Hi Britt, congrats on your fellowship! One thing for me is that I would love (white/privileged) young people to be able to understand climate change as an entry into justice. We experience so much pain at the reality of these losses and especially the prospect of future losses but it’s important to realize that we are living with communities that have survived catastrophic multi-generational losses (colonialism, slavery) and are still here. Seeing future catastrophe for ourselves and those like us can be a gateway to more deeply caring for the inter-cultural healing work that we can do right now with those who are the descendants of groups that have survived their own apocalypses and are still suffering from the neglect of a system that does not yet know how to heal ❤️ Perhaps we (white/priviledged) need to first come to terms with our own vulnerability to be able to turn toward the “other” and heal together as equals
Thank you Erin! I could not agree with you more about this. I write about this in my book too. It's a portal to fighting for all kinds of justice, and understanding the injustice all around. 100 percent, this can be built into mental health approaches too.
I'm an educator, teaching science classes to college freshmen and sophomores. I think one of the main responses received by my students after teaching them about our current crises is a general hatred for humanity. They see nothing but greed and exploitation, even when I show them ways that people across the globe are standing up and taking action. I want to be able to properly teach them how to harness these emotions and channel their anger and frustration into action. However, their anger often sinks them into a nihilistic hopelessness. I am simply their teacher, but I want to be able to help them, or steer them to proper resources that could help them. I know that the way I present these lectures plays a huge part in this, and I'm constantly searching for the best ways to communicate the crises without sending my students spiraling into doom-and-gloom. I know, however, that there will always be anger. I'm angry, too! What they do with that anger is so important.
Thanks Briana! If you haven't seen it yet, I think you'd be really interested in Sarah Jaquette Ray's book A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520343306/a-field-guide-to-climate-anxiety She is also an environmental educator and has had to learn how to navigate the misanthropic stares of students who are full of rage and hopelessness, channeling those feelings into something that sparks agency. The book has lots of great ideas and tips. But beyond that, I'm grateful that you brought this up so I can look more into it!
Congrats on the fellowship! I would consider myself a young environmental activist (23 years old and freshly graduated from college), and for me, the worst thing is knowing that the climate crisis is a solvable problem that is quickly becoming unsolvable due to the complete and utter embarrassing inaction of the older generations that hold power. Even our President-Elect, Joe Biden; who's basically our last hope for maintaining some degree of climate sanity, mind you; does not propose to go nearly far enough to reverse climate change, and is instead currently in the process of filling his administration with folks that cozy up to fossil fuel companies.
Honestly, the most likely outcome of this I can see is chaos; but the only way to avert chaos is for young people like me to work like hell to force the hands of nearly-dead people like Biden who have no personal stake in this crisis. And that's entirely unjust and unfair, and it makes me very mad, and it also makes me quite depressed, sometimes.
As a result, I think political action needs to be prioritized. First and foremost. If all we can do is help young people to individually feel better while the world is burning around them, that's woefully insufficient; we need action and we need it yesterday, and anything that doesn't prioritize swift, science-led action right now is simply not up to the challenges we're facing.
Thanks for sharing Mikayla! Your feelings are so understandable and super relatable. I agree and feel the same. A pillar of my research, and I think that of many in the field, is that this mental health innovation work can't only focus on individual soothing and support. It has to be simultaneously capacity building for action and collective change. So not about setting up a binary between personal work and collective action, but tools and frameworks that encapsulate both at the same time. Thank you for your activism and heart!
Yes, I saw that! With some of his other picks, I was worried he would choose more cabinet members with oil industry ties, so it's a relief to see that he picked qualified folks with a dedication to environmental justice to lead the EPA and DoI.
I'm a Gen Xer who's been working on climate issues (in the urban planning field) my entire career and I've seen so little progress over the last 20 years, it's so disheartening. I am extremely worried about my kids and their ability to mentally handle what's going on and what's coming. I worry they will become nihilists and not care about anything, I worry they will want to flee from society entirely and go live with a bunch of rich people hiding in the woods, I worry about them suffering from unmanageable depression and anxiety. Honestly I don't know how to help them since I struggle to manage these feelings myself; although I know I'd never want to check out and go hide on a farm in the woods, I've definitely had my nihilist moments. I find that the only thing that helps me is reminding myself that we're all just stardust, that all we can do is try to make the world better for people in whatever way we can even if it's a losing battle, and live one day at a time. As Angel (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) said, "If nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do." (Yes, I get my spiritual guidance from cult TV shows from the 90s and 00s. I did say I'm a Gen Xer.)
Thank you for this Rebecca! As a fellow Buffy fan, I love your source of spiritual guidance :)
These worries you mention are very understandable. I've interviewed a variety of people who are planning their escape to the woods, where they'll spend the rest of their days exploring permaculture and self sufficiency. I've also interviewed young people who fantasize about this but feel torn because a big part of them knows that abandoning the cities where they live - and all the people who need help there, is not the right answer. There's a productive ambivalence in a lot of young people about this, and that means there's some hope to work with them through it to end up on a path that isn't just about them, but also others (ex: https://gendread.substack.com/p/the-trick-to-helping-people-process). All this is to say, thanks very much for explaining your worries. I guess what I'm hearing from them is that it is important to look into the psychology of nihilism when considering the mental health impacts of the climate crisis on youth. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I am pretty firmly opposed to everyone who's able to do so to go hide in the woods and I find it extremely upsetting that so many people are trying to make that happen. I know people who are trying to make this happen and it's having a profoundly negative impact on our relationships. Much of this involves moving to previously untouched land, which I cannot support. I personally know people who are trying to do this and I hate it. If we all did that, we'd taken up all the land on the planet and that poses a lot of problems in and of itself. I know I've got my urban planning/city-loving bias here but I still believe density and cities should be our path forward, and that it can be done in a way that treads lightly on the earth. That way we can help everyone, too, not just the privileged few.
Anyway. I agree completely that looking into the psychology of nihilism -- which is what leads people to either abandon it all and go live in the woods, or remain in total denial and never do anything productive to make change -- is super important. There's gotta be a space in between. On a professional level, I would love to be working more to build models of eco-friendly and climate-resistant urban living. Building community is also a hugely important climate action. I do some of this now (mostly the building community aspect) but I never feel like it's enough, and of course like so many people I'm a bit stuck in the job I can get instead of the job I really want. I think that would help both my mental health and the mental health of my kids. :-)
Rebecca, I'm sorry to hear the hurt in your heart. So, when I push back it's not because I wish to discount the pain that we feel; Indeed, it is because of the pain that we feel at the thought of despoiling land, that I feel compelled to offer a different (historically and ecologically informed) perspective. The thing is, there is no such thing as "untouched" land. The vast old growth forest which once blanketed North America was thoughtfully and sustainably exploited by many Native American tribes for several centuries. The same is true of the Amazon Rainforest. These Edenic landscapes have been almost completely logged and cleared to gather resources and space on which to build, maintain and supply "energy efficient" cities and their vast populations.
Here is one possible solution: move to a piece of agriculturally-degraded land (feeding cities has entailed the poisoning and erosion of huge swaths of soil), and begin to heal the land with your hands. Healing the land, heals the healer, restoring the sacred connection enjoyed by our ancestors for millennia. Building up soil carbon helps mitigate climate change, and restore ecosystems function as well as to begin the processes of chemical filtration and ecological succession. The result: healthier food, stabler climate, and a more beautiful world. Sure, this result may take several generations' work, but it is derived from land stewardship practices with a nearly impeccable track-record of success. The same cannot be said of the colonial city state. Believing otherwise stems from a history revised by the victors, ie those who have managed to steal the land from indigenous people, ie my people--from whom I painfully stray, out of a love for the natural world which heals the heart in my chest.
Hi Britt and congratulations! I’m a psychologist in private practice, a former school psychologist and a mother of a 12-year-old. To protect and enhance young people’s well-being during the climate and ecological crisis, researchers and mental health innovators should figure out how to create the systemic and institutional changes needed to improve children’s mental health in general. What children need during the climate crisis is what they’ve always needed to be happy: stable families, adequate housing, strong communities, healthy food, access to nature, small classrooms, skilled teachers, minimal screen time, protection from consumer culture, and plenty of unstructured play. As a parent I’ve learned that meeting these essential needs naturally leads to psychologically resilient children capable of facing the realities of the climate and ecological crisis. My daughter is well-informed about the crisis and for her it’s not traumatic, it’s normal. Normal, but not acceptable. In addition to telling her the truth, one of the best decisions I’ve made as a parent is to involve my daughter in climate activism through Sunrise and Extinction Rebellion and to empower her to fight for system-level change. The systems which created the climate and ecological crisis are also responsible for the “epidemic” of mental health issues amongst children and adults. It would be a mistake for researchers and mental health innovators to focus on developing and implementing treatments and therapies to address mental health symptoms i.e., band aids. It reminds me of the educational trend of taking away recess and outdoor time and instead teaching kids mindfulness and meditation so that they can sit still and pay attention for longer in the classroom. Thanks for reading.
Hi Jennifer - such valuable input, thank you! From everything I've learned so far, I could not agree with you more. I'm working with a group of mental health professionals who are aligned with what you've written, so rather than creating bandaids, we're looking to support young people in their communities/families/inner circle while also helping them at the level of personal critical consciousness skills to work for collective change.
My identity as a microbiologist has clashed with concern for the environment, especially during the pandemic. I appreciate that many businesses encourage reusable bags (have used my own for several years) and reusable cups and do not individually wrap food but in a laboratory setting I am used to working with materials that are individually plastic-wrapped to prevent contamination. This has made me think more about how we can balance having clean (i.e. sterile) food and items sold in stores without using too much plastic.
Thanks for sharing Maria. This reminds me of when I used to be in biology labs a lot and was overwhelmed with all the single use plastics that are used for so many mundane lab protocols.
I was shocked and saddened this past summer when a young high school grad took her life due to climate despair.(https://noharm.co/lindazhang/ ) As one of very few people in my community who is fully aware and active when it comes to our ecological emergency, I felt remorse that she had not crossed my path. I have done the despair work (Joanna Macy, the work that reconnects) and working with Extinction Rebellion in NYC kept me going. I am now in contact with Linda's family and am helping them to create a foundation that will address the intersection between climate and despair. Hoping to prevent further unnecessary loss of life. The work you and others do is essential. I will do what I can to spread the world far and wide.
Oh my gosh, that is so sad. Thank you for letting me know about Linda Zhang. How tragic. Her parents have made a beautiful site to get her message across. Do you know if the New York Times ever received her note that she scheduled to them, and did anything with it? I can't seem to find it. And thank you for your support - both to Linda's family, and the message of Gen Dread.
As a grandparent of 5 ranging in age from19 to 11 I am concerned mostly about how my grandchildren can develop the knowledge and skills to survive in a world of collapsing natural and social systems. I am not refering to "survivalist" or bunker mentality paradigm. I would hope to point my grandchildren towards resilience and adaptability skills in a society that will likely change several times in their lifetimes as our environmental and social tipping points trigger feedback loops that I can hardly imagine. For me this is a challenge because their parents (my two daughters and sons-in-laws) are very much in the "business as usual" mode of just trying to make a living to support their families. This is a grandparent's dilema. I am felt the guilt and grief of my baby boomer generations sins and am doing my own work of moving beyond this. It is my hope that I can contribute in some ways to a better world for them, a better life for them than if I did nothing.
Thank you for sharing. What a piercing feeling Bill, watching your own kids not have the same concern for their own kids that you do for them. Have you tried having conversations with your daughters and their partners about their "business as usual" approaches that are not helping their kids? I'm trying to write about what it means to have these hard conversations across generational divides, and am generally curious about how this is landing for others these days.
In response to your question about how I am dealing with climate / collapse conversations. I have had individual conversations with each of our daughters (in their mid 40’s), but these conversations were focused on how their dad (me) was doing during the pandemic. I revealed to them the inner work I was doing and my general concern about their and my grandchildren’s future in a rapidly changing world. I did not dwell on scientific data and warnings, but did express my belief that collapse related events will adversely impact their children’s future. I really don’t feel like they sensed my deep grief. This is likely on me as a father not wanting to cause pain in my own adult children.
Several months after these conversations I did offer to help my youngest daughter establish a vegetable garden this spring in their backyard if she was interested. She very quickly took me up on the offer. We have been somewhat more distant this past year due to Covid pandemic precautions. It is my hope that possibly by working together on something simple like a garden, I can gently introduce in more specificity some strategies for the future that she and I can share with her children. Her children are 11, 15, and 17 years old. My other daughters children are 15 & 19. When they were younger, I introduced all five of our grandchildren to the natural world (plant & bird identification, fishing, gardening, star gazing, etc…), but I at that time I was not as collapse aware as I am now.
I want to end for now with expressing gratitude for the resources you offer on your website and newsletter.
Thanks very much for sharing Bill. The idea of working on a garden with your daughter, which then becomes a vessel for closeness and having hard conversations, is really inspiring.
Another issue that is really important relates to the ways we honour different ways of knowing in young people. We are so cognitively focused whereas our deeper body wisdom informs us of danger, trouble, imbalance but we are often taught to 'override' the body. This is a metaphor for our relationship with the Earth itself, where we have over-ridden its limits.
Hi Britt, I’m a parent and elementary school teacher, and I think that a fundamental shift in how our public schools operate presents a real opportunity for a different future. Most schools today are stuck in an old industrial model designed to teach rote facts, and social and emotional skills are taught around the edges. The rigid schedule, huge summer break, cinder locks, bullying, loud bells, big classes, and typically a lack of connection to the broader community of any given place all lead students to become trained in a failing system after 13 years of indoctrination. We can do so much better through creative, emotionally intelligent and place-based instruction, and treating children as the intelligent and important beings that they are. Thanks for the opportunity to comment.
Britt, congratulations on the Fellowship. It's exciting that someone of your intelligence and linguistic command will be working toward the amelioration of ecological collapse. Thank you. One issue that I think should be prioritized is the examination of the psycho-spiritual benefits of being connected with (ecologically rich) land, or the corresponding disease of disconnection therefrom.
Thanks for your kind words Max! Ah this is super interesting. After all, solastalgia is all about the grief that comes from severing that place based connection, so what is the flip side in terms of benefit? Rich area
Absolutely. The flip side is difficult to describe using objective terminology. It will be a challenge to convince the purveyors of global institutions to direct funding toward things that most of us, subjectively, know are of great need. And this is frustrating. It's hard to determine the ROI of "belongingness," for example haha. But there is one! To protect the planet, we may need an epistemological revolution, whereby we come to remember how to listen to the wisdom of the body, and to see the sophistication of natural ecology. This, by the way, needn't be a revolution which excludes scientific inquiry. Rather, a revolution that restores the role of grandmothers to guide and determine the focus of our inquiry. And now, I descend from my soapbox haha.
It's such a good speech to use a soapbox for though! :) I really agree with you.. It feels like much of what is happening is about going back to "the old ways" and bringing cutting edge science along to detect evidence for why these old ways are important, which the hyper-rationalist focus on 'visibility' and 'material detection' in past eras of science was not so good at asking questions about...
Hi Britt, congrats on your fellowship! One thing for me is that I would love (white/privileged) young people to be able to understand climate change as an entry into justice. We experience so much pain at the reality of these losses and especially the prospect of future losses but it’s important to realize that we are living with communities that have survived catastrophic multi-generational losses (colonialism, slavery) and are still here. Seeing future catastrophe for ourselves and those like us can be a gateway to more deeply caring for the inter-cultural healing work that we can do right now with those who are the descendants of groups that have survived their own apocalypses and are still suffering from the neglect of a system that does not yet know how to heal ❤️ Perhaps we (white/priviledged) need to first come to terms with our own vulnerability to be able to turn toward the “other” and heal together as equals
Thank you Erin! I could not agree with you more about this. I write about this in my book too. It's a portal to fighting for all kinds of justice, and understanding the injustice all around. 100 percent, this can be built into mental health approaches too.
I love this way of thinking!
I'm an educator, teaching science classes to college freshmen and sophomores. I think one of the main responses received by my students after teaching them about our current crises is a general hatred for humanity. They see nothing but greed and exploitation, even when I show them ways that people across the globe are standing up and taking action. I want to be able to properly teach them how to harness these emotions and channel their anger and frustration into action. However, their anger often sinks them into a nihilistic hopelessness. I am simply their teacher, but I want to be able to help them, or steer them to proper resources that could help them. I know that the way I present these lectures plays a huge part in this, and I'm constantly searching for the best ways to communicate the crises without sending my students spiraling into doom-and-gloom. I know, however, that there will always be anger. I'm angry, too! What they do with that anger is so important.
Thanks Briana! If you haven't seen it yet, I think you'd be really interested in Sarah Jaquette Ray's book A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520343306/a-field-guide-to-climate-anxiety She is also an environmental educator and has had to learn how to navigate the misanthropic stares of students who are full of rage and hopelessness, channeling those feelings into something that sparks agency. The book has lots of great ideas and tips. But beyond that, I'm grateful that you brought this up so I can look more into it!
Congrats on the fellowship! I would consider myself a young environmental activist (23 years old and freshly graduated from college), and for me, the worst thing is knowing that the climate crisis is a solvable problem that is quickly becoming unsolvable due to the complete and utter embarrassing inaction of the older generations that hold power. Even our President-Elect, Joe Biden; who's basically our last hope for maintaining some degree of climate sanity, mind you; does not propose to go nearly far enough to reverse climate change, and is instead currently in the process of filling his administration with folks that cozy up to fossil fuel companies.
Honestly, the most likely outcome of this I can see is chaos; but the only way to avert chaos is for young people like me to work like hell to force the hands of nearly-dead people like Biden who have no personal stake in this crisis. And that's entirely unjust and unfair, and it makes me very mad, and it also makes me quite depressed, sometimes.
As a result, I think political action needs to be prioritized. First and foremost. If all we can do is help young people to individually feel better while the world is burning around them, that's woefully insufficient; we need action and we need it yesterday, and anything that doesn't prioritize swift, science-led action right now is simply not up to the challenges we're facing.
Thanks for sharing Mikayla! Your feelings are so understandable and super relatable. I agree and feel the same. A pillar of my research, and I think that of many in the field, is that this mental health innovation work can't only focus on individual soothing and support. It has to be simultaneously capacity building for action and collective change. So not about setting up a binary between personal work and collective action, but tools and frameworks that encapsulate both at the same time. Thank you for your activism and heart!
Thank you for such a thoughtful reply 💚
:) some of the Biden news is favourable https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17122020/biden-epa-interior-secretary-deb-haaland-michael-regan-climate/
Yes, I saw that! With some of his other picks, I was worried he would choose more cabinet members with oil industry ties, so it's a relief to see that he picked qualified folks with a dedication to environmental justice to lead the EPA and DoI.
Exactly!!
I'm a Gen Xer who's been working on climate issues (in the urban planning field) my entire career and I've seen so little progress over the last 20 years, it's so disheartening. I am extremely worried about my kids and their ability to mentally handle what's going on and what's coming. I worry they will become nihilists and not care about anything, I worry they will want to flee from society entirely and go live with a bunch of rich people hiding in the woods, I worry about them suffering from unmanageable depression and anxiety. Honestly I don't know how to help them since I struggle to manage these feelings myself; although I know I'd never want to check out and go hide on a farm in the woods, I've definitely had my nihilist moments. I find that the only thing that helps me is reminding myself that we're all just stardust, that all we can do is try to make the world better for people in whatever way we can even if it's a losing battle, and live one day at a time. As Angel (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) said, "If nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do." (Yes, I get my spiritual guidance from cult TV shows from the 90s and 00s. I did say I'm a Gen Xer.)
Thank you for this Rebecca! As a fellow Buffy fan, I love your source of spiritual guidance :)
These worries you mention are very understandable. I've interviewed a variety of people who are planning their escape to the woods, where they'll spend the rest of their days exploring permaculture and self sufficiency. I've also interviewed young people who fantasize about this but feel torn because a big part of them knows that abandoning the cities where they live - and all the people who need help there, is not the right answer. There's a productive ambivalence in a lot of young people about this, and that means there's some hope to work with them through it to end up on a path that isn't just about them, but also others (ex: https://gendread.substack.com/p/the-trick-to-helping-people-process). All this is to say, thanks very much for explaining your worries. I guess what I'm hearing from them is that it is important to look into the psychology of nihilism when considering the mental health impacts of the climate crisis on youth. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I am pretty firmly opposed to everyone who's able to do so to go hide in the woods and I find it extremely upsetting that so many people are trying to make that happen. I know people who are trying to make this happen and it's having a profoundly negative impact on our relationships. Much of this involves moving to previously untouched land, which I cannot support. I personally know people who are trying to do this and I hate it. If we all did that, we'd taken up all the land on the planet and that poses a lot of problems in and of itself. I know I've got my urban planning/city-loving bias here but I still believe density and cities should be our path forward, and that it can be done in a way that treads lightly on the earth. That way we can help everyone, too, not just the privileged few.
Anyway. I agree completely that looking into the psychology of nihilism -- which is what leads people to either abandon it all and go live in the woods, or remain in total denial and never do anything productive to make change -- is super important. There's gotta be a space in between. On a professional level, I would love to be working more to build models of eco-friendly and climate-resistant urban living. Building community is also a hugely important climate action. I do some of this now (mostly the building community aspect) but I never feel like it's enough, and of course like so many people I'm a bit stuck in the job I can get instead of the job I really want. I think that would help both my mental health and the mental health of my kids. :-)
Thanks for elaborating! I will keep this in mind.
Rebecca, I'm sorry to hear the hurt in your heart. So, when I push back it's not because I wish to discount the pain that we feel; Indeed, it is because of the pain that we feel at the thought of despoiling land, that I feel compelled to offer a different (historically and ecologically informed) perspective. The thing is, there is no such thing as "untouched" land. The vast old growth forest which once blanketed North America was thoughtfully and sustainably exploited by many Native American tribes for several centuries. The same is true of the Amazon Rainforest. These Edenic landscapes have been almost completely logged and cleared to gather resources and space on which to build, maintain and supply "energy efficient" cities and their vast populations.
Here is one possible solution: move to a piece of agriculturally-degraded land (feeding cities has entailed the poisoning and erosion of huge swaths of soil), and begin to heal the land with your hands. Healing the land, heals the healer, restoring the sacred connection enjoyed by our ancestors for millennia. Building up soil carbon helps mitigate climate change, and restore ecosystems function as well as to begin the processes of chemical filtration and ecological succession. The result: healthier food, stabler climate, and a more beautiful world. Sure, this result may take several generations' work, but it is derived from land stewardship practices with a nearly impeccable track-record of success. The same cannot be said of the colonial city state. Believing otherwise stems from a history revised by the victors, ie those who have managed to steal the land from indigenous people, ie my people--from whom I painfully stray, out of a love for the natural world which heals the heart in my chest.
You make excellent points re: indigenous people! Thank you for that.
Hi Britt and congratulations! I’m a psychologist in private practice, a former school psychologist and a mother of a 12-year-old. To protect and enhance young people’s well-being during the climate and ecological crisis, researchers and mental health innovators should figure out how to create the systemic and institutional changes needed to improve children’s mental health in general. What children need during the climate crisis is what they’ve always needed to be happy: stable families, adequate housing, strong communities, healthy food, access to nature, small classrooms, skilled teachers, minimal screen time, protection from consumer culture, and plenty of unstructured play. As a parent I’ve learned that meeting these essential needs naturally leads to psychologically resilient children capable of facing the realities of the climate and ecological crisis. My daughter is well-informed about the crisis and for her it’s not traumatic, it’s normal. Normal, but not acceptable. In addition to telling her the truth, one of the best decisions I’ve made as a parent is to involve my daughter in climate activism through Sunrise and Extinction Rebellion and to empower her to fight for system-level change. The systems which created the climate and ecological crisis are also responsible for the “epidemic” of mental health issues amongst children and adults. It would be a mistake for researchers and mental health innovators to focus on developing and implementing treatments and therapies to address mental health symptoms i.e., band aids. It reminds me of the educational trend of taking away recess and outdoor time and instead teaching kids mindfulness and meditation so that they can sit still and pay attention for longer in the classroom. Thanks for reading.
Hi Jennifer - such valuable input, thank you! From everything I've learned so far, I could not agree with you more. I'm working with a group of mental health professionals who are aligned with what you've written, so rather than creating bandaids, we're looking to support young people in their communities/families/inner circle while also helping them at the level of personal critical consciousness skills to work for collective change.
My identity as a microbiologist has clashed with concern for the environment, especially during the pandemic. I appreciate that many businesses encourage reusable bags (have used my own for several years) and reusable cups and do not individually wrap food but in a laboratory setting I am used to working with materials that are individually plastic-wrapped to prevent contamination. This has made me think more about how we can balance having clean (i.e. sterile) food and items sold in stores without using too much plastic.
Thanks for sharing Maria. This reminds me of when I used to be in biology labs a lot and was overwhelmed with all the single use plastics that are used for so many mundane lab protocols.
I was shocked and saddened this past summer when a young high school grad took her life due to climate despair.(https://noharm.co/lindazhang/ ) As one of very few people in my community who is fully aware and active when it comes to our ecological emergency, I felt remorse that she had not crossed my path. I have done the despair work (Joanna Macy, the work that reconnects) and working with Extinction Rebellion in NYC kept me going. I am now in contact with Linda's family and am helping them to create a foundation that will address the intersection between climate and despair. Hoping to prevent further unnecessary loss of life. The work you and others do is essential. I will do what I can to spread the world far and wide.
Oh my gosh, that is so sad. Thank you for letting me know about Linda Zhang. How tragic. Her parents have made a beautiful site to get her message across. Do you know if the New York Times ever received her note that she scheduled to them, and did anything with it? I can't seem to find it. And thank you for your support - both to Linda's family, and the message of Gen Dread.
As a grandparent of 5 ranging in age from19 to 11 I am concerned mostly about how my grandchildren can develop the knowledge and skills to survive in a world of collapsing natural and social systems. I am not refering to "survivalist" or bunker mentality paradigm. I would hope to point my grandchildren towards resilience and adaptability skills in a society that will likely change several times in their lifetimes as our environmental and social tipping points trigger feedback loops that I can hardly imagine. For me this is a challenge because their parents (my two daughters and sons-in-laws) are very much in the "business as usual" mode of just trying to make a living to support their families. This is a grandparent's dilema. I am felt the guilt and grief of my baby boomer generations sins and am doing my own work of moving beyond this. It is my hope that I can contribute in some ways to a better world for them, a better life for them than if I did nothing.
Thank you for sharing. What a piercing feeling Bill, watching your own kids not have the same concern for their own kids that you do for them. Have you tried having conversations with your daughters and their partners about their "business as usual" approaches that are not helping their kids? I'm trying to write about what it means to have these hard conversations across generational divides, and am generally curious about how this is landing for others these days.
Britt,
In response to your question about how I am dealing with climate / collapse conversations. I have had individual conversations with each of our daughters (in their mid 40’s), but these conversations were focused on how their dad (me) was doing during the pandemic. I revealed to them the inner work I was doing and my general concern about their and my grandchildren’s future in a rapidly changing world. I did not dwell on scientific data and warnings, but did express my belief that collapse related events will adversely impact their children’s future. I really don’t feel like they sensed my deep grief. This is likely on me as a father not wanting to cause pain in my own adult children.
Several months after these conversations I did offer to help my youngest daughter establish a vegetable garden this spring in their backyard if she was interested. She very quickly took me up on the offer. We have been somewhat more distant this past year due to Covid pandemic precautions. It is my hope that possibly by working together on something simple like a garden, I can gently introduce in more specificity some strategies for the future that she and I can share with her children. Her children are 11, 15, and 17 years old. My other daughters children are 15 & 19. When they were younger, I introduced all five of our grandchildren to the natural world (plant & bird identification, fishing, gardening, star gazing, etc…), but I at that time I was not as collapse aware as I am now.
I want to end for now with expressing gratitude for the resources you offer on your website and newsletter.
Thanks very much for sharing Bill. The idea of working on a garden with your daughter, which then becomes a vessel for closeness and having hard conversations, is really inspiring.
Another issue that is really important relates to the ways we honour different ways of knowing in young people. We are so cognitively focused whereas our deeper body wisdom informs us of danger, trouble, imbalance but we are often taught to 'override' the body. This is a metaphor for our relationship with the Earth itself, where we have over-ridden its limits.
So true! Feelings and emotional knowledge is so somatic but most of us aren't very literate in that...I'll ponder how to incorporate this...
Hi Britt, I’m a parent and elementary school teacher, and I think that a fundamental shift in how our public schools operate presents a real opportunity for a different future. Most schools today are stuck in an old industrial model designed to teach rote facts, and social and emotional skills are taught around the edges. The rigid schedule, huge summer break, cinder locks, bullying, loud bells, big classes, and typically a lack of connection to the broader community of any given place all lead students to become trained in a failing system after 13 years of indoctrination. We can do so much better through creative, emotionally intelligent and place-based instruction, and treating children as the intelligent and important beings that they are. Thanks for the opportunity to comment.
Britt, congratulations on the Fellowship. It's exciting that someone of your intelligence and linguistic command will be working toward the amelioration of ecological collapse. Thank you. One issue that I think should be prioritized is the examination of the psycho-spiritual benefits of being connected with (ecologically rich) land, or the corresponding disease of disconnection therefrom.
Thanks for your kind words Max! Ah this is super interesting. After all, solastalgia is all about the grief that comes from severing that place based connection, so what is the flip side in terms of benefit? Rich area
Absolutely. The flip side is difficult to describe using objective terminology. It will be a challenge to convince the purveyors of global institutions to direct funding toward things that most of us, subjectively, know are of great need. And this is frustrating. It's hard to determine the ROI of "belongingness," for example haha. But there is one! To protect the planet, we may need an epistemological revolution, whereby we come to remember how to listen to the wisdom of the body, and to see the sophistication of natural ecology. This, by the way, needn't be a revolution which excludes scientific inquiry. Rather, a revolution that restores the role of grandmothers to guide and determine the focus of our inquiry. And now, I descend from my soapbox haha.
It's such a good speech to use a soapbox for though! :) I really agree with you.. It feels like much of what is happening is about going back to "the old ways" and bringing cutting edge science along to detect evidence for why these old ways are important, which the hyper-rationalist focus on 'visibility' and 'material detection' in past eras of science was not so good at asking questions about...