Do not despair, my friend! We constantly hear all the bad news, because that makes people tune in to TV news and podcasts and the like. But there is much good going on in the world, and you get to be a part of that! I am a lover of wildlife and, some 20 years ago I bought an acre of land in a suburban environment and set about educating myself on the wildlife I might be able to attract. I learned about the association between wildlife and native plants, and determined to plant as many natives as I could. That began a whole new love affair with native plants. At the time I started, it was difficult to find native plants in the nursery trade. Today, I know of at least a half dozen native plant nurseries here in Oklahoma. And now there is a national organization (Home grown National Park) which promotes the growing of native plants on private property to support our wildlife. I continue to plant my little acre in natives and watch the wildlife come. This is one small thing I can do for our planet and our wildlife. I think the world is changing - and for the better. Are there still problems? Yep - lots of 'em. But never give up; you CAN make a difference for the planet and for the wildlife. Thank you!
humankindness, patience, and friendship are human needs too. depression kills. community strengthens.
I was reminded of this the other day. Finding others concerned about the same things opens up possibilities to take action more effectively. Perhaps more importantly, it also makes us feel less alone and this makes it easier to continue when hope is difficult to find.
Around 8 years ago (a time when voters in several countries apparently lost their collective minds), I found comfort in the writings of Rebecca Solnitâspecifically her book Hope in the Dark. It may be time for me to reread it. One of the points she makes is that progress isnât something we achieve and then it is done and finished; it is a continual process that we have to keep working for. In this context, hope isnât about a belief that everything will turn out OK; it is an attitude that allows us to take action.
The contributions on this website (collected by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua) grapple with the question of hope specifically in relation to climate change: https://www.nottoolateclimate.com/
(Goes back to quietly mourning the outcome of an election I was able to vote in, and worrying about one even closer to my everyday life that I will not be able to vote in.)
I waited a day before replying to mke sure that I didnât say something I would regret. I know Astra means well. But I also know what it feels like when the help being offered is not the help that I need. I have written about that at some length elsewhere, but Iâm not going to link it here because it isnât about the thread topic. Instead, here is a comic.
The source of that comic captioned it as follows:
Changing your individual lifestyle will not solve the environmental crisis, it will only make you feel superior.
Only collective organizing on a mass scale can stop and hopefully reverse the environmental crisis. And every second one spends âshopping greenâ is another second closer to catastrophe.
This gives us some perspective on Diegoâs lament:
Ah, but what if that whole town went carbon neutral, or better yet carbon negative? Collectively, they could offset the billionaire. In some ways, it seems like the counter narrative â âChanging your individual lifestyle will not solve the environmental crisisâ â only flies because we think of ourselves as acting in isolation. Yes, any one of us in isolation will not be able to make a difference in global carbon emissions. But are we in isolation? In 2019, when images of Greta Thunberg were all over social media, there were references to âan army of Gretasâ â meaning all of us.
Instead of feeling hopeless because we canât change the behavior of billionaires, what if we thought in terms of what it would take to offset them? They are few and we are many.
Iâm not having kids because I canât in good conscience add another human life to the mass of humanity thatâs destroying the planet right now. Every time I look at satellite imagery, thereâs less and less natural land. My city has degenerated into row upon row of âdense, vibrant communityâ apartment complexes, with nowhere beautiful left to live. Iâm honestly in despair about it. I canât imagine it will get better. I used to have hope for the future, but after having my hopes dashed so many times, I think the best thing I can do is just not contribute to the problem.
When @wildwestnature posted that poem, I wrote it out onto a small piece of paper and put it where my eye falls to it often because it speaks to me on fears for the earth and I found reading it helpful.
I do not know what the answer to climate change is, but I do know that more people are thoughtful and considerate on a daily and ongoing basis than were when I was young. The ideas of hesitating before jumping on planes because of environmental impact or consolidating errands to minimize car use or considering how far your food had traveled did not even exist. I understand how for young people the situation might seem hopeless but for me, these seem harbingers of hope.
I do not subscribe to the âit makes no difference because I am only one personâ school of thought but rather to the âhow do you eat an elephant? one bite at a time,â so please do not be disabused that small steps are still steps. Sometimes just taking them and showing one can do so is enough to act as a model for others to want to replicate.
Also a GINK.
Some of my hopes rest with other peopleâs children - who are active in nature conservation. Some active on iNat, some on FB.
OP, your individuals actions will not make a unique global difference, but how would you feel about yourself if you gave up and contributed to the problems?
Every day we wake up and make a choice, you can say regardless âI will not be a part of thisâ, and do your best to do well. We can do nothing more individually, but we can know that we are right. Collectively we can vote, do local actions, but every day we can do the right thing, be Sisyphus.
Sincerely, a 30 year softy vegetarian weirdo : )
I know, weâre not supposed to talk about politics here, but I feel like this whole issue has been somehow turned into a political one in the last few years, so I wonât even try to avoid it.
I would like to adopt this view. But itâs not just the billionaires we need to account for. In the US, more or less 50% of all voters voted for Trump and his people who largely are downplaying or outright denying climate change and want to âdrill, baby, drillâ.
According to a poll by pewreasearch (idk how reputable they are), only 46% of Americans believe climate change is real and manmade. Only 37% believe it should be a top priority. (source)
In Germany, about 20% ± 1% would vote for the AfD in the coming federal elections according to polls. They have a similar view on the matter. And the entire landscape is party politics anyway. Potentially unpopular, but necessary (or at least beneficial) laws are handled like hot potatoes, and at best passed in very diluted form and not seldomly âauf freiwilliger Basisâ (voluntarily), meaning not at all.
And then we have all the NIMBY-ers who might be all for stricter climate-policies, but only so long as it doesnât affect them in any way.
âThe Westâ is seemingly not willing to make the necessary sacrifices and contribute their fair share. The economy is still operating on the cancer-cell logic of unlimited growth, and is chasing short-term profits. Techbros are still inventing worse trains everyday, while being vehemently opposed to actual trains because communism or something? And as more countries get more industrialised, more greenhouse gasses get emitted there too, and we in âThe Westâ really have no right at all to tell them to stop. At least without great compensations, which we are also not willing to pay forâŠ
Thatâs why I feel hopeless. Not because of some megalomaniac desperately trying to waste resources on some Mars mission. It doesnât prevent me from doing my part, but it does feel a lot like the cartoon you posted. At this point, Iâm mainly doing it because there is little I hate more than feeling like a hypocrite and acting against my beliefsâŠ
Thanks for bringing up this poem. It is one of my favourites.
Relatedly, and as others have mentioned, I think itâs helpful to go outside and experience the nature in your neighbourhood and bring things down to a personal scale. You can do something for the biodiversity in your neighbourhood, even if itâs just giving it attention that it wouldnât have gotten otherwise. And as weâve learned from iNaturalist, giving a bit of attention to your local ecosystem can have all kinds of unexpected positive results.
The comparison between nuclear anxiety and climate anxiety reminded me of this essay which also compares the two, and cites another wonderful Wendell Berry poem: Nuclear Man and Climate Woman
I find poetry very helpful for reorienting myself when I get caught up in catastrophizing about the future, and a while back I collected a handful of my favourite poems about anxiety, despair, and nature here.
A side-note: In the article you mentioned, I noticed they said âHere in our South London micro-community we have no sequoiasâ which brought to mind another article I read last year âGiant redwoods: Worldâs largest trees âthriving in UKââ.
Regarding the overall topic, I appreciate whatâs been posted by others here and think we need to do as much as we can of all of the above. You, @jme, are already doing such an important thing by studying and preparing for a career as an ecologist - thatâs fabulous! You are definitely not alone in your concerns, look at your classmates and teachers, in addition to your fellow iNaturalists. There are times we need to comfort ourselves to regain strength, and we also need to use our discomfort to make necessary changes.
Interesting article about climate change and why doomerism isnât helpful or accurate. As for solutions, I strongly believe switching to nuclear energy is the best practical way to reduce carbon emissions (rich people refraining from flying around the world in massive private jets to preach at us about how we should ride our bike to work and stop eating meat might help too, but thatâs too much to ask)
Peaceful global revolution: thereâs a solution.
^ That is essentially biomimicry: earth has been in continuous peaceful revolution for 4+billion years.
Right where you are now, wherever you are, you are already part of and participant in a peaceful global revolution.
Thousands of starfish washed ashore. Man walking the beach comes across a kid tossing them, one by one, back into the water.
Man says, that doesnât make difference.
Boys says, as he tosses another starfish back into the ocean,
âIt makes a difference to this one.â
âThatâs why I feel hopeless.â
Letting Go of Hope â Pema Chodron
https://thedewdrop.org/2019/08/26/letting-go-of-hope-pema-chodron/
"âŠAs long as weâre addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot.
The word in Tibetan for hope is rewa; the word for fear is dokpa. More commonly, the word re-dok is used, which combines the two. Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as thereâs one, thereâs always the other. This re-dok is the root of our pain. In the world of hope and fear, we always have to change the channel, change the temperature, change the music, because something is getting uneasy, something is getting restless, something is beginning to hurt, and we keep looking for alternatives.
In a nontheistic state of mind, abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning. You could even put âAbandon hopeâ on your refrigerator door instead of more conventional aspirations like âEvery day in every way Iâm getting better and better.ââŠ"
Fast forward to this February
Ian Toal is no longer with us. I miss his positive and kind voice.
I donât feel anxiety about climate change as much as I feel anxiety about habitat loss and the loss of species. Everyoneâs always talking about climate change and I feel that gets all the attention, when the real problem is the daily loss of wild nature for agriculture and building, and the extinction of all kinds of organisms as a result.
This is the situation in my country, the Netherlands:
Because of global temperatures rising, the winters get warmer and the weather gets more extreme in general: more heavy rainfall in short periods and longer warm dry periods. But every year we also get new species that are migrating from southern Europe and couldnât survive our winters before.
However, our small country is full of people and our soil is fertile. That means 20% of the entire surface is built-up, and another 45% of the surface is used for agriculture, of which about 70-80% is meant for export, so not even for our own people. Only about 15% of the surface is nature, and these areas are all heavily manipulated by humans as well.
So, here we have two huge problems:
- An incredible loss of wild nature in the past century, meaning many species are restricted to very small areas, which are too small for viable populations and which are surrounded by farmland, so populations in different areas canât interact with each other.
- The huge numbers of livestock produce incredible amounts of nitrogen, which gets deposited everywhere, including in the small nature areas, causing many plants to die off, and insects that depend on those plants to disappear.
The result is that we have lost about 70% of our insects in my lifetime (30 years) and our nature areas have little to no flowers left. We see insect species disappear completely from the country all the time. And this is all definitely not because of climate change.
I generally agree with you. We are currently facing a bunch of environmental crises at the same time, not just the biodiversity crisis or the climate crisis.
The issue is, that they compound and are far more potent than any one in isolation. For example, climate change would be less bad if we had healthy and biodiverse ecosystems, which in general are more resilient. On the flip side, the biodiversity crisis may have been slightly less catastrophic if climate change wasnât an additional burden organisms had to deal with.
Perhaps approaching all these issues from a species and habitat conservation angle rather than the climate change one will be more successful, though, as more people can sympathise.
- For one, biodiversity conservation is something every country can do independently. If a country invested heavily in re-naturalisation (even if no one else does) then that country will have a nicer nature in a few years time.
- For another, we may even be able to âexploitâ patriotism in a sense, something like: âlove of your environment = love of your countryâ. If nature becomes a symbol for the greatness of a country, something to be proud of, then Iâm willing to bet many more people would support and maybe even participate in environmental protection.
- thirdly, climate change is a rather abstract issue. Protecting the âcrowd favouritesâ and the animals you can see in your backyard and have grown up with is something far more tangible than preventing an invisible thing to get warmer a couple of degrees on average
Over time, these would add up. If every country started protecting their environment independently from one another, then by the end of it, weâd still be farther regarding climate protection, pollution, etc. then we are now. And maybe farther than if we relied on global contracts, which are technically a good thing, but in reality never get fulfilled because the first one to make a move will always be slightly worse off (short term at least) than those who wait a bit more.
Perhaps we are not yet ready for large scale global cooperation, as much as I had hoped otherwise.
Itâs best not to get into political debates here, but the fact is that this expected reduction in funding for studying weather and climate is currently causing anxiety for many people: NPR: Trump officials signal potential changes at NOAA, the weather and climate agency.