Climate Trauma

Gillian Caldwell of 1Sky writes about climate trauma, something affecting people of all ages and levels of activism. She wrote it after the two part interview, the first part of which is at the top of this post.

And climate is traumatic because, for instance ...

Energy Secretary Steven Chu gave a speech at the beginning of his tenure where he said that we could see the end of agriculture in California, as Change.org climate blogger Emily Gertz wrote at the time. As Chu said at the National Clean Energy Summit, the effects of weather and resource wars could affect "hundreds of millions, to billions of people."

A lot of people's lives literally hang in the balance, waiting for Congress to do things like stand up to industry today in order to save them tomorrow. It's unnerving, to say the least, but as Caldwell writes:

... All the polls and marketing specialists tell us that people will tune us out if we shriek about the fact that the sky is falling and that people want to hear about solutions. We do see a path forward -- a way out of this mess we got ourselves into. But in our heart of hearts ,we are fearful that the powers that be in industrial America, the votes in Congress, and the ignorance or economic plight of voters all around us, will stand in our way and we may get nothing at all, or too little to late. Will we add up? ...

As she says, the unholy trinity of "depression, irritability and anger" are ultimately stumbling blocks to getting positive results and engaging the public, probably because they don't want to share this damage.

Why would you want to work on something that just makes you angry all the time? That's a good question. I hope so, anyway, I end up asking it a lot.

My answer comes down to the possible result: a good future.

I'd rather live in a world where the food was good, fresh and healthy, the weather was predictable, industries couldn't make money from wrecking the joint, and when, frankly, we could move on to more interesting problems than this collective death wish we all seem to have.

For instance, is interstellar travel at speeds pictured in movies like Star Wars or Star Trek possible, or would approaching them create so much pressure that it would turn living beings into goo? Can we terraform Mars? Can we build a space elevator? Can we get solar power beamed to us directly from the Moon or from orbit? Can we mine asteroids? Can we figure out a better way to ensure reasonable living standards for all while still rewarding initiative and invention? Can I please have my flying car, already?

But can we sit around working on these things? No, because we still haven't figured out the basic questions, like how to dig ourselves out of the mud of a mean animal existence without destroying everything we touch.

So we have to solve that problem before moving on, though I really wish we could just move on already. Which keeps me going. The dream of a Mars colony someday does rather presume our survival as an advanced species, even if it's a very winding path from here to there.

Anyway, this last video is from a 1Sky contest. Caldwell linked to it in her post, from an interview with a little girl whose parents say they don't really talk to her about global warming. She just heard all of this 'around' somewhere. Wouldn't it be great if she could forget about all this irritating crap unless she was studying history and answer a better question with her life than, "Are we facing the end of agriculture as we know it?"

Ask the Children from Barbara Lucas on Vimeo.

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