I’ll keep this short and sweet. Some random guy on the internet compiled together and summarized a bunch of climate research papers analyzing global trends and a bunch of different slow actors that are all going to kick in soon like the permafrost in Russia or the polar ice caps etc.
While I have not yet gone through the sources the author links and quotes extensively, this still has me extremely worried and I think that unless society somehow drastically changes and devotes a significant effort in doing something about it, we’re all going to die within half a century.
I’m sorry for bringing doomerism into a safe space like Beehaw, but I’m scared and I can’t sleep.
Also I’m not going to link the document in question because the author goes on a rant about billionaires and greed, and while I haven’t decided whether or not I agree I’m not sure the tone fits the community.
Sorry again and have a good one !
Hey OP. Kudos on acknowledging your feelings and expressing them ;)
TL;DR: your reaction makes a lot of sense, don’t stay alone with this, lots of empathy
Where I speak from : I’m a white and socially cisgendered male, 35 yo, living in France. I had the chance to go to university and to have several educations.
I have been a climate change and biodiversity collapse educator and activist for 3 years, and I’m currently struggling with crippling adhd, depression and anxiety after a rough burn out.
I try to base my opinion on the IPCC reports which I regard as the best science consensus provider on climate-related matters (more on the IPCC at the end of the post).
In my opinion, being terrified by climate change is a very appropriate emotionnal response.
What scientists say about the amount of suffering climate change already inflicts to hundreds of thousand is hard to fathom, and imagination fails to grasp how much worse it’s going to get in the coming decades.
To my understanding, humanity as a species is not under threat, and we will not all die in 50 years. But a huge amount of people already suffer and die from climate change and it’s going to get much much worse. As usual, the less privileged you are (and the less you contribute to climate change), the worse you have it.
CO2 emissions keep going up when scientist agree that they should be cut in half by 2030 and divided by 3 or 4 by 2050.
The IPBES (same as IPCC but for biodiversity) current analysis reinforces the “we’re in deep shit and we’re diving faster and faster” feeling.
And while individual action is absolutely necessary, it is by large insufficient without structural collective change.
I also feel terrorized. And so angry. And more sad than I’ll ever by able to express. And so fucking frustrated.
I found that sense of community is what keeps me going. I met some great people in environmental ngos, and getting together to do something about it is a great feeling. Having a drink together and ranting about how hard it is to witness our collective failure makes is really not as bad as doing it bu myself. And crying among friends feels a lot better than crying alone, for me.
So I wish for you to find people around you who understand the world in the same way you do, who care as much as you do. I wish for you to find safe spaces in which you can stop pretending it’s ok, in which you don’t need to explain yourself, to have a debate about whether or not climate change is a big deal, in which you can let your emotions flow. I wish for you to find meaning, belonging and even happiness in action.
Take good care of yourself, the wolrd needs you in good shape !
Btw, compiling and summarizing together papers about the mechanism and impact of climate change is exactly the job of the IPCC. They take in account thousands of papers from all the fields related to climate change, write a draft an publish it, wait for questions/criticism/corrections to be sent by all the scientists who want to contribute (for several months) and then they correct their draft and publish the final version. I recommand reading at least the key points of the “Summary for policymakers” of the 6th assessment report..
Friendly reminder: If you aren’t fighting conservatism, you aren’t fighting climate change.
We can still mitigate the effects of manmade global warming if we act right away. Unfortunately, conservatives (including neo-liberals) are hell-bent on preventing effective action from being taken. They are paid by corporations to protect corporate interests, even when it will result in billions of deaths.
If we can somehow marginalize and defeat conservatives in the U.S., we might be able to influence other nations to follow along in making large-scale changes. Fighting conservatism is how you can fight climate change.
Not sure if this helps at all, but you’re not alone: I feel a sense of dread every time I find myself holding an empty plastic container.
It might feel like you’re sticking your head in the sand, but what I do – and what I suggest for people suffering from climate anxiety – is actively avoid reading reports like that. Sure, they’re informative (and it’s important to stay informed), but at the end of the day it’s not worth your mental health.
If there’s one thing we know about the problem of climate change at this point (despite what massive corporate contributors have tried to tell us) it’s that you as an individual cannot fix it and you did not contribute very much to it. Plus: you already know it’s bad. Those statistics are meant for people whose minds and behavior will be changed by them.
Instead of reading reports that are informative (but unhelpful), spend time researching who to vote for, how to get involved with organizations who are making change, and which companies are truly focused on sustainability so you can vote with your money.
Climate change is an unfortunate reality and you’ll never feel good about it, but you can feel better if you’re focusing on what you can change.
Thank you for the advice. I was planning on getting more informed on the topic so as to be able to talk to others about it better, because right now I think it would come across as incohesive rambling.
As to the part about me as an individual not being able to fix anything, while on one hand that is true and I already do what I can personally, the one thing I can try to do is to get more people involved because it feels like we’re a train hurtling towards a cliff and two people on board even know where we’re heading.
To be honest I am quite young and now it feels like most of the meaning in my life is ruined, and I don’t think I can go back to how I was before. My plan for now is making trying my best to avert what’s coming my life quest, but I don’t know how that will make me.
I’m sorry for ranting but I guess I am quite emontionally distressed now, which is kind of the first time this happens to me and I don’t know how to process it.
Thanks for your time and sorry again!
Hey, no need to apologize! This is something I’ve had a tough time with for a while, so it’s also helpful for me to articulate some of my thoughts to someone else.
As far as getting other people interested: that’s a fantastic reason to spend time learning about a topic! Good on you for taking an educational stance on something so important.
The fact that you’re new to this information about climate change does change (slightly) what I was saying previously: I’m in my 30s and I’ve been reading report after report for over a decade and only recently decided to avoid them.
The fact that you’re new to this is challenging because it’s important for you to learn about climate change, but it’s not exactly a topic that inspires hope. I’m not sure which specific report you’re referring to, but you do need to remember that there are a lot of reports out there that are really overblown and sensationalized.
Climate change is definitely a threat, but environmental science is also ridiculously complicated. It’s easy for people with little understanding of a topic to make commentary on it (and sound convincing because they’re using technical terminology!) But they may not be qualified to make the claims they’re making.
As you educate yourself, I’d stick to intro-level educational resources from universities and science organizations – they tend to be less “doom and gloom,” more focused on solutions, and they avoid making over-the-top claims.
Also, remember that climate change is, well, change. And change is scary. But the fact that the future is going to be different doesn’t mean that everything is going to become terrible one day and be terrible forever until we all die in under 100 years (which as many people have said in this thread, is extremely unlikely.) The future will have good times and bad times, just like there are now. But this kind of change means that we need to adapt and be more resilient than ever: luckily, humans are excellent at adaptation.
So don’t let this report ruin your life: you’re right that you won’t be the same again after learning about climate change, but that’s normal! It’s a part of learning and growing. “Ignorance is bliss” is a phrase for a reason: it really does suck sometimes learning about the world, because not everything about the world is blissful. But now you’re going to take climate change seriously and help others do the same, and that’s a powerful thing.
So again, focus on what you can control, maybe find some less intense resources to learn from, educate your peers so they can help move things in the right direction, and take a deep breath. You’re going to be okay!
I feel a sense of dread every time I find myself holding an empty plastic container.
Niche thing to break out given the context, but the best purchase I’ve made in the past decade is a SodaStream, a couple of extra carbonating bottles and an inline water filter for the kitchen sink.
I didn’t realize how much of my aggregate shopping mass came from paying usurious prices to have water from somewhere else delivered via fossil fuel to a store so I could pick each bottle up once from the shelf, again from my cart to checkout, again to get it back in the cart, again to put it in the vehicle, again from the vehicle to the pile outside the front door, again to bring it inside for final staging, again to put it in the fridge, and finally, again, to drink it. And 99 cents for the privilege.
(It’s now two cents a litre thanks to a 10-pound tank + adapter.)
Being easier on the planet can save time, money and effort, even though it looks somehow less convenient on the surface.
How is a rant about billionaires and greed ever a thing to shy away from? The class war and it’s associated wealth inequality/endless growth mentality are essential drivers to the climate change problem that’s keeping you up at night. You can’t disconnect the two if you actually want the problem addressed.
If the bad things are going to happen, there’s little we can do to stop it, once it has been set into motion (no one person led to climate change). What we can do is control our response. We can do our best to mitigate what risks we can, and ultimately we can do our best to make the most of the situation we are in. That’s the one thing we can do as individuals to make things better for our future selves and our descendants, we can be compassionate to those around us and work to inspire our communities to do that too.
All in all, nothing tonight that you can think up will change the climate or the world’s response to it. We can worry about the future, but we only will know what the future holds as it occurs, so it doesn’t do much good to assume that the worst is necessarily going to happen. Catastrophizing sucks, and I know what you’re struggling with right now. Perhaps a counselor/therapist could help you understand and manage your anxious thoughts. You’re definitely not the first or only one to have these fears, so don’t feel bad about it. I hope some of the comments put you at ease and help you get some rest.
Many things are outside of your control. You were given life outside of your control, and you will die outside your control. Whether you die of cancer at 50 or climate change at 50, you die all the same.
We still have a moral duty to make the best choices that we can with the information that we know. A lot of the existential crisis though, I think, stems from a fear of mortality. Coming to grips with the fact that you must die sets you free to act rightly within the world.
Reminds me of that quote from Frozen. “All one can do is the next right thing”
I’ll do the opposite and make this long and bitter.
There is hope, look at restorative agriculture which sequesteres CO2 into the ground. It’s a bit more work than modern farming but the tradeoffs may outweigh the effort and it’s starting to get more popular.
I don’t have much faith in carbon capture technologies that are not placed at the concentrated outputs of emitting sources, but i want to be wrong. The worst part about them is oil companies will say ‘see, nothing to worry about’.
I think that RNG is going to be a huge factor.
First: because commercially it has a way to make money so anti environmentalists may bite off on it. B: gas stove snobs can keep their damn gas which should reduce political resistance.
III: even though you’re burning methane, at the end of the cycle you’ve pulled CO2 out of the air, created fuel, and have carbonaceous remains that can be put in the ground as fertilizer, overall carbon negative.
4 - As long as there are humans that eat food then there will be farms that grow crops, most crops have parts that we don’t eat like stalks and leaves n such, those remains can get dumped into an RNG reactor instead of decomposing into the atmosphere as methane, so even more reduction in GGs because methane is a greenhouse gas.I really think RNG can have a huge effect as long as the reactors aren’t fueled by biomass that is made by chopping down trees and milling them up. I need to find out how much biomass farm waste has…
SMR nuclear is happening, if you ignore the big oil funded green peace clowns you’ll see that nuclear is an essential base load source that is reliable and safe.
Electrification is happening, more makers are making electric vehicles, more municipalities are electrifying mass transportation, even shipping is making slow progress. Heatpumps are getting viable even in cold climates.
The grids can take it. There’s multiple parts to this story but 4 main parts and the gist is that the growth in demand is not giant leaps but in small steps for now. It is likely that some of these technologies will take on S curve uptake but even then there is plenty of room for growth. If you want i can talk your ear off about this one (I’m an electrical engineer at an electric utility).
You can make a difference, join the citizens climate lobby, they are working on legislation to tax carbon production which shoul help slow the bleeding. This will be hard to pass in the US, but squeaky wheel and all that. Help them get loud. Force politicians to either say out loud that they are against it or are for it and vote out the clowns.
There’s also the idea of spraying reflective chemicals in the upper atmosphere to reduce the amount of heat that gets in. I hope we don’t do this unless we have to because it just kicks the can down the road and corpos will say ‘see, we can stop worrying now’. BUT, it absolutely can buy us more time to save ourselves, and we have the technology to do this right now.
It may seem hopeless with all of the headlines of crossing the point of no return and spiraling out of control and what not. The ‘point of no return’ is pretty vague and each headline is talking about a different problem. Most of them are talking about the 1.5 or 2 degree temp rise. Some even talk about run away effects like thawing permafrost and undersea stuff that gets released. While that is all fucking terrible I implore you to look at the absolute worst case of run away effect. It’s bad, but it’s not Venus 2.0 bad and we can buy more time if we have to.
Last, i want to talk about defeatism. It’s not too late to stop the absolute worst. Yes, there is permanent damage and we are losing species and people are fucking dieing BUT it’s not fucking over. Republicans want you to feel defeated, they want you to think there’s nothing you can do and there is no point in trying and at the same time say climate change isn’t real. Don’t be a part of the republican message. We absolutely can make a difference, we have to make a difference, and we fucking will make a difference.
So i lied when i said ‘last’.
I felt the exact same way you did about a year ago. I was in a deep depression and i didn’t have a way to cope. The good news is a healthy brain won’t let you stay in that dark place forever and you will find a way out. If you can’t then your brain isn’t healthy and you NEED to find help.
Also, climate denialists are willfully ignorant. Don’t waste your time trying to convince the willfully ignorant of anything. They have all the information in the world at their fingertips and choose to believe what they want to believe, nothing you say is going to change them. They will regurgitate catchy talking points and half truths and give you doubt that will make you waste your time verifying what you already know. They are the loud minority, ignore them and surround yourself with sane people. Use your energy to steer those that actually do care toward useful things like citizens climate lobby.
Don’t hyperfixate on the problem, focus on solutions. I recommend Undecided with Mattl Ferrel on youtube. He’s cautiously optimistic about emerging clean technologies and each video usually makes feel more positive. When you see a viable solution, help it grow. We can do this.
edit: Matt Ferrel, not Will Ferrel, lol.
There’s also the idea of spraying reflective chemicals in the upper atmosphere to reduce the amount of heat that gets in. I hope we don’t do this unless we have to because it just kicks the can down the road and corpos will say ‘see, we can stop worrying now’.
Problem: spray a little too much, and you’ll cause an apocalypse instead of preventing one. And yeah, the corpos will demand we “spray, baby, spray” until we do unleash said apocalypse.
I used to get very anxious and stressed out about this. I started reading a book that reframed my mindset on the issue. Now I don’t get nearly as stressed or anxious as I used to.
Being stressed and anxious about the issue is coming from a mindset that we could still prevent it, and wanting to do something to “stop” it from happening.
So maybe try thinking about it like this instead:
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Humanity will not end with Climate Change. It will become different, and worse. But it will not end society.
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Animals and nature will not end with Climate Change. They will become different, and worse. But it will not end all other forms of life.
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Climate change is not something to stop. It is already here. The world you used to know is already gone. Accept that you live in a different world, and that’s ok.
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Mitigation is still a good thing, we should still be actively trying to mitigate what we can. But it won’t make things the way they used to be.
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Start preparing and planning your life around these changes. It will help you feel more empowered, and help you accept our new reality.
My recommendation is to read “How to Prepare for Climate Change: A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos”. Reading that book in some ways felt like going through the five stages of grief. But in the end I felt like I came out feeling healthier, and more capable of helping mitigation efforts because I didn’t feel paralyzed by fear anymore.
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If you’ve never considered therapy, here is a sign to talk to somebody professionally. In my experience, existential dread is best discussed with building up a foundation of good mental health practices. A couple of more specific thoughts:
Every generation of humans have thought they’d be the last. We are a resourceful species.
What does the future hold? How will climate change impact our lives? It’s really unknown at this point. All the articles and science in the world is educated speculation.
There are new technologies being created but in a lot of ways the pandemic showed us that people really cannot seem to get it together. If you are passionate about the environment, there is many areas of activism and volunteering to get involved with.
Ultimately, you cannot control what happens with the climate or the future. A lot of times anxiety can come from situations we can’t control but so much of life is out of our hands. Learning to live in the moment and go with the flow is an art.
I appreciate the advice and I am considering therapy right now.
I’m unsure about returning to my previous “carpe diem”-esque lifestyle, because at the moment I am pretty convinced that disaster is coming within the decade and I’m afraid that every moment will be tainted by this fear. I also don’t know if I want to talk to other people about this, because I don’t want to push this onto them and make them feel the same way as I do now.
And yes, every generation thought they’d be the last but I do think ours is in a bit of a more dire situation. Maybe that’s just a dumb take on my part, but that’s how I feel at the moment.
Sorry for basically dumping all my yucky feelings right now but I guess it had to come out somehow and I’m not waking up my roommate at 4AM
Every generation was convinced that their fears was the real one, and all past fears were just irrational. There is no reason to think that this has changed.
It is also important to note that some past fears were arguably just as extreme if not worse than current fears. After all, a massive nuclear war was a real possibility. It never meant that people had to put everything down and just wait for death.
If you can’t stop the (possible) coming disasters, what’s the point in paralyzing yourself with fear? Do what you reasonably can to prepare, and enjoy the life that you have now while it’s here.
Things will certainly get worse, and disasters will happen in the coming decades, but the end is not right around the corner. The decline will be slow, and it’s still possible that solutions, or at least mitigations, will be found. Look for little ways to contribute something positive, and try to appreciate the moment.
Disaster IS coming within the decade. Disaster is coming this week, this summer, this year to someone, somewhere. But the thing is, disaster has always been a very common and normal part of the human experience. It doesn’t happen to everyone, everywhere, all at once. (See what I did there? ;)
When I was in high school, the chemical factory where my mother worked had an explosion that killed three people and started a fire that threatened to kill both my mom and my dad who was working at a nearby factory. For nearly a decade of my life afterward, PTSD convinced me that nothing was worth doing because it would all just end at any second anyway.
I really missed out on a large chunk of my young adult life because I was stuck in my own head about it. A lot of cognitive behavior therapy and I learned how to live in a world where disasters are part of it.
I went on to do crazy things like live on a Caribbean island for six years. That was later leveled by a Cat 5 hurricane. But all my friends and the vast majority of the general public there were fine! And five years later, life there is right back to normal.
Humans are resilient. To quote one of my favorite Crystal Method songs: There is hope.
Try therapy. It’s great.
Thank you for verbalising this, I’ve been feeling similarly. Like you I try to go back to the sources and read them often finding that the danger is being sensationalised by the media. Recently though I’ve seen a few papers where the findings have been much worse than is being reported and that worries me very much. I’m mostly able to only worry about things I have control over as others have suggested but the oncoming climate crisis is so encompassing and existential that I’m finding it hard to temper my worries.
I don’t have a lot of words because I’m in the same boat, but I’m really sorry that you’re having to go through this. :-(
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A lot of people want you to be fearful. Fearful people make for very avid readers and sharers of media. Fearful people spend a lot of their precious time convincing other people to be fearful. Fearful people often don’t make the most rational decisions.
I’m not downplaying the problem or saying climate change is some sort of fairy story, but I am saying that it is almost impossible to have a 100% impartial birds-eye-view of what is a tremendously complex problem, especially if you just ingest whatever random media crosses your door.
There is no point beyond which the entire game is lost and we should just lie down and rot. Things can always get better, and things can always get worse. So act, get involved in local action and put pressure on government to make the right calls. Act with the hope of a better future in your heart, and save the despair for when the end is known beyond all doubt. It’s just another day at the office.
I also think it’s important to have hope for technological advancements. Carbon capture technology exists and is improving rapidly. We need to get to net zero, of course, but we can also go negative and cool the planet to pre-industrial levels.
The world is changing rapidly, both for the worse and for the better.
Yes, there is going to be a mass extinction event. But mass extinctions have happened before and biodiversity recovered. We also have technology to save species and reintroduce them later, too. A hundred years from now, when CO2 is back under control, who knows; maybe we’ll be able to “print” extinct species’ zygotes from saved DNA code.
The problem with carbon capture is that yes it exists, but is not nearly close to good enough for our needs. Add to that the fact that we physically do not have enough materials on Earth to implement it on the scale required and that becomes a tough pill to swallow.
I’m hopeful that some farming techniques may be promising and that not everyone’s going to die, but relying on technology that doesn’t really work yet seems foolish.
At any rate I’m not gonna sit around and twiddle my thumbs, I’m probably going to become an activist this summer instead and see where that takes me
Well put. My personal litmus test for any piece of media is this: if it makes you scared, angry, or horny, your red flags should be raised. It’s likely that the article/video/whatever is trying to manipulate you. The fact that OP mentioned a political rant tells me the video might be using climate change as a tool to make people angry in a political direction. Acknowledging this doesn’t take anything away from legitimate political criticism or climate research. But anger and fear are tools to bypass your reason.
Someone linked this to me a while ago cause I expressed climate despair: https://thecarbonalmanac.org/
I then found it to download for free from the zlibrary (I can‘t afford it ok), and so far it‘s good, it gives a more action focused perspective and is more optimistic than I would be.
So far it made me rethink my liberal use of cow products, while I struggle with even approaching a vegan diet, the “stop feeding into demand for cows” is a bit easier for me, I already didn‘t buy the meat for a long time and now I finally switched to an almond milk too and it‘s alright.
I also did switch my search engine to Ecosia to plant trees, it‘s not much, but maybe it helps. Works alright so far.
I’d say don’t let fear control you.
When fear gets too out of hand it becomes a problem; However there’s a side of fear that can also prompt us to improve a situation, where we can recognize the threat which then allows us to educate, inform, act, and build a better world.
There will be a lot of challenges to face, especially considering the limits to change based on how rampant wealth inequality is, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to feel frozen and shocked at not being able to instigate positive change.
