Life Without Hope

“We all sit here stranded, though we’re all doing our best to deny it.” — Bob Dylan

This is a difficult post to write. Despite everything, I have always been a congenital optimist; I have even prided myself on my ability to look unblinkingly into the vortex and still find a reason to hope. My habitual metaphor has been my ardent hope for some cultural awakening that goes viral, a self-replicating “butterfly effect” that would trigger the “spontaneous remission of the Cancer of the Earth.” But there comes a time…and for me, that time has come. Let me begin with a quote from a writer I follow on Medium named Richard Crim, who is very proficient in climate science:

The last time CO2 levels like this were seen on Earth, was three million years ago, according to the most detailed reconstruction of the Earth’s climate by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and published in Science Advances.

At that time, there were no ice sheets covering either Greenland or West Antarctica, and much of the East Antarctic ice sheet was gone. Beech forests were growing in Antarctica and temperatures were up to 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4.℃) warmer globally, at least double that at the poles, with sea levels some 20 meters (65 feet) higher than today.

This quote says it all. By raising CO2 levels to their current level, closing in on 450 ppm, we have initiated a host of irreversible, interlocking feedback loops that will dramatically accelerate the heating of the Earth, regardless of what we do to stop carbon emissions. But unlike the last time (3 million years ago), this heating will not be gradual, and hence will not enable the biota to adapt over hundreds of thousands — or millions — of years. Crim has coined the apt term “bomb time” to describe our current predicament.

Think of it this way: human time scales, compared to geological time scales, are infinitesimal — like the blink of an eye. Yet in the last 70 years — my lifetime — the CO2 level in our atmosphere has risen from roughly 300 ppm — slightly higher than the average high of 280 ppm over the previous 800,000 years (as measured in the bubbles of antarctic ice cores) — to the current, utterly unprecedented level of 420 ppm and rising steadily. When you graph my lifetime onto a geological time scale, it is the merest blip. Yet within this blip of time, the atmospheric CO2 level has shot up, almost vertically, as seen on this graph:

In short, the fossil fuel age of the last 150–200 years looks, on a geological time scale, like a brief spike in energy release that could be compared to a volcano or a meteor impact — or a bomb. This explosion of energy released into the atmosphere from the global proliferation of fossil fuels will play out inexorably in the next few decades, due to the convergent feedback effects of loss of albedo from melting ice at both poles and all mountain ranges, methane release from melting permafrost, carbon release from wildfires and logging, ocean heating and acidification (and carbon release from the calcium carbonate that builds dying coral reefs and shellfish), sea level rise, loss of (carbon-sequestering) vegetation due to prolonged drought, violent storms and floods, massive wildfires and so on. All of these destructive trends are strongly predicted to accelerate in the coming years, until the global climate reaches a new homeostasis, a new, higher set point, that is well beyond the tolerance of most of today’s biota — at least large multicellular organisms like ourselves, or the food we eat. (Bacteria and fungi will do fine, no doubt, since they reproduce and evolve far faster than we do, and can already withstand temperature extremes far beyond our own tolerance.)

When you put all these (fully validated) climate data together, the conclusion is inescapable: we are fucked, and any effort to reduce climate emissions, convert to electicity, stop eating meat, or launch vastly expensive (and energy-intensive) geoengineering schemes — will be like arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Or to cite another, perhaps more apt cliche, our goose is cooked, regardless of what we do.

So how do we live without hope? That is the question for this generation — which may well be the very last generation of humans — ever. I don’t pretend to have a satisfactory answer to this conundrum, but these thoughts may help somewhat.

First, let’s remember that the present is all there is. The future is just a mental formation, enabled by the unique gift of human language, which enables us to imagine such a thing. It does not actually exist, however, except in our minds.

I learned this lesson from a hummingbird I saw hovering and feeding on a hanging fuchsia on the shady side of our house, during the utterly unprecedented heat wave of last summer, when the temperature here in the (normally cool and pleasant) Willamette Valley rose to an ungodly 114 degrees. The hummingbird, like me, was suffering from the heat — and like me, he is doomed. But he needed to eat, to sip the lifegiving nectar of that fuchsia, and the sight of him sipping from the flowers despite the torrid heat gave me a refreshing moment of grace, of pure, timeless joy, that has stayed in my memory ever since. Having no concept of “the future,” the hummingbird was enthusiastically embracing the present moment — the delicious, life-sustaining nectar — despite the appalling temperature. We can all embrace such moments of grace as they arise: the laughter of children, the eyes of our beloved, a delightful symphony or string quartet, the rising sun over a misty lake… they are truly all that matter, impermanent though they may be.

So here are a few humble suggestions for coping with a world without hope, with no future at all.

1. Breathe, Observe, and Let Go. Cultivate a spiritual practice every day. It does not matter which brand you choose, or what you “believe;” all wisdom traditions have useful practices for facing and enduring the traumas and vicissitudes of life. The main benefit of these practices is that they help you accept that that is, to let go of wishing things were other than they are — for such longing is the source of all human vices and all human suffering. As the Dalai Lama has noted, every religious tradition emphasizes three core practices: meditation, contemplation, and prayer. Meditation is breathing; contemplation is observing; and prayer is letting go.
2. Be well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch. This is Garrison Keillor’s sign-off from his morning radio program “Writer’s Almanac,” and it is the best generic daily agenda I have ever come across — no matter what is happening in the world. Starting with yourself, take good care of your body, feelings, and mental state; then turn to your livelihood and daily tasks, and attend to them mindfully, and for the right reasons (to promote your own and everyone else’s health, competence, and resilience); finally (and most importantly) be there for those closest to you — spouse, family, friends — expanding your circle of care to include everyone you encounter, and ultimately, all living beings, including even your enemies. As William Blake once said, “Everything that lives is holy” — however impermanent.
3. Learn, Teach, Heal, and Create. No matter what happens as the momentum builds in the ongoing and accelerating collapse of our civilization and biological support system, we will be most contented and most useful to others if we organize our lives around these four standing goals: to cultivate resilience through the constant learning of new knowledge and skills; to teach what we know to others; to heal, as best we can, our own and others’ physical and emotional distress, and to take good care of the portions of our living planet entrusted to us — our own gardens, farms, and communities; and finally, to use our creative gifts in whatever ways nourish our own lives and that of others.

Hence the slogan I have put on my own self-designed bumper sticker that sums up all of the above, a succinct recipe for cultivating good health, competence, and resilience in a time of growing chaos and catastrophe: Grow Gardens, Grow Community, Grow Awareness. Each of these injunctions reciprocally supports the other two, and taken together, they offer us the best opportunity for taking care of one another, nourishing our topsoil and adapting to accelerating change, and creating a vibrant local community and economy even as the global market economy collapses all around us.