Climate Grief, and Why the Climate Crisis is at the Center of a Much Larger Societal Dilemma

In light of recent progressions in the sphere of climate change and sustainability initiatives, many have come to a distressing realization; the threat of a global climate crisis looms over us at all times, and it is inextricably intertwined with a wide array of other modern issues.

This is best explained through an example; the fishing industry, for instance, has struggled to generate profits due to a decrease in the number of fish as a result of climate change. The easiest way for business owners to circumvent this issue, then, is to pay fishermen less and force them to work under inhumane weather conditions. This however, may lead to pricey lawsuits if workers raise complaints, so they commonly hire undocumented migrants who have virtually no rights and cannot unionise, to do this work. In this case then, we can establish clearly that border control, labour rights, and climate change are not separate issues; they are all parts of the same problem. This is not an isolated instance either; it can be seen in many other areas of societal and political concern, and this knowledge can be quite upsetting.

This is climate grief - sorrow felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems, and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change. Understandably, young people are more susceptible to such feelings of anxiety; we are the ones that will be left to live with the consequences of today’s CEOs and politicians, after all. So why is it so difficult for them to sympathize with us and our fears?

The non-identity problem primarily explains that if a particular group of people are born into a damaged environment, and continue to live their lives within said environment, technically, no one is worse off than they were before. Despite the glaring transgression this situation implies, many are convinced that the net-damage is still zero. This is essentially the situation that people currently in power are constructing; future generations may never know what it is like to live in a world where the air doesn’t make you cough, where the heat doesn’t hijack your body’s ability to cool itself.

Furthermore, the category error many make when trying to identify nature and global warming with specific areas or objects is what has led many into thinking of society and nature as two separate entities, making it easier to justify the exploitation of forests, oceans, and other natural resources. Environmental philosopher Tim Morton believes that this perception of nature is inadequate in allowing people to really feel responsibility for the repercussions of their actions, so in 2008, he introduced the concept of a ‘hyperobject’; objects that you can’t see or feel, and whose vitality is massively distributed throughout space and time. If we begin to think of the climate crisis as a hyperobject that we are all living inside, perhaps we may begin to see a shift in our mindfulness regarding what we do to the environment.

Interestingly, many indigenous tribes already perceive nature in a similar way, and see themselves as being one with their land. In 2016, the Native American Standing Rock Tribe were faced with a threat to their connection with their land; Dakota Access LLC had announced that it would be rerouting the construction of an oil pipeline out of fears that it would contaminate the (predominantly white) city of Bismark’s water supply, to instead pass close by the Standing Rock Indiginous Reservation, putting them at precisely the same risk. A great volume of impassioned protests ensued, but instead of waiting to establish whether or not the construction of the pipeline would be legal, the police force almost immediately responded with violence. Similarly to what we saw with the fish example, there are a variety of different issues at work here. Police violence, Indigenous rights, and environmental concerns all play into the same problem.

Part of what makes the climate crisis so upsetting is that we know who the biggest contributors are. Curtis Morgan, CEO of Vistra Energy; Thomas Fanning, CEO of Southern company; Jack Dalrymple, the governor of North Dakota during the Standing Rock protests. Under current law, these individuals are likely never going to face any repercussions for their contributions to climate change, and that knowledge is not very encouraging.

While outright climate denial is a large part of what enables CEOs to go about running their companies without giving a second thought to their carbon emissions, there are also subtle ways in which figureheads can falsely convince their audiences of their concern for the climate crisis. Tech CEOs especially have mastered the art of putting on a facade of care for the environment, many of them utilising Moore’s Law (a fallacy that wrongly states that every 2 years, the price and size of technology halves, and the speed doubles) as a way to reassure customers that technology will soon enough solve the climate crisis, carelessly brushing off desperate calls for action.

Taking this all into account, it is understandable why many are overcome with feelings of despair, and yet a concerning number of people lack the capacity to empathize with such emotions. Take Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenager known for her impactful speeches aimed at pressuring politicians to take action to save the planet, for example. During her TED talk, she admitted to falling into depression at the age of 11 once she realised that the world was aware that the climate crisis posed a threat to our existence, but seemed unaffected enough to continue on living like before. She was later diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, and is now commonly ridiculed in the media by fully-grown adults who seem to find comfort in tearing down any who dare to question their ways of living.

It can be difficult to make productive use of such feelings of despair, but once we all recognise the interconnectedness of the plethora of social and political concerns at play in modern society, we can capitalise on the fact that we have many more allies than we may think. Once we acknowledge the tragedy of the way things are, we are offered the opportunity to construct a new way of living, rather than preserving the old one.

• Rose Salib 12F