Embracing My Climate Grief and Rage
And feeling happier for it
I have been surprised at how much happier I have been since I accepted that the future I was fighting against is really going to come true.
How does that work? “Oh, yeah, the world is going to shit. I feel so happy…” Really, Nicole? Seriously?
Well, yeah.
I tend to talk openly about how my grief around climate change was the cause of my clinical depression which affected me for 10 years. I had tried so hard, for so long, to “save the world”, to stop animals and plants and people from dying and becoming extinct, but I couldn’t do it. The 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen made me realise the truth of it and I could no longer ignore it. The grief that followed was like a dam bursting. It broke me. It still hurts all these years later.
And, in the last year, while I have travelled Australia to help with the last stages of improving my health, I have seen the impacts of climate change. It is here and now. Not sometime in the distant future. Not someone else’s problem. I have seen how Australia is going to fare in the next 50 and the next 100 years and it is not good.
Yet, my heart and my energy have lifted. I have been fired up and can talk about the future without crying or getting really angry (well, I still cry and I still rage. It just doesn’t choke me up like it used to).
What’s going on?
I realise that since I am no longer fighting so hard to prevent our “death” and have actually accepted our future for the reality that it is, I have been freed to shift my energy away from what I feared, to what is the truth (I won’t explore here how “our death” is really referring to humans and most other organisms on the planet at the moment. Life, in some form, will always continue on Earth, long after we are gone, until the sun expands and burns out).
My energies have now been freed up to focus on life here and now.
Yes, I still carry my grief and sadness. I still cry when I talk about losing the Great Barrier Reef. I still get upset when I think about the unfairness of the world my nephew and nieces and their children will grow up in; how they will curse our names for not fighting as hard as we could to give them a liveable world.
And I still get very very angry and yell at the tv when I see the stupid, stupid rhetoric of our politicians and decision-makers who are fighting so hard to maintain the status quo so they can continue to make money and power for themselves.
And yet, my joy in the world around me has returned. I smile more. I still don’t laugh as often or as freely as I used to but it’s a real pleasure feeling that spark of joy living in me again.
I have talked to a growing number of other scientists and environmental activists who have come to a similar acceptance of our future. They, too, mention feelings of a weight being lifted from their shoulders or chest, and being more at peace with our future. That does not mean they don’t get sad or angry or depressed. They do. They still have periods where it overwhelms them. But they talk about how they can move forward more easily than they used to. It is like they are no longer distracted by this burden of fear and grief.
I suspect much of our response in dragging our feet to take climate change seriously and make the changes we need stems from our collective human fear of death. There are always people who do not fear death or fear talking about it but many of us do fear it. It is considered a “taboo” topic in many societies. We have many ways of dealing with it, creating social norms about what is and is not acceptable about death, about how to embrace or ignore it in our community. We ritualise it to help understand it and to learn to accept that we are no more.
And climate change is the biggest death we have to deal with it. It is scary, huge, unfair, wrong, sad, traumatic, terrible and the end of everything. Once we are gone, there’s no coming back from that.
No wonder so many people ignore it.
And throw on top of that our inability to deal with change easily (yes, there are always some who can handle change easily, but as a group, we are not that great at it), then it’s the perfect mix for baking a Stick-Our-Head-In-The-Sand cake.
When I read about people who are at the end of their life and who have accepted their death, they talk about how they really enjoy the small moments in their life. It is almost like they are practising mindfulness by focusing on the now, and not always on the future or how much work they have to get done or how they look. Accepting that the end is near and that it is coming regardless of whether they want it or not, it seems to free them up and allows them to appreciate life fully.
That is how I feel. I know that the future I have been fighting against is now here and it is only going to get worse in the next 50–100 years (and probably beyond). Fighting against that truth is a waste of my energy. I now accept what we are going to lose, and how we are moving into uncharted territory. I want to spend my energy on what we can do, on building resilience to get through the coming changes.
My study of nature over the last 30 years has taught me that some individuals in any population do survive major upheavals (up to a point, of course. Let’s not focus on those species that have become extinct just yet. That’s for another discussion). Which means, there is a good chance that some species in our world will survive the current changes. Who knows if that will include humans but, as we haven’t been down this path before, I am going to include us in that mix anyway.
That means, I am clear about what I am doing in my life. I am fighting to create a liveable world for the kids and grandkids of my nephew and nieces, and other young people. I am fighting to build a resilient population of plants, animals, humans, ecosystems, cities, cultures, rural communities, urban systems and anything else. We are already locked in to some big changes that we can’t stop. Our complex ecosystems take time to shift and we need to ride that out. But that does not mean we can’t reduce the impact or that it will last forever. That does not mean we give up. That is completely unfair to those in front of us (and I include plants, animals and all other life forms in “those”).
I have finally accepted our future. I own it. I own my place in it and my contribution to it. I own that I am going to have to fight, even though I hate conflict. I have to stand up. It is the only fair thing to do, because if I was born today, I would want people to fight for my future and my world. I have to stand up for the voiceless and those who cannot act. Facing that truth fires me up and empowers me to face my fears, my grief and my rage, and keeps me fighting for a better future.
I am not giving up without a dam good fight. Want to join me?
