Mass Extinction

I'll get back to my posts on progress, but I have to interject this, to get it off my chest, and also to try to catalogue exactly what I'm feeling when I read bad climate news.

Yesterday, I fell over this article.

Actually, I didn't even have to read the article, I just caught the article name on a post by someone over on Twitter. That was enough. I've read enough over the last few years to know that I didn't need to read this.

So what happens when I see an article like that? Or rather, just the title? I go cold. I just re-read it now, and read the article in its entirety, and seriously, I can feel the blood drain from my face. My fingers have gone a little tingly. My lips are a little numb too, come to think of it. My stomach is tied in knots. I'm nauseous.

I can hear my kids in the bath, their dad is washing them, talking to them. I want to rush in, and hug them, but I'm already really close to crying, so I don't. I don't want them to see me like this. Other times when I'm like this, when I've just read something really bad, I'm mean to them. It's not on purpose, but I just feel so stressed by the weight of it all, and by the fact that I'm responsible for them being here at all, and I fear they won't even reach adulthood before the world is literally drowned, so I snap at them, correct them, have no energy for hugs and love, it's so unfair to them.

Guilt, fear, despair. There is a little optimism, but it's such a tiny tiny sliver. I'm scared, really frightened. In some ways I wish we could all just instantly vanish from the face of the earth, not have to deal with what is coming. But life is such a gift, and a joy mostly, we owe it to ourselves to squeeze every last drop out of it, and fight of course, tooth and nail, for the right for mankind to keep living it. Undeservedly though, we've fucked up so much, and been so nonchalant about it, it's a disgrace.

After something like this, it takes me a couple of days to get back to an even keel. I'll be okay again. Until the next article rolls around.

The Climate Doesn't Do Weekends

I've been away on vacation for a week's time. I realized that while I might physically be on vacation, and away from routines, I've always got my solastalgia with me on trips.

I thought about it in Morocco on our past two trips there (by train, of course). Thought about how our beloved Essaouira will look underwater. I wonder where the inhabitants will go. Will they collectively relocate, or will they disperse individually or as families? I look at each and every person I interact with, and think about where they will be, and what their world will look like in twenty years. Will they be hungry? I try not to think these thoughts completely through, but let the endings stay open, to interpretation, to miracles, or hopefully, positive human action.

Last year, in Finland amidst absolute forest bliss, my climate fears were never far. We stayed at my friend's family cottage, 20 kilometers from the nearest country store, on an island in the middle of a large lake. My friend commented on how hot it was, and how the normally damp island earth was dry and porose. The neighbor came over one day and talked of how water was unusually warm. The nights were warmer too. The blueberry and mushroom harvest were also particularly sparce because of the heat.

Of course, some years are just different than others, they just are. But it always gets my thoughts going, and instead of enjoying a carefree holiday, I end up worrying. Studying my children and wondering how many years they'll experience the world as I've always known it before it irrevocably changes. Again, I let that thought stay just out of reach of a conclusion, god forbid.

This year in Stockholm, I couldn't help but notice how many places in the city were high above sea level. I love city living - would I be better off in the long run living there, as opposed to Copenhagen, where everything is situated at precisely sea level? In the case of sea level rise, there's an awful lot of coast to be levied in and around Copenhagen. And Sweden's got so many trees everywhere, surely a lush location like that would be a cooler place to live than tree eschewing Denmark after a few more decades of warming?

Again, I can't help but let my mind wander, even if I'm supposed to be relaxing. Climate fears do not take breaks.

I was pondering something over the weekend. Anyone within reach of a newspaper in the West knows how close we've come to complete and utter global economic collapse. However, it was the weekend. All talk was about how the markets would look upon opening Monday morning. Now, I get economics. For all intents and purposes, it's been quite a positive thing overall, adding wealth and prosperity to societies, creating jobs, giving people work and money, giving societies money to put to good use for the greater good. But it's all just a psychological sham when it gets down to the nitty gritty. An economy is only available for growth or collapse during weekday working hours. How organic and real is that? And for all we know, having a weekend break for speculation and further fear mongering can only really make that situation worse. What a construction. It's all just human behavior.

But while potential economic collapse takes breaks, climates fears - and climate change - do not.

Anatomy of a Climate Depression - Part 4, Walking the Walk-ish

After my angst of Peak Oil hit me as relayed in my last post, the crisis was pretty much complete. Having basically entertained all thoughts of how the future could play out, and carrying them out to the bitter end in my head had not really helped much, it didn't seem there was any way out of our predicaments. If I was depressed about the climate before, the looming energy crisis almost derived me of my will to live.

Don't get me wrong, I was really trying to enjoy life, despite everything. I had two sweet babies and a loving husband, what wasn't to like? But the thought of sticking around to watch the end of everything was too sad to consider. The best antidote to this feeling was to pretend everything was okay, and just go about my business. Or was it?

The fact of the matter is, once you've realized something of this magnitude, you can't go back. It's Pandora's box, it's the apple in the garden of Eden. You can pretend that you don't know what you do, but underneath it all, the worry is still there. You're merely lying to yourself. So while pretending that everything is all business as usual can dupe the outsider looking in, you can't dupe yourself.

At this point in the timeline, my husband and I had been invited to a wedding in November 2008, in the US. A good friend was marrying her best friend. We were looking forward to the nuptials and the festivities, and the kids were slated to go with us. But thoughts were swirling in my head. Flying uses an insane amount of fuel, fuel that's running out, and not only that, but the carbon emissions of just one person flying to the US and back were equal to the amount of energy it takes to power our apartment for over a year. And there were four of us in all.

How could I rationally deal with my angst of climate change and still pretend everything was business as usual? I couldn't, could I? I wrote about it on my blog as it was playing out. Reading the comment section brings back a lot of memories - the guilt of considering to forego a good friend's most important day ever, because I was a climate worrier. There was some hefty deliberation going on in my head!

It finally culminated. And not quite how you think. My husband Mikael was doing everything to convince me to attend the wedding. Good friends, see my mom and godmother while we were at it, take a train instead of flying domestic, carbon offsets etc. etc.. But then one day he came home from work, bearing a newspaper he'd been reading on the bus. He flung it on the coffee table, completely nonchalant. The headline was: Oil extracted from tar sands will bring climate change beyond the point of no return. I read the story, and my mind was made up.

To quickly surmise the tar sands subject, there are millions and millions of barrels of oil in tar sands, however, it must be ground out of the sands using machinery that requires a lot of energy to run. Using energy to extract energy = bad idea that seriously jeopardizes our habitat. However, because the quick and easy oil is running out, tar sands are next up. Go google it if you need more info. It's bad news, people.

So, how on earth could I justify increasing demand on something that would effectly ruin the habitat of my children and their children? I couldn't. My husband would be attending the wedding alone, alas. I'm not going to tell people they can't go off flying, this is my decision, about me, and only me. And as it is, I'm not living in a forest, foraging for my own food. I'm living in an oil hungry society, and I'm not ready to give up grocery shopping, hot showers and electricity yet. Seriously, for the oil left on this planet, would you rather eat or fly? Something had to go. I wrote about my decision on my blog here.

Listen, I live in Europe, I have family members living in the US. My husband loves to travel. I love to travel, for that matter! My mother was a stewardess and my father was a pilot for god's sake. I was born with jet fuel in my veins! This was not an easy or wanton decision to make. This was my personal stand to take against "Business As Usual". I'm not finished, there's still a ways to go. But it was a powerful start.

Anatomy of a Climate Depression - Part 3, It's Not Just the Climate, Stupid

My original blog, Copenhagen Follies, is proving an invaluable resource in my visits back to the start of my climate woes. I hardly ever go back and visit earlier posts, but it's a perfect timeline of the evolution of it all, and I'm actually quite impressed how well I wrote in the throes of such a huge existential crisis!

To continue, after my second son was born in July 2007, I had a complete meltdown over the climate in October of the same year. I was a sad and crying mess, friends were starting to be concerned, I started feeling more sad than happy for having put kids in the world. There was a certain ebb and flow to it, so after the initial rough patch, I learned to live with it, sometimes even forgetting it, and going happily on with my life. But it would always come back to a certain degree when I read about climate in the news.

I did start to act upon my climate fear, not only writing about it, but also being more aware of unnecessary consumerism on my part, and deciding to take a family vacation to France by train instead of plane to cut down on carbon emissions. It was a small start.

However, what I'd experienced in October of 2007 was peanuts compared with what came in March 2008.

On a regular old weekday, I'd been home with both boys, messing about in the kitchen, stirring something up, while simultaneously messing about on Google. I was searching after information about Dr. Udo's oil (healthfood store staple of different omega oils), and something about Peak Oil popped up. I started reading. Shouldn't have done that! (Well actually, I should, and I did. If you don't know about Peak Oil, you need to google it. Another good resource is The Transition Towns Movement, but please try to find a broad spectrum of resources, for balanced input)

The notion that the world was going to run out of oil wasn't new to me. I'd even bought this book at an airport bookshop (the irony) years before getting married and having my kids, which I'd dutifully read, though for some reason I didn't find it particularly alarming at the time. In trying to understand how that could be, I can only guess that I was such a product of the consumer society I was a part of that I was duped like everyone else into thinking that everything would be ok, and things would eventually be taken care of.

After reading one too many google hits on peak oil, I experienced what a can only describe as a full blown anxiety attack. I threw up. Twice. I broke out in cold sweats. I couldn't stand up. All this, with a 2 year old and a baby to take care of. Why the notion of peak oil hadn't bothered me before, but caused such a physical reaction to me then I put down to the additions of having children and climate change in my life. Feeding the world is largely an oil based activity in this day and age, stop and think how much farm equipment is run on petrol, and imagine how the world can continue agriculture on such a large scale using manual labor only. Feeding ourselves is going to be the new black, or rather an all encompassing factor, and not just a hobby or an afterthought as we order our favorite numbers from the pizzeria around the corner. And naturally, I think about how my kids are going to eat, now as in the future. Throw in climate change, and the fact that less oil will no doubt mean more coal, the real carbon sinner, and we have just about as many post-apocalyptic scenarios as there are Hollywood movies that provide them for us.

How to describe the first physical feeling that overcomes you when you realize something of this magnitude? Before the spewing, that is. It's like having a huge bass string running the length of your body, from the very top of your head to the soles of your feet. And The Hulk is plucking it. "Doing!"

I somehow managed to call my husband, between vomiting and dragging myself to the den where all I could do was turn on the tv and find something to satiate my kids for a while. The baby was hungry though, and my oldest was constantly asking me to read a book. None of which I was capable of handling alone. I told my husband to come home ASAP, and bring dinner with him. I have no recollection of what happened after, I stayed an apathetic lump on the floor the whole night.

In the morning, I remember waking him up, and in all seriousness telling him that I wanted to find a place in the country where we could live and grow our own food. What a wakeup call. All of a sudden, all that mattered was getting back to basics, taking control of our own primary needs, instead of leaving them outsourced to an unsustainable paradigm. Peak Oil will change everything the industrialized world does. But no one is taking account of that fact. Our lifestyles are still based on a finite resource as though it were infinite. And like climate change hardly figures on political agendas, peak oil hardly gets a mention. It's not a secret or anything. Since the first oil well ran dry, humans have known that oil would one day run out.

Peak Oil and Climate Change present two different sides of the same challenge. Our need for energy has tipped the natural carbon balance of our planet. So we can't address the one, without addressing the other. And the implications of both mean big changes for society as a whole. The sooner we realize that, come to terms with it, and embrace it, the less scary it can seem. I'll deal with that later on in this blog, I need to wrap up the "Anatomy" series of blog posts first.

Anatomy of a Climate Depression - Part 2

As I mentioned in my previous post, the world really woke up to the climate crisis in 2006. I was no exception. Being a parent had changed and prioritized my thinking on a number of subjects, and of course I was now a lot more interested in the future of all things, especially the future of the world my kids would be adults in. My second kid was born in 2007, and during the pregnancy, I was actually starting to doubt having children in this world at all! Luckily, as with all things, no matter what happens off in the future, it is what's going on right now that's important, and having a second bundle of absolutely scrumptious cuddly baby-love set my worries aside - for the time being.

About two or three months after Halfdan was born, and the media was gearing up to cover the climate talks in Bali, the daily paper we keep was having a bonanza of climate news, publishing alarming articles for an entire week that brought me pretty much to my knees. No doubt post-partum hormones played in, one is naturally sensitive after a family augmentation in general, but I couldn't read the paper without feeling my chest constrict, my head grow hot, and finally, sobbing. I vividly remember walking around some nearby lakes with the baby buggy, looking around, feeling quite surreal about everything, and I had to call my husband in the middle of work, a blubbering mess. He was alarmed of course, to hear his normally cool, calm and collected wife this way. He beckoned me to come to his work, where we could have lunch and talk. That was my first real emotional outburst spurred by the climate crisis.

After that, the issue was really there for good. I calmed down a bit, enjoying my maternity leave without being too sad, but I was en garde at all times for news of climate change. I even wrote a blog post about it when it happened in October of 2007, on my other blog. It sums up exactly what was going through my head at the time. I can only say, that it is more or less how I still feel about it, only now, it is worse, but in a more rational way, if that is possible.

Anatomy of a Climate Depression - Part 1

I had my first kid in 2005. Now, back then, the general public had already known about global warming and the greenhouse effect for at least 15 years. And awareness of it was growing, but the world wasn't anywhere as alarmed as they would be, just the next year. Dante was born in August of 2005, and just as he was turning a month old or so, Hurricane Katrina hit the US along the Gulf coast. All of a sudden, global warming was being connected with a real life disaster in a Western country. Natural disasters have always been taking place, flooding, droughts, wildfires, in the West as well as everywhere else. But somehow, in our little comforting consumer cocoons, we've just assumed it was the natural order of things, as it certainly can be.

But Katrina planted that first real seed of awareness, and connection between mankind's actions and the repurcussions it could have on our lives. Not a moment too soon.

In 2006, when Dante was a year, we moved into a friend's garden cottage for what we thought was a a month and a half of simple living, while our apartment in the eastern part of Copenhagen was being renovated. I recall even more awareness yet. More and more articles were appearing in the paper about climate change, experts were starting to point out the warning signs, not just in natural calamities, but also in the receding ice sheets, melting glaciers, etc.. 2006 was truly "the" year when common awareness of climate change grew from a small article in a respectable newspaper into a frontpage story. Again, not a moment too soon.

Our stay at our friend's summer cottage was prolonged, as anyone who's renovated their home before knows. September flew by, October came, it got cooler, but nothing the portable radiator and furnace couldn't handle. But there was no insulation in the cottage whatsoever, and since we had a baby with us, I jokingly thanked global warming for the Indian summer. Our apartment wasn't completely finished, but we had to move in, since no matter how hard we tried to warm the place, on Nov. 1st, when we woke up in the morning, fully clothed in our over-bundled beds, there was a layer of frost on the covers. Time to go home!

I always thought I was the environmentally aware type. Back in Texas, where I grew up, my mom and I would drive 3 miles out of our way to recycle newspapers, glass and plastic. The irony. I grew up a place where most food save beef came from another state or country. Where I had a driver's license at age 16, needing it to get to school. Going shopping would have been a daylong affair if you had to walk to and fro, and bicycling was suicide. The place I grew up was built around the car, and as unsustainable as one of the steel monsters is, it's a necessity that everyone practically takes for granted just like they do electricity. In high-school, I remember when the price of a gallon of gas shot up over 1$, 1.07$ I think it was. There was an outcry. Nevermind that gas cost, and still costs, about 4 times as much in Europe. So, recycling was about as environmentally aware as I could be. My life was provided for by a well-oiled machine, where all my parents needed was an income doing what they'd been trained to do, and everything else was bought at the cash register. I could even have an after school job so I could bow to peer pressure and buy t-shirts with the "right" band on it, or maybe the "perfect" shade of lipstick. The disconnect was complete.

I do though remember reading Newsweek in what I'll estimate was 1988. The Greenhouse Effect was the front page story. I was alarmed, as much as a 10 year old can be (though not as alarmed as when the first Gulf War started a few years after that), but the matter dissipated into the ether, and I didn't think much about it again until years later.

So, in 2006, after Katrina, after climate change had hit mainstream media again, this time for good, I started to feel the burn, so to speak. Becoming a parent had of course heightened my awareness of the world around me even more. The world didn't just have to provide for me, it had to provide for my kid too, hopefully also long after I'd be gone. I was beginning to see that there might be a slight glitch in this scenario.