This Is How We Live Now
January 9, 2020 10:52 AM Subscribe
A year’s diary of reckoning with climate anxiety, conversation by conversation. (SLTHECUT)
Some scientists say the best way to combat climate change is to talk about it among friends and family — to make private anxieties public concerns. For 2019, my New Year’s resolution was to do just that, as often as possible, at the risk of spoiling dinner. I would ask about the crisis at parent-association meetings, in classrooms, at conferences, on the subway, in bodegas, at dinner parties, while overseas, and when online; I would break climate silence as a woman of color, as a mother raising black children in a global city, as a professor at a public university, and as a travel writer — in all of those places, as all of those people. I would force those conversations if I needed to. But, it turned out, people wanted to talk about it. Nobody was silent. I listened to their answers. I noticed the echoes. I wrote them all down.
Some scientists say the best way to combat climate change is to talk about it among friends and family — to make private anxieties public concerns. For 2019, my New Year’s resolution was to do just that, as often as possible, at the risk of spoiling dinner. I would ask about the crisis at parent-association meetings, in classrooms, at conferences, on the subway, in bodegas, at dinner parties, while overseas, and when online; I would break climate silence as a woman of color, as a mother raising black children in a global city, as a professor at a public university, and as a travel writer — in all of those places, as all of those people. I would force those conversations if I needed to. But, it turned out, people wanted to talk about it. Nobody was silent. I listened to their answers. I noticed the echoes. I wrote them all down.
It just built and built. It was weird for some reason when I realized some of the conversations were with people from my area experiencing what I experienced .
posted by agatha_magatha at 3:20 PM on January 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by agatha_magatha at 3:20 PM on January 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
TFW boomers mention nuclear Armageddon anxiety in response as if that risk is no longer present.
posted by BrotherCaine at 7:55 PM on January 9, 2020
posted by BrotherCaine at 7:55 PM on January 9, 2020
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Dispiriting, but good.
These are conversations that need to be had in the real world, not the Skinner box of social media.
At the same time, social media is the only force opposing traditional media, which is the key driver of denialism and the key propagandist to the proletariat.
I don't advocate violence, and I'm not even American, but increasingly, I'm coming around to the idea of the second amendment.
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:34 PM on January 9, 2020 [3 favorites]