We think we know what it takes to shift our external reality to ‘solve’ the climate crisis, but what about the critical internal shift we have all been procrastinating?

Katie MacDonald
Aug 9, 2017 · 5 min read

Something or someone else will save us…

When many of us think about ‘solving climate change’ we visualize the discovery of breakthrough technology that once deployed en masse, will address the climate crisis, shift our relationship with energy and enable us to sit back in smug old age and congratulate ourselves. Phew, that was a close one! Whether it’s the belief that cheap and abundant clean energy infrastructure will save us, or that we will produce the conditions necessary to enable technology innovation at breakneck speed for carbon sequestration, etc. it’s likely that neither of these solutions alone will be enough.

This is not to say clean energy and breakthrough technology will not be a crucial piece of this puzzle, they will be. It is to say that it seems we have convinced ourselves that solving climate change will not require us to radically change our current relationship with ourselves and each other.

Join the (human) club

We know why the climate is warming. We are dumping reams of CO2 and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as byproducts of our industrialized lifestyles and we can’t stop. Since the common denominator of all emitters is our shared humanity, let’s talk about what is driving this bad behavior from an evolutionary perspective so we can understand ourselves enough to solve the source of the problem.

Unaddressed Fear

Death and suffering are inextricable to every human life and have been since the dawn of man. They are the things most of us fear and want to escape most. As Karl Albrecht Phd.’s article in Psychology Today highlights, there is a ‘Feararchy’ or hierarchy of fears every human experiences to some degree during a lifetime. At #1? ‘Extinction — the fear of annihilation, of ceasing to exist’.

Fully accepting the inevitability of our own deaths as humans is not easy (understatement of the century). Even harder? accepting that if radical action isn’t taken on the climate crisis, our species will go extinct or cease to exist forever. This is likely the hardest concept any human could be asked to grasp and accept.

In the Western world, in particular the United States, instead of being taught radical acceptance of the impermanence of human life and the inevitability of suffering as a part of the human condition (as Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies teach), children are taught to fear death and obstruct personal suffering through any means necessary (especially through self — distraction, entertainment, material consumption and denial of the suffering of others).

The ‘Hedonist Treadmill’

Many experts, like Robert Wright believe that we have evolved to be insatiable in our search for pleasure. In his new book,‘Why Buddhism is True’, Wright posits “We are condemned to always want things to be a little different, always want a little more,” “We’re not designed by natural selection to be happy.”.

In an interview with NPR, Wright describes our unquenchable desire for satisfaction and pleasure as a ‘hedonist treadmill’ set in place by natural selection to keep us striving to survive. While this treadmill may have been useful during the first epoch of human life, it is now a source of confusion, sending us messages about what we might like to have in the Pleistocene as we live out our lives in the Anthropocene. We can attribute this treadmill to the acceleration and intensification of modern day consumerism as we strive for more, faster, now.

The Feedback Loop

So what is the connection between these evolutionary tendencies and climate change?

The Feedback Loop of Unaddressed Fear (FLUF)

As our fear grows, so does our instinct to suppress and assuage it. This leads to bolder patterns of overconsumption related to our hedonist tendencies which yield intensified external outcomes. These intensified outcomes in the form of climate change (and it’s ugly effects) intensify our fear which drives the whole system to the next extreme. Imagine our inability to address fear now vs. when most of the planet is uninhabitable to human life and fisheries have collapsed, etc.

To stop climate change, and empower ourselves and others for the long haul, we will need to find an anecdote to the evolutionary levers that are keeping us in this toxic holding pattern.

Our work

There are many practices available to us as we seek to transform the realities of ourselves and those around us. One of these practices, meditation, has empirically proven benefits that can be weapons against fear and inaction. Here is a short list of proven benefits (from the American Psychological Association):

  • Stress reduction
  • Focus
  • Relationship Satisfaction
  • Empathy
  • Compassion

Imaging a world where we were ready to face our fears, face each other and face climate change with these tools at the ready? Changing ourselves will not be easy, but it will be necessary if we desire to not only halt the climate feedback loop, but create a lifestyle and society we are happy to be a part of. Let’s go do the work!

Photographer & Turtle Unknown

For other resources, see below and stay posted for more ❤

Eckhart Tolle — ‘A Pragmatic Guide to The Power of Now’ (4min video)

Eckhart Tolle — ‘The Power of Now’ (book)

Tich Nhat Hanh — Be a Home for Yourself (20min video)

Pema Chodron — The Wisdom of No Escape (book)

‘This book is about saying yes to life in all its manifestations — embracing the potent mixture of joy, suffering, brilliance, and confusion that characterizes the human experience. Pema Chödrön shows us the profound value of our situation of “no escape” from the ups and downs of life.’

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