, while doing practically nothing to solve the global problem. So even if everyone would be far better off if we all stopped using fossil fuels, that doesn't mean it's going to happen.

But we also know that cooperation isn't impossible.

An analogy is European history, 1500-2000. Any power trying to dominate the Continent (Spain, France, Germany, USSR) found itself facing an opposing coalition.

Historians tend to take this balance-of-power dynamic for granted, but if you think about it as a collective action problem, it's surprising. Any one country isn't powerful enough to stop the conqueror alone, so it has a strong incentive to jump on the conqueror's bandwagon. Why didn't this happen? What held the opposing coalition together?

The role of England was a key factor here: England would always put together and back the opposing alliance. Hans Morgenthau quotes Churchill, 1936:

For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent, and particularly to prevent the Low Countries falling into the hands of such a Power. Viewed in the light of history these four centuries of consistent purpose amid so many changes of names and facts, of circumstances and conditions, must rank as one of the most remarkable episodes which the records of any race, nation, state or people can show. Moreover, on all occasions England took the more difficult course. Faced by Philip II of Spain, against Louis XIV under William III and Marlborough, against Napoleon, against William II of Germany, it would have been easy and must have been very tempting to join with the stronger and share the fruits of his conquest. However, we always took the harder course, joined with the less strong Powers, made a combination among them, and thus defeated and frustrated the Continental military tyrant whoever he was, whatever nation he led. Thus we preserved the liberties of Europe, protected the growth of its vivacious and varied society, and emerged after four terrible struggles with an ever-growing fame and widening Empire, and with the Low Countries safely protected in their independence. Here is the wonderful unconscious tradition of British foreign policy. I know of nothing that has happened to human nature which in the slightest degree alters the validity of their conclusions. I know of nothing in military, political, economic, or scientific fact which makes me feel that we are less capable. I know of nothing which makes me feel that we might not, or cannot, march along the same road. I venture to put this very general proposition before you because it seems to me that if it is accepted everything else becomes much more simple.

I would suggest that we need one or more countries to play a similar leading role today, using the elements of diplomacy - persuasion, compromise, threats - to get other countries to act on climate change. If the US is out of the picture, then maybe it's the EU, or even China.

The basic policy requirements are pretty clear - electrify everything (including transport and heating), and generate a lot more electricity from non-fossil-fuel sources (hydro, nuclear, wind, solar). This will be extremely costly, so we want to do it in the most cost-effective way possible. If you ask economists, they're pretty much unanimous: the most cost-effective policy is to use a steadily increasing carbon price to reduce demand for fossil fuels, which simultaneously makes non-fossil-fuel energy more and more competitive. Once there's a carbon price, individual households and businesses see a direct financial benefit from reducing their fossil fuel usage.

William Nordhaus, an economist who's studied climate change for a long time, also argues that carbon pricing is the most effective way to coordinate international action. Emission cuts are zero-sum, so it's very difficult to agree on how to distribute them: more for me means less for everyone else. It should be easier to agree on a common price.

How fast does the carbon price need to rise? According to the IEA, this is the price path which stabilizes CO2 at 450 ppm.

So at the national level, we can use carbon pricing to align people's incentives. But that doesn't answer the question of why a particular national government would seek to act, rather than free-riding and putting their political capital into other issues.

It's difficult to generalize, because it's going to depend on the political context in each country. Contingency (election results depend on a lot of factors) and individual agency (the decisions of individual leaders) both matter.

The EU has had carbon pricing (in the form of a cap-and-trade system) since 2005. Canada is bringing in a federal carbon price floor this year, after Alberta came on board in 2015. The US went from a government that came pretty close (with Waxman-Markey) to bringing in cap-and-trade, to one that rejects action on climate change. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Democrats regain control of the White House and Congress in the near future, making action on climate change much more likely.

So if you want to focus on what you can control, rather than what you can't control, I'd suggest focusing on upcoming elections.

My attempt to summarize the problem.
posted by russilwvong at 7:00 PM on June 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

Can't argue your science, russilwvong, but I think your sense of the political realities is naive. Of course I hope you are right.
posted by PhineasGage at 10:27 PM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

-Future's bright
-Elon Musk's Fall from Grace
-Recommended Reading on Energy
-Lithium-ion batteries are eating the world
posted by kliuless at 11:19 PM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

Life Versus Dark Energy: How An Advanced Civilization Could Resist the Accelerating Expansion of the Universe
posted by kliuless at 11:22 PM on June 15, 2018

Save energy. Get paid.
posted by flabdablet at 1:58 AM on June 16, 2018

“Right now climate denialism is a touchstone of the American right, but the evidence is almost impossible to argue against right now and it's increasingly obvious that many of the people who espouse disbelief are faking it—virtue signalling on the hard right. Sooner or later they'll flip. When they do so, they will inevitably come to the sincere, deeply held belief that culling the bottom 50% to 90% of the planetary population will give them a shot at survival in the post-greenhouse world. “ Welcome to the 21st Century.
posted by The Whelk at 12:17 PM on June 16, 2018

To the extent that there's a breakthrough to be had here, it's in realizing, as in a recent review of William T. Vollman's new book on the subject

Thank you so much for sharing that article, I thought it was excellently written and articulates a point I find myself regularly making the in the face of climate change fatalism. It's just terrific.
posted by smoke at 6:34 PM on June 16, 2018

When You Can’t Find Shelter From the Heat - Temperatures elevated by climate change can be deadly for people experiencing homelessness.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:00 PM on June 18, 2018

Alleged Charlottesville Neo-Nazi Marine Faces Summary Court-Martial
posted by Artw at 3:21 PM on June 18, 2018

Wait, there is hope!—What happened last time it was as warm as it’s going to get later this century?
Kids today will be grandparents when most climate projections end—does the past have more hints?

[discussion of how Miocene Era sea levels were dozens of meters higher than circa-2100 forecasts, but on the positive side there were more forests and other vibrant ecosystems, though different circumstances mean we may just get deserts instead if uncontrolled and self-perpetuating warming continues]

If all of this feels depressingly “doomist,” there is hope! It lies in Earth’s slow reaction time, which gives us a (limited) window of opportunity.

If you pass your hand through a candle flame quickly enough, you won’t get burned. The same principle applies to Earth—if we minimize the time that the planet spends above preindustrial temperatures, Miocene-like sea level rise may be avoidable.

Although Greenland and West Antarctic ice is already melting at an accelerating rate, East Antarctica is—for now—relatively stable (except the Totten Glacier). So, if we can keep warming well below 2ºC, DeConto and Pollard’s models suggest East Antarctica will contribute little to future sea level rise.

But this will require us to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations, going beyond achieving “Net Zero” emissions.

“Negative emissions” (actively sucking CO₂ out of the air) could slowly reduce global temperatures and stabilize many sources of sea level rise during the 22nd century. According to Matthias Mengel of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and colleagues, falling CO₂ would eventually allow Antarctica to begin accumulating ice, so sea levels would begin to fall again, three centuries into the future.

(Note that per the study I linked to above, over the majority of Antarctica's land mass—East Antarctica—very small increases in ice mass are what's been recorded recently and forecast for the near future. It's the smaller West Antarctica and Antarctic Peninsula where ice loss has massively accelerated during the past quarter-century, enough to predominate in the overall trends for the entire continent measured together.)
posted by XMLicious at 8:39 PM on June 20, 2018