CLIMATE ANXIETY March 12th 2020.
Climate Anxiety has surfaced as
something new to be anxious about after all the recent publicity Climate Change
has received. Some people are going to therapy expressing their Climate Anxiety.
The implications of Climate Change are threatening and no one likes feeling
threatened. But we are going to have to live with it.
I get that an uncertain future due to
Climate Change (the full extent of which cannot really be foreseen) can induce
anxiety. I wonder if there is some reassurance to be had though by putting this
into a larger context. Many young people seem to feel their future is very
uncertain and maybe in jeopardy. Was it ever any different? In the 19th
century and before, you would be lucky if you lived beyond the age of 5.
Thinking back to when I was a
teenager, and the uncertainties of that time. We were in the midst of the Cold War, and under nuclear threat. I was
around at the time of the Cuba Crisis, although I do not remember much. I
remember the arms race and the proliferation of weapons, and that we could all
be annihilated. The concept of a nuclear winter emerged just to make it worse.
I wonder why people had children in those circumstances. I certainly did not
appreciate that aspect of the world that I had been brought into. A fundamental
difference in those times when I was a teenager was that a nuclear war did not
have to happen. Things did not have to escalate that far, and if they did people
could back off, as happened in the Cuba Crisis. Nobody had to press the button,
so you always had hope. Climate change is different in that it is happening and
we are some way along the road already, with something that cannot be turned
off or reversed by us, the only hope at the moment being to stop it going any
further if we do some drastic things to the way we live.
There is nothing unprecedented about
a hotter Earth. What is unprecedented is the speed with which it is happening.
We are adding Carbon at a rate which is at least 10 times faster than at any time
in Earth history. It is a 100 times faster than at any point in human history
before industrialization. And there is a third more carbon in the atmosphere
than at any time in at least the last 800,000 years. Temperatures are already
1.5°C higher. That is not evenly distributed around the world either, it is an
average. The Arctic has risen 3°C. And weather event records are being broken
regularly.
Saving Planet Earth is a concept that
I have heard quite a few times. Planet Earth though is fine. It has seen a lot
worse than this. It has seen the climate much hotter and much colder. Early in
its history the young sun produced 30% less energy than today. There is Geological
evidence that the Earth was pretty much a snow ball and frozen over at times in
its history. In time (about 500 million years) the sun will get so hot that
Earth will not be able to sustain any life ever again.
There have been extreme events in
Earth’s history where much of life has become extinct. There have been 5 major
extinctions through Geological time, each of which has been like an
evolutionary reset.
86% of all species dead 450 million years
ago
75% extinction 380 million years ago
96% extinction 255 million years ago
80% extinction 205 million years
ago
75% extinction 70 million years ago.
Apart from the last one which wiped
out the dinosaurs and was caused by an asteroid, all the others were caused by
climate change due to greenhouse gases with a much hotter Earth than today by
the order of at least 5°C.
I hate the fact that species have
become extinct and plenty are disappearing still or under threat. It saddens me
that there are so many of us consuming the Earth’s resources and producing vast
amounts of waste in the process. I envision a different way of life might be
possible for humanity with a much smaller sustainable population in a
technological world which is not based on consuming stuff. But I do not have
much hope for this vision. (I touch on population here which is really the real
source of the problem, but that still seems like a taboo subject where humanity
seems not to want to go).
So back to what I see as reassurance.
We need to accept that Earth is a dynamic system. It is not constant, and it is
not here entirely for our benefit. We have no entitlement to a Garden of Eden
whatever we do. We have no entitlement to our way of life or any way of life.
Yes we could have controlled how we live, and we still can, but whatever you think
about that, we are a product of nature, and we are a part of nature. Our
abilities and our mistakes do not change that, so even if we destroyed our
environment and ourselves it would still be a natural event, because we are a part
of nature. The Earth would merely carry on to its next phase whatever that might
be, with sufficient time left in its path through time to evolve new species.
So the Earth is alright. Reassurance is in accepting that the Earth is alright.
