How to feel about climate change
December 1, 2022 4:25 AM Subscribe
"The landscape of climate emotions is broad and complex, with different emotions being elicited in different people to different degrees. This gives rise to an additional, yet undertheorized layer of disagreement among the public: there is division of opinion not only about what should be believed regarding climate change, but also about how we should emotionally react to it." (The paper's key example: How should one face a warmer than normal summer--with pleasure or fear?) How to Feel About Climate Change? An Analysis of the Normativity of Climate Emotions.
I remember very clearly a certain day in December of 2000 when it was in the 60s and sunny. This had not happened before. I was in college at the time, and I had a small seminar class to go to. Someone proposed having it outside, like in spring, and everyone agreed but me. It was wrong, I said—I hated it out there. The professor himself laughed at me. I really liked and respected him, as he was top in his field (not STEM, I can tell you) and in the department, so I subsided and we went. I have thought of it often on warm winter days since, with increasing bitterness, not towards the professor or anybody but just, you know, us.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:49 AM on December 1, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 5:49 AM on December 1, 2022 [8 favorites]
How about enjoying the nice day while also joking that it's a good thing climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, otherwise this would all be very concerning ? Because that's the tack we usually take.
My greatest hope with climate change stuff and semi-denier family members is to share articles like the one yesterday "how should we change our economy when it's too hot to work outside for more days in a year?" "What will happen to your AC bill when days above 100 degrees Fareinheit increase?" Because talking apocalyptically to them, here, where there haven't been major droughts or floods, seems to make them tune out the arguments but these are concrete changes it only makes sense to consider....
posted by subdee at 6:33 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
My greatest hope with climate change stuff and semi-denier family members is to share articles like the one yesterday "how should we change our economy when it's too hot to work outside for more days in a year?" "What will happen to your AC bill when days above 100 degrees Fareinheit increase?" Because talking apocalyptically to them, here, where there haven't been major droughts or floods, seems to make them tune out the arguments but these are concrete changes it only makes sense to consider....
posted by subdee at 6:33 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Again last night I had that strange dream
Where everything was exactly how it seemed
No concerns about the world getting warmer
People thought that they were just being rewarded
For treating others as they'd like to be treated
For obeying stop-signs and curing diseases
For mailing letters with the address of the sender
Now we can swim any day in November
The Postal Service - 2003.
posted by rebent at 6:38 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Where everything was exactly how it seemed
No concerns about the world getting warmer
People thought that they were just being rewarded
For treating others as they'd like to be treated
For obeying stop-signs and curing diseases
For mailing letters with the address of the sender
Now we can swim any day in November
The Postal Service - 2003.
posted by rebent at 6:38 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
How about enjoying the nice day while also joking that it's a good thing climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, otherwise this would all be very concerning ? Because that's the tack we usually take.
Making the obligatory climate-change-we're doomed comment is also my approach, but the butt of the joke is more my own uselessness, I guess. I'm as good at denial as the next gal, but I guess I can't do it selectively enough to get much enjoyment from it - if I sucessfully numb myself to the impending doom, I also numb myself to the beauty of the fine day; if I become aware of the fine day, I also become aware of the impending doom.
posted by sohalt at 6:42 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Making the obligatory climate-change-we're doomed comment is also my approach, but the butt of the joke is more my own uselessness, I guess. I'm as good at denial as the next gal, but I guess I can't do it selectively enough to get much enjoyment from it - if I sucessfully numb myself to the impending doom, I also numb myself to the beauty of the fine day; if I become aware of the fine day, I also become aware of the impending doom.
posted by sohalt at 6:42 AM on December 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Thanks for posting this. It's interesting to see community norms about emotions discussed at all, and our communal response to climate disaster also...I often feel They Live feelings about climate.. like, Can No One Else See What is Happening??! It's extremely disturbing and also alienating but also not conducive to organizing other people toward change or action.
posted by latkes at 7:18 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by latkes at 7:18 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm tired of being shouted at when I express my hopelessness that anything will be done to change the acceleration of warming. It feels so very invalidating and, yes, rude, to be told that feeling sad and hopeless about it is not only wrong, but dismal, and that I am a miserable person. Even though all data points to humans, and most life on the planet, is going to be gone sooner rather than later.
My grief is real too? Even if it's not painted with urgent calls to action or positivity.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:09 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
My grief is real too? Even if it's not painted with urgent calls to action or positivity.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:09 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
When I was a kid, a big part of long road trips was the bugs, so many bug splats on the windows, and the wildflowers, patches of purple, orange white and yellow standing out from the browns and greens of the creosote, cactus and the desert soil. Now there's no bugs and the wildflowers are nothing but a sea of tan bufflegrass with occasional yellow splashes of invasive globe chamomile. The cactus are all burnt at the bottom, having been dealt a fatal wound by brushfire, dead men standing.
posted by kzin602 at 8:51 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by kzin602 at 8:51 AM on December 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
Even though all data points to humans, and most life on the planet, is going to be gone sooner rather than later.
I don't share these conclusions. Or more to the point, I see ZERO gain in attaching myself to them. Born in 1959, conscious of catastrophic human impacts on nature well before I hit my teens, entirely open to the possibility/probability of Cold War nuclear annihilation throughout my twenties (thank you Ronald Raygun) ... and so on.
And yet here I still am, sixty-three years old, at some point having concluded that I may as well have a life, I seem to be doomed to live one regardless of the "if it bleeds it leads" headlines.
If you're looking for something quantitative, I've found this discussion* (Climate Change Debate: Bjørn Lomborg and Andrew Revkin) intriguing -- the debate being not about whether Climate Change is a thing (of course, it fucking is), it's what to do about it. Doom and despair is an option, of course, but there are also things like, hey, maybe we should actually take action toward NOT continuing to populate known flash flood zones, and ummm maybe not waste our efforts (and money) on dubious initiatives such as subsidizing electric cars (just a couple of examples).
* WARNING: hosted by Lex Fridman who is known to be Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson adjacent, but if you do some digging you find he's not afraid to confront them on some of their bullshit.
posted by philip-random at 9:22 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I don't share these conclusions. Or more to the point, I see ZERO gain in attaching myself to them. Born in 1959, conscious of catastrophic human impacts on nature well before I hit my teens, entirely open to the possibility/probability of Cold War nuclear annihilation throughout my twenties (thank you Ronald Raygun) ... and so on.
And yet here I still am, sixty-three years old, at some point having concluded that I may as well have a life, I seem to be doomed to live one regardless of the "if it bleeds it leads" headlines.
If you're looking for something quantitative, I've found this discussion* (Climate Change Debate: Bjørn Lomborg and Andrew Revkin) intriguing -- the debate being not about whether Climate Change is a thing (of course, it fucking is), it's what to do about it. Doom and despair is an option, of course, but there are also things like, hey, maybe we should actually take action toward NOT continuing to populate known flash flood zones, and ummm maybe not waste our efforts (and money) on dubious initiatives such as subsidizing electric cars (just a couple of examples).
* WARNING: hosted by Lex Fridman who is known to be Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson adjacent, but if you do some digging you find he's not afraid to confront them on some of their bullshit.
posted by philip-random at 9:22 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Even though all data points to humans, and most life on the planet, is going to be gone sooner rather than later.
I don't share these conclusions. Or more to the point, I see ZERO gain in attaching myself to them.
These are facts, for me. There's no debate to be had.
Also, I don't "attach" myself to facts. They simply are.
I was kind of hoping to not get any pushback on my feelings, in a feelings-related post about climate change. But oh well.
You and I have gone back and forth on this before, I believe. I want to be respected that it's ok to feel sad about it, and to feel that nothing will change. I firmly believe it's okay to feel that way. My feelings don't affect the future, or your climate action plan/activities.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:35 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I don't share these conclusions. Or more to the point, I see ZERO gain in attaching myself to them.
These are facts, for me. There's no debate to be had.
Also, I don't "attach" myself to facts. They simply are.
I was kind of hoping to not get any pushback on my feelings, in a feelings-related post about climate change. But oh well.
You and I have gone back and forth on this before, I believe. I want to be respected that it's ok to feel sad about it, and to feel that nothing will change. I firmly believe it's okay to feel that way. My feelings don't affect the future, or your climate action plan/activities.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:35 AM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
for what it's worth, I tried to "push back" not on your feelings but rather your assertion of scientific data points (aka facts) as definitive and absolute.
I do accept that this is probably not the right thread for pushing back against how anyone feels about climate change. It's in the title
How to feel about climate change
If my words landed wrong, that's my bad. I apologize.
posted by philip-random at 10:11 AM on December 1, 2022
I do accept that this is probably not the right thread for pushing back against how anyone feels about climate change. It's in the title
How to feel about climate change
If my words landed wrong, that's my bad. I apologize.
posted by philip-random at 10:11 AM on December 1, 2022
for what it's worth, I tried to "push back" not on your feelings but rather your assertion of scientific data points (aka facts) as definitive and absolute.
What scientific data points did I raise? Nothing specific. So maybe no refutation was needed? Please consider that and pass me by next time. However, I appreciate the apology.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:26 AM on December 1, 2022
What scientific data points did I raise? Nothing specific. So maybe no refutation was needed? Please consider that and pass me by next time. However, I appreciate the apology.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:26 AM on December 1, 2022
I really liked the introduction to the work of Amira Srinivasan and their work on affective injustice. We see that a lot I think and not just when it relates to the climate. There is an inherent balance between aptness of anger and effectiveness but this is immensely complicated by the fact that many of the people making the effectiveness argument against anger "your anger is counter-productive" are in fact doing so in bad faith but some of them are not.
In absence of an account that explains the presupposed value superiority of prudence over fitting anger, Srinivasan argues, we can be suspicious that the counterproductivity argument against the expression of fitting anger masks an attempt of social control over certain socially excluded groups, traditionally slaves and women
It's almost impossible to disentangle that because nobody can see inside someone else's mind.
Indeed, Ojala (2012b; 2015) has found that individuals’ engagement with climate action is more common when they feel ‘constructive hope’, which is closely related to efficacy beliefs and trust, in combination with worry.
This has been my experience in the lobbying work I have done. If the problem is presented as either entirely insoluble or requiring an implausible seeming effort, people shut down. I'm convinced that as of 2022, most "climate denial" among people who are not paid-for mercenaries is just cognitive dissonance. "If this was real, we'd be fucked, so... it's not real". When we go and meet both decision makers and members of the public and lay out the actual costs and steps that need to be taken, they tend to relax a lot and suddenly they "believe" that it's real... which makes no logical sense but it does make sociological sense.
Personally, and I know we can't all do it, actually working on renewable energy projects helps me to calm my own emotions. Not that I'm personally very prone to enjoying warm weather but if you've been up to 3AM trying to solve a construction issue on a GW scale offshore wind-farm, one feels like it's ok to not be emotionally distraught by the fact that it's the warmest mid-November day ever.
posted by atrazine at 10:34 AM on December 1, 2022 [8 favorites]
In absence of an account that explains the presupposed value superiority of prudence over fitting anger, Srinivasan argues, we can be suspicious that the counterproductivity argument against the expression of fitting anger masks an attempt of social control over certain socially excluded groups, traditionally slaves and women
It's almost impossible to disentangle that because nobody can see inside someone else's mind.
Indeed, Ojala (2012b; 2015) has found that individuals’ engagement with climate action is more common when they feel ‘constructive hope’, which is closely related to efficacy beliefs and trust, in combination with worry.
This has been my experience in the lobbying work I have done. If the problem is presented as either entirely insoluble or requiring an implausible seeming effort, people shut down. I'm convinced that as of 2022, most "climate denial" among people who are not paid-for mercenaries is just cognitive dissonance. "If this was real, we'd be fucked, so... it's not real". When we go and meet both decision makers and members of the public and lay out the actual costs and steps that need to be taken, they tend to relax a lot and suddenly they "believe" that it's real... which makes no logical sense but it does make sociological sense.
Personally, and I know we can't all do it, actually working on renewable energy projects helps me to calm my own emotions. Not that I'm personally very prone to enjoying warm weather but if you've been up to 3AM trying to solve a construction issue on a GW scale offshore wind-farm, one feels like it's ok to not be emotionally distraught by the fact that it's the warmest mid-November day ever.
posted by atrazine at 10:34 AM on December 1, 2022 [8 favorites]
I personally see a lot MORE initiatives, locally, to do something about climate change.
There's new laws in this state mandating a certain portion of energy be green energy
There's a solar co-op spinning up in my town, that purports to help people save money on their energy bills
There's evidence of infrastructure planning at the country, state and local levels for future increased flood and fire risk; also planning by large corps like Facebook when they are deciding where to put future data centers
Some of the tools for local planning are available to consumers to assess how much risk their property has in the medium and long term
There's the problem of "re-insurance" in Florida that might eventually force people to abandon their houses in the flood zones
There's stunts like the tomato soup on Van Gogh painting, etc as well as more drastic actions at energy plants and pipelines
It's all too little, too late and mostly coping with what's to come instead of working to change it. But the political will to do something, to grapple with this, increasingly is there.
People don't want a deflationary economy or to stop using too much electricity but "climate change" action in a general sense has broad support.
This is a US perspective, I recognize this country is both insulated from a lot of the most dire immediate issues of climate change (at least D.C. is) and way behind the curve of what's happening elsewhere.
posted by subdee at 10:47 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
There's new laws in this state mandating a certain portion of energy be green energy
There's a solar co-op spinning up in my town, that purports to help people save money on their energy bills
There's evidence of infrastructure planning at the country, state and local levels for future increased flood and fire risk; also planning by large corps like Facebook when they are deciding where to put future data centers
Some of the tools for local planning are available to consumers to assess how much risk their property has in the medium and long term
There's the problem of "re-insurance" in Florida that might eventually force people to abandon their houses in the flood zones
There's stunts like the tomato soup on Van Gogh painting, etc as well as more drastic actions at energy plants and pipelines
It's all too little, too late and mostly coping with what's to come instead of working to change it. But the political will to do something, to grapple with this, increasingly is there.
People don't want a deflationary economy or to stop using too much electricity but "climate change" action in a general sense has broad support.
This is a US perspective, I recognize this country is both insulated from a lot of the most dire immediate issues of climate change (at least D.C. is) and way behind the curve of what's happening elsewhere.
posted by subdee at 10:47 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
How should one face a warmer than normal summer--with pleasure or fear? This is full of my usual doom n gloom, so if you're the type, please skip it.
I live in Houston. (Help. Please.) There's one simple answer to the concept of an even 'warmer' summer..... And that's incoherent frothing rage filled cursing and smashing of things.
I can't describe the horror of the relentless soul grinding crush when it's 105 and the humidity is 80+. You can feel the hot water suffocating you, like being waterboarded with a hottub just by opening a door. Ever seen a steering wheel melt? Yeah. Having to put towels on the seat and cover things like exposed metal seat belt buckles to avoid second degree burns... Normal.
It doesn't cool off enough at night. It's hard to sleep unless you can afford enough air conditioning. How many people would die if the power went out for a day in the summer? Two days? A week? Let's add more heat!
posted by Jacen at 11:09 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
I live in Houston. (Help. Please.) There's one simple answer to the concept of an even 'warmer' summer..... And that's incoherent frothing rage filled cursing and smashing of things.
I can't describe the horror of the relentless soul grinding crush when it's 105 and the humidity is 80+. You can feel the hot water suffocating you, like being waterboarded with a hottub just by opening a door. Ever seen a steering wheel melt? Yeah. Having to put towels on the seat and cover things like exposed metal seat belt buckles to avoid second degree burns... Normal.
It doesn't cool off enough at night. It's hard to sleep unless you can afford enough air conditioning. How many people would die if the power went out for a day in the summer? Two days? A week? Let's add more heat!
posted by Jacen at 11:09 AM on December 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
How should one face a warmer than normal summer--with pleasure or fear?
[...]
How many people would die if the power went out for a day in the summer? Two days? A week?
I imagine that a study of how everyday people make it through a war or some similarly prolonged season of horror-terror-uncertainty might offer up some answers. How did the British survive the Blitz of WW2, the repeated bombings of various cities? And even after that, they had V2 rockets lobbing in more or less randomly for years. Demoralizing, I'm sure, but at some point, everyday life found a way to carry on ... for most anyway.
posted by philip-random at 1:43 PM on December 1, 2022
[...]
How many people would die if the power went out for a day in the summer? Two days? A week?
I imagine that a study of how everyday people make it through a war or some similarly prolonged season of horror-terror-uncertainty might offer up some answers. How did the British survive the Blitz of WW2, the repeated bombings of various cities? And even after that, they had V2 rockets lobbing in more or less randomly for years. Demoralizing, I'm sure, but at some point, everyday life found a way to carry on ... for most anyway.
posted by philip-random at 1:43 PM on December 1, 2022
How many people would die if the power went out for a day in the summer? Two days? A week?
That's the question asked by the opening scene of The Ministry for the Future... in that book it's twenty million (in India), and then a few years later 300,000 (in the Southwestern US and Texas).
posted by subdee at 2:04 PM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
That's the question asked by the opening scene of The Ministry for the Future... in that book it's twenty million (in India), and then a few years later 300,000 (in the Southwestern US and Texas).
posted by subdee at 2:04 PM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Hope in the face of climate change, climate hope, is widely discussed among scholars, some of whom have emphasised its importance for dealing with this crisis (e.g., Geiger et al. 2021; Ojala 2012b)
¡epónistérico!
posted by gurple at 4:56 PM on December 1, 2022
¡epónistérico!
posted by gurple at 4:56 PM on December 1, 2022
I mean, with respect to Texas, increased day to day heat wasn't the issue for me so much as the water was. Changes in rainfall patterns that caused incredibly frequent flooding; frequent water safety disruptions (partly from river and reservoir strain, partly from improved conditions for pathogen growth); and on top of everything no one can trust the goddamned electrical grid.
Climate change has demonstrably strained my life badly in the last ten years, and I'm incredibly grateful to be somewhere that already gets extreme weather swings that is also well inland at this point. The constant strains of picking up low-scale disasters, coupled with the certainty that no one was planning ahead--not just for mitigating climate change, but for dealing with the fallout--that fucked me up.
It's gonna be a wild ride.
posted by sciatrix at 5:18 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Climate change has demonstrably strained my life badly in the last ten years, and I'm incredibly grateful to be somewhere that already gets extreme weather swings that is also well inland at this point. The constant strains of picking up low-scale disasters, coupled with the certainty that no one was planning ahead--not just for mitigating climate change, but for dealing with the fallout--that fucked me up.
It's gonna be a wild ride.
posted by sciatrix at 5:18 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've a close friend who does open skull base surgery, so sometimes she prepares for days for a case, opens them up, and must conclude they're inoperable. We must stay firmly in touch with reality because someone must make actual hard choices.
I do feel "black pilled" for a bit whenever I've discovered some cute climate solution is fiction, but then I accept what I cannot change, develop hope for other solutions I initially liked less, and move on to doing what I can within my skill set.
As we head towards +4°C we'll cut carrying capacity to under 1 billion humans, down from like 8 billion humans, 21.5 billion chicken, and 4.5 billion livestock, but our question always remains: What do we choose to save? How do we save it?
We also trap ourselves into believing that these question require consensus, but in really almost everything major happen unilaterally, including corruption and deception like trade treaties, and very little happens by global consensus. Ain't only super powers who can act unilaterally either.. India or Pakistan could make the whole world spend 10x more for fuel if they chose to do so, not without consequences of course, but they do have this power.
I firmly believe someone shall start making those hard unilateral choices eventually, which then saves humanity from extinction, but yeah tropical countries who'll become uninhabitable first should probably start doing so now-ish.
We all need to talk to officers in our respective nations' militaries about climate change and other planetary boundaries.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:29 PM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
I do feel "black pilled" for a bit whenever I've discovered some cute climate solution is fiction, but then I accept what I cannot change, develop hope for other solutions I initially liked less, and move on to doing what I can within my skill set.
As we head towards +4°C we'll cut carrying capacity to under 1 billion humans, down from like 8 billion humans, 21.5 billion chicken, and 4.5 billion livestock, but our question always remains: What do we choose to save? How do we save it?
We also trap ourselves into believing that these question require consensus, but in really almost everything major happen unilaterally, including corruption and deception like trade treaties, and very little happens by global consensus. Ain't only super powers who can act unilaterally either.. India or Pakistan could make the whole world spend 10x more for fuel if they chose to do so, not without consequences of course, but they do have this power.
I firmly believe someone shall start making those hard unilateral choices eventually, which then saves humanity from extinction, but yeah tropical countries who'll become uninhabitable first should probably start doing so now-ish.
We all need to talk to officers in our respective nations' militaries about climate change and other planetary boundaries.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:29 PM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
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