We’re drunk and we’re at the edge of the roof.
Recently, Tim sent me an email with this subject line:
Significant climate tipping points have been passed.
I opened the email to find an article about the most recent “comments and projections” by James Hansen. Hansen, you may know, is perhaps the most famous NASA climate change scientist. He’s the man who testified before Congress twenty years ago that the planet was warming and that people were the source of that warming. He’s the man who was pressured by senior officials at NASA, at the behest of the current administration, to tone down his reports about the impacts of climate change. Thankfully he seems to have resisted that pressure.
I read the article and then I read a related article by Bill McKibben. Hansen says, and McKibben underscores, that there is a critical maximum number of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to heed to prevent climatic catastrophe. That number, he says, is between 300 and 350.
In earlier years of climate change awareness experts were shooting for limits of 450 to 550 ppm, with the hope that those were realistic limits we could manage. But now Hansen is saying the number is much lower, between 300 and 350, if we want to avert catastrophe. Things are melting and weather patterns are changing much faster than anyone has predicted. So we need to get even more serious about reducing the carbon in our atmosphere. Three hundred fifty is the number, the number everyone should know, says McKibben in the Washington Post. While nothing is sure, McKibben says, “at least we are honing in on the right number.”
So, now, we are looking at the right number. That’s good. We’re on the right track. Can you guess how many ppm of CO2 are in the atmosphere now? Slightly below 350? Slightly above?
We’re at 383 parts per million and counting, well past the number Hansen suggests is critical. We are past it by a lot. We were at 325 parts per million in 1970! Um, I don’t think we can just suck all that carbon back out, ask billions of people not to have been born, tear down all of those new suburban developments, return to non-fossil-based agriculture, and innocently pretend it’s thirty years ago.
My stomach is tight. So is my chest. I tell myself to remember to breathe. While I still can.
We’re already past the number? Wait, I knew this. I’ve known this for a long time. With my head. But it took that email from Tim. It took Hansen saying it. Now my body is catching up. My gut and chest now register it.
We’re already past the number.
Carbon emissions were greater last year than ever. World population was greater than ever. Consumption was greater than ever. There has been no reversal, nor even significant trend down, in fossil fuel consumption, since An Inconvenient Truth was released in May of 2006.
In fact, according to the Energy Information Administration:
“World oil consumption is expected to rise by 1.6 million bbl/d (barrels per day) in both 2008 and 2009 compared with the estimated 1 million bbl/d increase recorded last year. The larger volume gains expected in 2008 and 2009 compared with 2007 mainly reflect higher consumption expected in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), particularly Europe, where weather factors constrained oil consumption last year.”
I’m letting all this sink in, deeper than ever. It doesn’t feel good but I’m committed to what Scott Peck wrote in The Road Less Traveled is the hallmark of mental health: dedication to the truth.
Then I get stopped. My head starts to feel kind of cottony inside. My stomach gets watery. All of this happens as I contemplate the fact that Hansen and McKibben say it’s not too late. They say: All we have to do is stop using fossil fuels.
McKibben writes:
“Does that mean we’re doomed? Not quite. Not any more than your doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high means the game is over. Much like the way your body will thin its blood if you give up cheese fries, so the Earth naturally gets rid of some of its CO2 each year. We just need to stop putting more in and, over time, the number will fall, perhaps fast enough to avert the worst damage.
That “just,” of course, hides the biggest political and economic task we’ve ever faced: weaning ourselves from coal, gas and oil. The difference between 550 and 350 is that the weaning has to happen now, and everywhere.”
Spinning, I ask myself, “What would that take, now and everywhere?”
It would take closing the highways, now and everywhere. It would take ending industrial agriculture, now and everywhere. It would mean shutting off everyone’s natural gas and oil fueled furnaces, now and everywhere.
I mean…think about it. It would mean stopping about 90% of everything because everything we have and do has fossil fuel energy embedded in it. Forget about building nuclear power plants since they have fossil fuels embedded in their construction, large amounts of it. Forget massive production of solar photovoltaics: the mining of silica has huge amounts of fossil fuels embedded in the process. There are questions about whether hybrid cars take more energy to produce and dispose of than they save. The couch I’m sitting on, this computer, the computer you are staring at. Everything most of us take for granted as part of our daily lives is currently dependent on fossil fuels. When McKibben says “now and everywhere” he’s talking about the shutdown of industrial civilization.
For the sake of the rest of the community of life, all of the endangered other species, all of the threatened ecosystems and life support systems they depend on, I’m okay with that. But who thinks that’s going to happen voluntarily?
My head spins some more. Part of me seeks retreat into denial. So I go look for more numbers.
Here are some numbers from the Energy Information Administration Excel spreadsheet for world energy use from 1980 to 2005.
Ponder these:
In 1980 world petroleum use was 63 million barrels a day.
In 2005 world petroleum use was 83.5 million barrels a day.
During the same years, natural gas consumption went from almost 53 trillion cubic feet to almost 104 trillion cubic feet per day.
Coal use went from 5 billion to almost 6.5 billion short tons per day.
I strain to get a picture in my head of how much energy stuff, just the sheer volume of matter, those numbers represent. And I sit with the fact that those are PER DAY numbers. I can’t even imagine what 104 trillion cubic feet of natural gas would look like. Per day. Day after day after day.
But Hansen and McKibben say it’s not too late. All we have to do is stop. Now and everywhere.
I mean, I agree. We have to stop.
But would it be okay if I stop tomorrow? Because I’m not quite ready. I still buy food at the co-op that I still drive to. I still get firewood delivered by a nice guy who still uses gasoline in his chain saw and delivers it in his Ford truck, which also still uses gasoline. I still sort of need my laptop. And the lamp behind my head with the compact fluorescent bulb. I still use that to read by. And to be honest I’ve never grown more than 1% of my own food. My water is pumped to my sink from a couple of hundred feet below ground into a pressured tank. Electricity that comes from a huge power grid, partially powered by coal, is used to run the pump and pressurize the tank so I can just turn on the faucet when I need it.
I’m not quite ready to stop using fossil fuels. Could I wait a day or two while I prepare?
I think the truth, as Daniel Quinn told us when we interviewed him for What A Way To Go, is this: there is a secret plan in place. I t’s a secret plan that we don’t talk about because, well, it’s a secret, and we want to keep the secret. That’s what we’ve been taught to do.
This is the secret plan: we are going to continue on this way until we can’t anymore.
That’s the plan. And that’s what person after person told us when we interviewed them for What A Way To Go. We asked everyone we talked to, “What’s it going to take for people to change?” And what person after person said was, “It’s going to take a catastrophe. It’s going to take a catastrophe before people will wake up.”
I just turned off the lamp behind my head. The room is dark at this time of the morning, but seeing the words on the screen of my laptop really does not require the light behind my head. I can go without these carbon-fueled electrons this morning.
This is all staggering. And confounding. And I’m not the only one with cotton in my head and a knot in my gut when I read these things. My question is: why do James Hansen and Bill McKibben and others say, “It’s not too late?” That assertion, it seems to me, just intensifies the cotton effect, the numbing, the craziness.
If they said, “It is too late,” what would happen?
I’m going to try it. It’s too late.
There I said it. It’s too late. It’s too late to get out of catastrophe. There’s no way this civilization is going to grind to a halt, get off the fossil fuel train, reduce the population voluntarily by 3/4 and start growing food sustainably, without catastrophe. We’re in for it. And we don’t even know what we’re in for.
My son, Andy, who holds together the business end of VisionQuest Pictures in a tiny room on the other side of this funky recycled house-turned-duplex-turned-cooperative-living/ business place, and Tim and I talk about the advisability of making such statements. We want this family business to succeed. And we know that saying it’s too late doesn’t sell DVDs to a large potential audience of people who listen complacently to smart, white, male authority figures who say it’s not too late. Those people don’t want to hear it’s too late.
But this is where Tim and I drew our line in the sand. This is where our inner “Cheyenne dog soldiers” placed our picket pins. We can’t pretend to not see what we see. So Andy and Tim and I are coming to terms with the idea that What A Way to Go is not going to be a blockbuster. At least not this month. Things still look too good out there, in spite of the volatility of the stock market. It’s too soon for What A Way To Go to be the poster child of progressive documentaries. That would require ruthlessly honest viewers, willing to challenge the American way of life beyond our choice of light bulbs. That’s not easy for people trapped in this culture. But the feedback we get, from those rare but growing numbers who are screaming for some sanity in the face of 383 ppm, is that watching the movie, talking about it all, facing into it, finally, is a balm. The cotton starts to loosen in their heads and they start to feel related to reality. They start to feel sane.
And that’s why we do this. That’s why we look at things exactly as they are, even when what we see feels at times so grim, so dire, so irreversible. We do this, we look at it, we talk about it, and we write about it, because it’s our best approximation of reality. And I want to live fully. I want to live consciously. I want to live with full integrity, sanely. And if I want those things I have to be related to life as it is, not life as I wish it were. I have to look at things exactly as they are. And so do you, if that’s what you want.
“Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs.”
~ M.Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
I was doing some research in preparation for a retreat Tim and I facilitated. The organizer of the retreat, blessings on him, called a gathering with the intention to create such a strong and cohesive group that we would be able to enter into deep dialogue about these issues, to step out of denial, to look at, and feel, things exactly as they are. Unless we do this we will not be effective in our lives. We will not be fully ourselves, not in our intimate relations with family and friends, not in our work as helpers, visionaries, catalysts, healers, nor in relationship with the larger community of people and planet.
Wikipedia had some great information about psychological defenses. Denial and two others form a triad of “Level 1 Defense Mechanisms.” The other two are distortion and delusional projection. The projection in this case shows up as the tendency to fear and label people who look at reality as “negative” or “doom-sayers.” Wikipedia says that the combination of those three can
“permit one to effectively rearrange external reality and eliminate the need to cope with reality.”
The denial member of that triplet is defined as:
Refusal to accept external reality because it is too threatening; arguing against an anxiety provoking stimuli by stating it doesn’t exist; resolution of emotional conflict and reduction of anxiety by refusing to perceive or consciously acknowledge the more unpleasant aspects of external reality.
So this morning, as I reflect on the article about James Hansen’s most recent comments and on Bill McKibben’s report about those comments, I can’t help but think about denial as a psychological defense. These questions go through my head:
When James Hansen and Bill McKibben say, “It’s not too late,” are they not supporting all of America to embrace denial?
Are statements that suggest it’s not too late not an example of refusing to accept external reality because that reality seems too threatening?
Are such statements not made to argue against a stimulus that provokes high anxiety: the stimulus being the idea that it IS too late?
Are these statements not used to “resolve” our conflicted emotions by supporting Americans to refuse to perceive or consciously acknowledge these unpleasant aspects of external reality?
Are our best and brightest scientists and journalists, Hansen and McKibben being two representatives of those, caught in denial themselves? Or are they just stumped about what to say, what to do, how to be with all of this?
My chest and gut get tight as I articulate these questions. Am I allowed to do this? Do I get to ask these questions? Am I breaking an unspoken rule when I question if renowned White Male Authorities could be caught in denial?
I have a lot of compassion for being caught in denial. At this very moment, in order to ease the discomfort in my chest and gut, I am tempted to run for denial myself. I’m tempted to defer to White Male Authority, especially to two of the best, brightest, and highest intentioned of the bunch. I’m tempted, at least momentarily, to judge as faulty or misguided my own perceptions and analysis.
But I don’t want to do that. I want to be intimately connected to reality. So I decide to look at more data. Data always helps me remember that just because I’m female doesn’t mean I’m wrong, or crazy, or overreacting.
Here’s the data I look at: net geothermal, solar, wind, wood and waste electric power went from 195 billion kilowatt hours in 1980 to a whopping 370 billion in 2005.
Wow. Almost double in 25 years. Is there a bright spot here? Those look like big numbers and a large increase. Maybe that’s good. I wonder how those numbers compare with total fossil fuel energy use.
Whoops. Fossil fuels actually provide 93% of the world’s energy use. Renewables provide only about 7%.
Consider what kind of ramping-up, now and everywhere, would be required to move from the fossil fuel based civilization we have to a cleaner, renewable energy based civilization. Consider how much recycling of our current infrastructure would have to take place. Consider how much time and energy it would take to revision, rebuild, and retrofit what we have now into a non-fossil fueled operation?
I don’t know how much it would take, or how long, but I know it is a lot. Like most of the trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, the billions of barrels of oil, the billions of tons of coal, consumed daily. And, while we may have a lot of technological know-how, I don’t see how we have the time, energy, political will, cultural awareness or deep understanding of ecosystems, currently, to pull it off to avoid catastrophe. We are on the edge of the cliff pretending we can fly. While we have defined the physics of flying, we have not grown wings.
When I let the anxiety rise, when I resist the move to denial, when I sit with all of this, I know we aren’t going to sprout wings and fly out of all of this. I know the chances of “It’s not too late,” being really true are about the same as the chances that Jenny, the 14-year-old Springer spaniel that we buried a month ago, will magically appear at the door scratching and whining and wagging to be fed. I can want that. I can imagine it. I can even wish for it. But to hold onto that as a real possibility, rather than to face and grieve her loss, is to be in a severe, pathological form of denial.
I suspect most people, down deep, when they aren’t drunk with denial, or shopping, or television, know this also. Collectively, we know the secret plan and we know it can’t go on forever. What we don’t know is what IS going to happen.
So, if not denial, then what?
Pema Chodron, author of The Places That Scare Us: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times, begins her book with this idea:
“…we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.” (p.3)
I would add that we have this choice only if we are willing to be related to “what’s so,” to reality. When we are not in reality we are caught in denial or some other form of psychological defense. Defense is always about hardening ourselves off. It’s about blame, resentment, or frozen, unfelt fear, fantasy, projection.
Tim and I talk a lot about the ruling paradigm of this culture, “the paradigm of domination and control.” We use those words to assess various approaches to the current situation. As Tim said in the voice-over in What A Way To Go,
“What we’ve been doing hasn’t been working. We’re going to have to try something else.”
The circumstances we living beings of this planet face are about as scary as I can imagine. Can we allow these circumstances to soften us so that we become less resentful and afraid, kinder and more open? Can we step out of the paradigm of domination and control? Can we let go of denial and face into things exactly as they are?
Life has been inviting me, using the knots in my chest and gut, to “try something else.” I am not willing to use pharmaceuticals, or even herbs, as a technofix for the discomfort. And my favorite distractions have not worked. But in the last two weeks there are three things that have been extremely helpful. They all involved softening, letting down my defenses, and letting myself feel.
A couple weeks ago I took some dried garden sage to the edge of what this drought has left of the pond that lies a few hundred feet from our house. I lit the sage to let the sweet, smoky fragrance remind me of times I’ve spent on longer retreats I’ve made to the woods. As the smoke swirled about in the breeze, I lay down and I cried. I asked for help. Out loud. I asked the ancestors. I asked the unseen forces that might be waiting, wanting to help. I asked any and all creative forces in the universe. I admitted, again out loud, that I am not doing well. I felt the fear and the helplessness in my body. I surrendered denial. I surrendered control. I want to join the winning side and I have a feeling that ultimately this culture of control and domination is not on that side. I wept gently and sincerely. This is part of what it takes to step out of the paradigm of domination and control. The willingness to surrender.
You know, it wasn’t that bad, the surrendering and the weeping. It never is when I remember to do it. It’s actually pretty easy and sweet and simple. It just takes admitting what’s so: I’m just one human being. I’m limited. I’m doing my best. Many, many of us are doing our best, and we’re still collectively drowning in carbon dioxide, facing economic and environmental collapse, while the growth machine continues to struggle to ramp up production and population.
When I sat up my face was wet with tears. I looked out across the pond. Sunlight reflected off the tiny ripples there like nothing I have seen before. What appeared was more beautiful than the most beautiful fireworks I’ve ever seen. I saw thousands of tiny, crystalline flames dancing in ecstatic patterns before my eyes. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was stunned at this sight.
I was not so stunned of course that my mind did not theorize about this phenomenon. Was it the chemical composition of my tears that was creating this? Was it the angle of the sun in relation to my position on the bank of the pond? Was it some weird atmospheric condition brought on by the drought in the Southeast? But miraculously, even in the throes of my mind’s compulsive theorizing, the phenomenon persisted.
Perhaps it was my ancestors speaking, revealing their love?
After the pond experience I felt less anxious for a day or so. Apparently the lesson is not quite learned however as the anxiety returned full force. I complained to Tim. I journaled about it. Mostly my knuckles just turned white. When I went for acupuncture, though I had not told her anything about this, my saintly and apparently psychic acupuncturist said in her Israeli-accented English,
“You have substantial worries and you have insubstantial worries. You know what I’m saying here? You must work on these. You must let go these insubstantial worries and you must deal with the substantial worries. Do you understand this?”
I understood. The substantial worries are about the planet, the insubstantial ones are more petty. Those are just garden-variety neuroses, like worry about whether people will like and approve of me; like if it’s okay to question renowned White Male Authority figures.
That evening Tim and I took one of our late night walks. We bundle up to walk the road, to talk, and to look at constellations, the moon, and the dozen or more blinking lights from airplanes coming and going, even late at night, from the Raleigh/Durham airport. I truly will not miss the airplanes in the night sky if I’m around when we stop using fossil fuels.
As we walked I noted again the knot in my stomach, the “substantial and insubstantial worry,” that I need to let go of, or deal with. I noticed it, and then I stopped. I lay down on the bank next to the road. Tim’s gotten used to this kind of behavior and seems to like me anyway. As I lay on the ground, I looked up at the stars, and I cried. As I had earlier in the week, I asked for help and admitted how difficult this all is, this looking head-on at reality, this mission to encourage others to do the same.
Just as it had been with the pond experience, it wasn’t so bad, this surrendering, this asking for help. I admit it’s a little awkward. I have no generations of conscious spiritual tradition to back me up in this. This practice is based on a twelve-day intensive workshop in the wilderness of Tennessee and several individual retreats on my own, away from all things man-made. So it’s largely intuitive what I do. And I still feel awkward. I’m glad Tim doesn’t laugh at me.
It occurs to me that this is what it means to pray. It is a mighty step out of the paradigm of domination and control and a giant step toward the paradigm of humble relationship. If as a culture we took this journey, step by step, we would routinely act with humility. The precautionary principle would be the eleventh commandment. We would not have collectively fucked up like we have, if we had already taken these steps.
In the end what I do as an individual is engage in active, physical, vocal acknowledgment of what is: of my feelings, of my limitations in the face of climate change tipping points, of my utter not-knowing what to do. We need to do this collectively, now and everywhere.
I didn’t feel immediately better after. This time there were no visible fireworks, at least not on the outside. But I slept well that night and, come morning, I felt lighter. I felt adequate to the day. It was easier to approach what was on my plate creatively, with peacefulness. The calm lasted a while.
And then I read the article Tim emailed me. And I read the article by Bill McKibben. And I felt sad and sick and a little crazy. The White Guys didn’t validate my experience.
You need to know I have nothing but respect for James Hansen’s scientific work and for his courage in continuing to report accurately on the facts of the situation. And I have nothing but respect for Bill McKibben’s journalism. But I have to say, they come from White Guy Culture: the dominant European culture of progress and control, based on unexamined and pervasive assumptions about the superiority and near omnipotence of humans, and especially of white, male authority.
They are White Guys. And like most white guys, they’ve likely been brought up to feel like they have to fix it or, in this case, to at least suggest that it can be fixed by other White Guys.
We know that men in White Guy Culture routinely jump into “fix it” mode. We joke about it. We observe it whenever their wives or sisters or mothers are sad or angry or scared. It seems to be just part of the deal, of being a guy, a white guy, a well-educated, privileged, white guy. They are supposed to be able to fix it. It’s not all bad. There’s a very good part of it. At root it comes from a genuine desire to help, to serve, to protect. But as women will attest, men’s attempts “to fix” all too often end up offending and missing the point. And those attempts usually make things worse. The attempt “to fix” cuts short what women, in their own profound wisdom, know: that they need to feel, and that they need to feel deeply. It is through feeling that they arrive at wisdom.
What women need, and of course what men need as well, is to be supported to feel deeply, and to be respected as they work their way into and through those feelings. They need to be supported to trust their capacity to feel and to find the wisdom and healing that comes of that.
Maybe Mother Earth doesn’t want to be fixed. Maybe She wants to be heard and respected.
Collectively we have a similar situation on a grand scale here. Our Mother is hurting. She’s wounded. She loses children at the rate of 200 or more species a day. She’s being bled to death and her blood is burned to create a great cloud of pollution. She’s sending all kinds of signals that things are way out of whack. She’s in the throes of huge feeling about what’s been done to her over the course of industrial civilization. It’s not pretty.
In the face of that, White Guys feel like they need to fix it. They feel compelled to say, “It’s not too late. We can fix it.” Because if they don’t do that, they don’t know what to do. They would have to just sit and feel too.
Sit. Be still. And listen. For you are drunk and we are at the edge of the roof. ~ Rumi
Last night, after I put down my current Orson Scott Card novel, as I shut my eyes and sealed out the chilly air with the wool comforter around my shoulders, a great wave of sadness and helplessness came over me. Again I cried. I cried and I prayed.
“Help us. We’ve really fucked up. We really have. Help us. Help us be humble and open in the face of this. Help us respond in sane, heartfelt ways. Help us learn what we need to learn so we don’t ever do this again. Help us. We are drunk and we are at the edge of the roof and we don’t know what we’re doing.”
I wiped away the tears with the edge of the sheet and resealed the comforter around my shoulders. And then I drifted off to sleep.
Today I have the courage to say that I believe the most important thing we can do in the face of the current situation is to sit still. We have really fucked up. We are drunk on technology and insane with the power it has given us to turn fossil fuels and the very body of the planet into tons of meaningless toys. We need to sit still, sober up, and look at this.
We need to surrender to the reality of what we’ve collectively done and become utterly willing to learn.
I also have the courage, and it takes some, to say that it is vitally important that White Guy culture look to women to take the lead in all of this. While women have been wounded by this culture, we generally carry less of the wounding that prevents things like surrender, prayer, tears, and genuine humility. It is critically important for women to step more deeply into our wisdom, the wisdom of our bodies and our feelings. We all need to sit, to become still, to become fully sober, thoughtful, and willing to grieve. Men need women to step up and lead in this process. And women need men to acknowledge them and to support them to do so.
This has been, in microcosm, the course of my partnership with Tim. When we first met I took the lead in the scary work of unveiling all of my feelings to him. Over a period of several months, early in our relationship, I opened up, soberly and thoughtfully. I grieved deeply about past disappointments. I felt my fears, risked my sadness and carefully shared my anger. Then it was Tim’s turn to do the same. Being a man, and having had less opportunity to do this kind of surrender into feeling, he took a long turn at it. Now we pass the stick, the talking stick, the crying stick, the ranting stick, the praying stick, back and forth, with great regularity and more grace than I had imagined possible. We feel like we’ve made great progress between us in stepping out of the paradigm of domination and control.
There is now an inside joke in the tag line for What a Way To Go:
A middle-class white guy comes to grips with peak oil, climate change, mass extinction, population overshoot, and the demise of the American lifestyle.
The inside joke is that Tim is no longer a White Guy. He resigned, went AWOL, jumped ship, escaped. He deconstructed the prescription “Big boys don’t cry,” and claimed his right as an adult male to grieve and rage, to feel afraid and awestruck. And to surrender his white guy ego to something greater.
This is the work. To recognize we are drunk. We are at the edge of the roof. It’s time to be still and look at things exactly as they are.
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February 6th, 2008 at 12:05 am
I share your feelings entirely-gone thru the same downs and downs and ups….
I despair because people around me ridicule me, change the subject, avoid me as ‘depressing’ or crazy, or a worry wart; one answered, ”the ice is melting in Greenland but increasing in antarctica..nobody knows anything” etc. Some people I gave the dvd to view are offended that I preach one shouldn’t have any more children….
I also am sad that I am not allowed to show the dvd in local TV or in a movie theater. Isn’t the point to get out the information? It is painstaking and slow in small house gatherings.
I found Paul Chefurka’s website and articles very helpful and comforting-especially how his experience of the interconnectedness of everything helped him deal with the facts. Still, the enormous grief I feel is not helped. Do you know of anyone in Santa Cruz or the Bay area / San Jose Monterey CA I can talk to for support?
Sincerely,
Sigrid McLaughlin
February 6th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Dearest Sally,
as I read the numbers, the facts and figure in your blog, I thought “Oh good I can share these with my middle-class white guy and he will believe me. When I got to the last part I thought, “Yes, Yes, Yes, it’s what I’ve been feeling, we women have to step into our empowerment and believe our own sweet common sense and not abandon it to white middle class men who still believe they have to fix it. The work you and Tim describe having moved through with great vulnerability is the work that needs to be done. We are indeed at the edge of the roof and we need to sit still and sober up.
Thank you for speaking of the praying and the surrendering to our Mother it is where we will learn to take our next step once we have come down from the roof.
Vivienne, Ladner, B.C.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:03 am
Is not acceptance just another form of denial?
February 6th, 2008 at 2:01 am
Thank You for (all) of your messages, Sally.
Each on hits home with me- and, I hope, to the
people I distribute them to.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:57 am
Good article, Sally
It’s been clear to me for some time that we are heading for the mother of all catastrophes - human suffering on an unimaginable scale, possibly even a mass extinction in time. I don’t think you need to cry about that; I think you simply need to adjust to what is. The challenge of the adventure ahead is to see if you and yours can survive; actually it’s quite exciting! After all, life is a game; don’t take it so seriously. And sorry, putting women in charge won’t make the slightest difference; that’s just your personal issue. Hillary Clinton? I hope not!
Warmest regards, Robin Scott
February 6th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
This has all happened before,just in a different form ,many thousands of years ago.man became “intelligent” and invented things that gave him power to manipulate gravity ,fly and many sciences we know nothing about.He reached the end of a cycle where he destroyed himself with great harm to the earth.We are at the same place in that cycle,just one rung up the spiral.He left giant rocks behind that we cannot move with our technology to let us know this is true as this generation of many learns this lesson now to be repeated at the next cycle thousands of years from now.The time of peace ,harmony and balance is not far away if we make it through the fire. Adios,Ed Sarten
February 6th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I’m glad someone else mentioned Hillary and not! in the same breath, so I don’t have to. Thanks, Robin. But I don’t think it’s about putting women “in charge”. I agree wholeheartedly with Sally, and to the degree that I understand what I’m agreeing with, it’s not about anyone being “in charge”. It’s about each of us taking responsibility for our actions in a fundamental way - in a fundamentally feminine way that considers the impact we have on those around us - on all of those around us, other humans, polar bears, bees, plankton… the very wind. No one, regardless of gender, who rises to the apex of the current paradigm is going to have any capacity for that in any meaningful way. The system requires quite the opposite of them, regardless of any pittance of lip service paid to ‘environmental protection’ or ‘energy independence’. Oh, and on the latter, Sally, an addendum to your facts and figures. While fossil fuels provide 93% of our energy, most of the balance is provided by hydro, which is largely maxed out. So the list of renewables you provide that would need to be ramped up to replace FF’s, actually provide only about 1% of our current energy (notice I’m studiously avoiding the use of the term ‘needs’ here) So it’s actually even too later than you portray. Off to work on learning to surrender…
February 6th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
There is hope, Sally. It’s called “cannibalism”.
“Donner! Party of four! Your table is ready.”
You may want to dust off your “Iowa Farm Wives’ Pork Recipes” book. I’m just sayin’, ‘z all.
“Soylent Green is peeeepul!!”
Got salt?
Robin:
“No more Republican Presidents!!
That means his wife, too!!”
February 6th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Ed: Have you ever read the book “Toolmaker Koan” by John McLoughlin?
Right up your alley. Great story. Maybe they weren’t men that built that stuff….
February 6th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Wonderful! Sally, I am a true sister and felt every thing you experienced…….We will survive and continue to build abundant lives……We will be beautiful communities………There are positives……..Thank You for your courage and strength! I look forward to building boats with you and yours!
February 6th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
“We’re drunk and we’re at the edge of the roof.”
Yes, we are. It is over.
OK, now I think I get it - intellectually, you and Tim understand TEOTWAWKI but emotionally it really hadn’t sunk in even with the production of WATGo - eh?
The imminent actual demise of industrial human society is impossible for most humans to even imagine, let alone accept.
And now, [actually, long before now] it is only about finding survival tribal members and making those low probability but hopeful preparations.
Love your ways, Sally,
Mike from Spokane
February 6th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Dear Sally
I feel privileged that you made your essay available for us to read. What do I say? I’m a White Guy - yet I’m not. I’m a human, yet I’m not. The situation is serious - yet, on the other hand, on another level, is it?
Don’t know what I’m saying here, only that this knowledge of impending disaster (and yes, I agree with you that it is too late. We won’t change the way we live until we are forced to) has spurred me to seek deeper answers. You know, there’s more to life than living. Wish I had your way with words. All I can do is to empathize whole-heartedly with you, dear.
BTW, Bill McKibben writes wonderful books. I have three of them out of the library as we speak. Try his ‘Deeper Economy’.
William
February 6th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Sally
I suspect that there are forces at work much bigger than the ones you are describing, which you are perhaps unaware of, having taken it on faith that humans are causing global warming, a postulate that has not been proven by the facts. All the planets are heating up..are you aware of this fact? Do you think its because the Martians and the Venusians are burning fossil fuels? Yes, I am being a bit cynical and facetious here, but may we please distinguish between fact and theory for a minute? Man made global warming is a theory, the film by Al Gore is a theory, masquerading as fact…the truth is that all the planets are heating up which can only mean one thing…its the sun, not you and me and our SUV’s. I think it is a natural process, perhaps like getting a fever when there are microbes in you to be burned up. I predict a global cooling, like ice on a broken arm, will follow. The facts actually support this prediction.
A big volcano, like Mt Saint Helens put out more pollution than the entire 20th century has!! The atmosphere weighs 4.5 million billion tons…compare that with the miniscule tonnage of particulates that we have emmitted and you see that yes, there is pollution and yes it has an impact, but no, it has not caused global warming. Maybe the sun, intelligently, reads the planets via the light waves it emits and adjusts its output for the benefit of the planets…if this is the case, then we should be glad for the warming and trust the huge galactic processes that are going on and quit blaming ourselves for doing something we could not possibly do…namely, heat up the planet. I am sure that “global warming” is the same kind of social meme as “overpopulation” and “Arabs hate our freedoms” . Speaking of overpopulation, did you know that every man, woman, and child would fit nicely in the state of Texas and every family of 4 would have an entire city block for themselves? Overpopulation is a theory based on Malthusian mathematics and is not substantiated by the facts. What is called overpopulation is overcrowding in cities. The Club of Rome and other think tanks came up with “overpopulation” in the 1960’s to justify the genocide and forced sterilization that the social engineers (eugenicists)need to control you and me. Global warming is another myth based social meme that is causing you and many others untold anxiety…and I assure you that this is not denial or avoidance…social memes like “19 Islamic terrorists did 911″ have a specific purpose and that is to scare the living shit out of you and me… it is working…but we must see through the devious machinations in which predictable emotional responses like yours are used as weapons of control. I hope you will consider this deeply and do some research into global warming and overpopulation that is deeper and more comprehensive than assuming that think tanks and politicized science is anything more than sophisticated propaganda designed to elicit precisely the kind of response that you are having. No human being can remain sane for long enduring the kind of psychic stresses that you are suffering… I think this is by design…the truth is that we are love but they want us to think that we are separate from that and are under threat…which we are, but its a created enemy through false flag terror.
Bob Cinque
February 7th, 2008 at 2:04 am
dear Sally,
I a glad that you worte again,…I was waiting for your new article to come along,..I hope you would be writing more often,….there is something special about your writings,which I (personally)seek,and which I do not find in other sites talking about the collapse,..it is your honest talking about the hard feelings you are going through,..this is something very special about your writings(it is to a degree what makes women writings special),…now to tell you why I am so interested in this point…..I believe that these hard feeling are very commen these days,but not every one can speak it out like this,…and if this is true,..let me ask this question,..what is more dangerous?..what may kill a person first?..shortage of food(energy..etc.)..or the strong hit of these hard feelings?..putting in mind that you already took your time facing lot of the painful facts,..what about all the others who will know it as a huge shock?..that will kill….it will kill people before the climate change do and before peak oil do and before the economic collapse do,…this is the fact which I still find most doomers(as they call them)…fail to face,…the collapse will come from inside before it comes from outside,..and the only question is..who will be able to survive the mental breakdown
February 7th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Hi Sally,
I was glad to see this. The problem is that we don’t just have to “learn what we need to learn so we don’t ever do this again.” We need to stop what we’re doing. As you say, we have to stop “90% of what we’re doing.” With TPTB and virtually everyone else implementing the “secret plan”, stopping all that won’t be easy.
Terry from Lone Star
February 7th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
More articles to consider, responding to James Hansen’s “350 ppm.” Bart Anderson from the Energy Bulletin calls the first one below one of Steffen’s “grimmest” posts, yet Steffen still says things like this: “To do that we need to be able to read the bad news and still remember that defeatism serves evil here, and in times like these, optimism is a political act. We need to cultivate a politics of optimism.”
David
350 ppm
Alex Steffen, WorldChanging
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007744.html
“The evidence indicates we’ve aimed too high — that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350 ppm,” says Jim Hansen.
350: That is the level to which Hansen believes we need to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide (and by implication, other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere if we want to avoid a series of catastrophic climate tipping points.
The bad news? Atmospheric carbon is already at least 383 ppm, and the rate at which we’re spewing greenhouse gases is increasing. In other words, we’ve seen the credible bar for achieving climate stability drop from 550 to 450 to 350 over roughly the last year.
…Carbon-neutral prosperity is possible. We can design and build a sustainable society within the time we have remaining. The matter hinges entirely on having the will to build it. And that’s what’s going to be tested now, and big time: our will.
Beyond the political barriers, though, I think there are some habits of mind that impede the gathering of that will.
The first is, as we’ve said here frequently, the lack of compelling and credible visions of what that society would look like. Without those visions, it is very difficult for any of us to seriously imagine transformational change.
…The second is that we are in overshoot and time is proving to be the strictest planetary limit of all. It’s bad enough that with each passing day it becomes more difficult to attain a bright green future — it’s worse to know that things are going to get grim, no matter what we do. We have already committed ourselves to climate chaos, an extinction crisis and mass human suffering — though what we do now will greatly determine exactly how awful each of those things gets, and if we act now, we can, in fact, still make it through the window of opportunity. To do that we need to be able to read the bad news and still remember that defeatism serves evil here, and in times like these, optimism is a political act. We need to cultivate a politics of optimism.
(2 January 2008)
Follow-up Column: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007748.html
And these from George Monbiot:
George Monbiot: A Sudden Change of State (The Guardian, July 3, 2007)
Reading a scientific paper on the train this weekend, I found, to my amazement, that my hands were shaking. This has never happened to me before, but nor have I ever read anything like it. Published by a team led by James Hansen at Nasa, it suggests that the grim reports issued
by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could be absurdly optimistic…I looked up from the paper, almost expecting to see crowds stampeding
through the streets. I saw people chatting outside a riverside pub. The other passengers on the train snoozed over their newspapers or played on their mobile phones. Unaware of the causes of our good fortune, blissfully detached from their likely termination, we drift into catastrophe.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/07/03/a-sudden-change-of-state/
George Monbiot, Updating the Book on Global Warming (Aug. 28, 2007)
“I’m going to start with some bad news, and the bad news is this. Two degrees is no longer the target. And the news is contained in a recent paper written by James Hansen of NASA in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society(1). And what Hansen shows is that the profoundly pessimistic assumptions in the latest IPCC Report are insufficiently pessimistic.
And the reason for this is as follows. The IPCC assumes that the melting of the ice sheets at the poles will take place in a gradual and linear fashion. And Hansen’s own work with the paleontological record shows that that is an “entirely implausible” (to use his term) scenario.
The last time we had two degrees of warming in the Pliocene 55 million years ago, the ice sheets at the poles did not melt - as the IPCC proposes - over a millennia, but within the course of one century. And they did not cause a maximum sea level rise within the course of one century - as predicted by the IPCC - of 59 centimeters, but of 25 meters.”
http://energybulletin.net/34174.html
Note:
25 meters = 82 Feet possible sea level rise!!
February 7th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Another wonderfully poignant entry, Sally. Thank you for providing your readers and me such a sincere, personal take on the situation we humans are just beginning to recognize exists.
I’ve paid some attention to mother earth for some time, learning what I could over the years. I have not been convinced yet that the imminent climate change is wholly the result of human activity. But, as I just indicated, I completely believe the climate is undergoing a change the likes of which humans may never have seen before.
The paradigm of “dominion and control” we humans seem hell-bent on exersizing is, I agree, a non-harmonious illness. But, as powerful as we may think we are, we’re a speck when compared to the mother planet. The time humans have recorded history on this planet is miniscule in geologic terms. Our science seems to have convincingly determined that severe climatic changes are a natural occurrence and, further, that such changes have occured in spans as short as tens of years … quite without any human activity to blame.
What I’m trying to say is that we shouldn’t necessarily feel a terrible guilt for having “ruined the planet”. Nor should we be so arrogant, or dismissive of scientific data, to believe that this change is solely the result of human doings. The effects of Daniel Quinn’s “secret plan” are quite paltry when compared to the planet’s terrifically complex ability to adapt. However we should, by all means, carry a guilt about consuming with reckless abandon. It seems that such gluttony is seen as a failing, on a small, personal scale, but is tolerated - even rewarded - in the large, corporate and national scale.
The imminent climate change is a “black swan”, a disjunctive event that some, including you and your readers, can already see. Things will change; those who are prepared to deal with the existence of a “black swan” will likely fare the most comfortably. It would seem that those who understand “sustainable” does not mean “less unsustainable” should do the best as our environment quickly becomes more challenging.
TEOTWAWKI occurs every day … as does it’s rebirth. A “black swan” that lands right in front of a group - an extremely improbable, extremely significant event we didn’t/couldn’t see coming - simply makes the TEOTWAWKI more dynamic, palpable and spectacular … but it’s still just something that happens every [fill in the blank] cycle.
So, please, remember we silly, pompous humans aren’t really all that capable of wounding mother earth beyond a superficial scrape she can heal without so much as a bandage (and, heck, we are part of the whole system regardless how disconnected we view ourselves). And that climate change is a seemingly capricious whim of mother earth … we get to deal with it whether or not we sped it up, slowed it down, deny it’s happening, accept it or think we can “fix it”.
I’d like to suggest to everyone a reading of a short paper titled “Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks” at
http://www.singinst.org/upload/cognitive-biases.pdf
I found it breathtakingly informative.
Also, a little about “black swans” and distortions (often in science) brought about by the Platonic fallacy can be found summed up nicely on wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Taleb
It has helped my thinking; I hope you find it helpful as well … among other things, it helps illuminate why humans tend to ignore what (to us here) seems to be an imminent, significant change.
Take care, Sally, and please continue to allow us to share this journey into the future with you!
February 7th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Maybe it’s not all our fault.
While they continue to blame global warming (so called) on pollution, there is strong evidence that our pollution mat be keeping us from serious heat.
Three facts the media and governments refuses to acknowledge.
1. While the period of Sun spots passed what should have been the Solar Minimum five years ago. No one has seen a Sun Spot since. Lack of Sun Spots make the Sun warmer because Sun Spots are cooler places on the sun that don’t radiate as much heat reducing the sun’s average output that we receive.
2. The Mars polar caps are retreating at almost exactly the same rate as the glaciers and polar caps on Earth.
3. The Pan Evaporation Rate (PER) - a measurement taken daily all over the world - has decreased by nearly 25% since the early 50s. It’s called Global Dimming. http://www.scienceblog.org/community/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=111
The PER is measured with a one metre diameter pan that is full of water and in full sunlight. Every day the water is topped up to replace what is lost due to evaporation. The amount needed to top it up is a very accurate measure of the amount of sunlight received and is recorded. Those records go back to the early 1900s because that information is very useful to agriculture.
Putting those three facts together leads naturally to the conclusion that the Sun is warming up. The Sun is known to be a variable star and we have been lucky enough to be in a steady period for many years.
February 8th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Sally, when I read your earlier blog about your impressions from your tour, I was perplexed. Your previous blog conveyed a deep sense of frustration that we were not doing what you want to see us do. But you also weren’t clear about what you want from everyone. I had the same feeling participating in your talking circle after the screening.
This blog has made your point clear to me. It seems you want us to take no action other than sitting and feeling the enormity of the situation like you do. You seem frustrated that many people, including myself, can’t connect with this message.
Your message would resonate with more people if you described how “sitting, feeling, and pondering” was part of a way forward. For instance, your message is relevant to a way forward since we need new minds and new vision to get us out of this, of which feeling is fundamental. You also make good points that men have much to learn from women about the value of feeling/intuiting as well as thinking. We need ALL forms of knowledge and learning to create a new way of life.
But the pondering and feeling must be part of a CREATIVE process rather than just soaking yourself in grief; Part of a way of LIFE, rather than some global hospice process for the mass die-off. Urging everyone to adopt your emotional approach to the situation is utterly pointless if you believe that it’s too late to do anything but be swept away in a catastrophe. If it’s too late and we’re all going to die, who cares whether we’re sitting and exploring our feelings or having one last giant orgy of consumption?? That’s why people shrug and turn away from your message.
February 8th, 2008 at 1:35 am
The post above by Robert (Bob Cinque) is an example of the kind of stuff I run into all the time.
A lot of these people are into the documentary “Zeitgeist”, which I do recommend, the documentary “EndGame”, which I recommend with slight reservations and who are into the 911truth movement.
They for the most part believe that global warming, peak oil and overpopulation are lies perpetrated by the Global Power Elite who desire to eliminate most of us and enslave the rest.
It should be noted that only some, not all, of the people in the 911 truth movement reject an ecological perspective.
It is my understanding that, yes, the entire solar system is heating up, and that this is one of the reasons why exacerbating this situation with the huge amount of carbon emissions we are generating is especially dangerous.
These people are also often into “zero-point energy” technologies that they claim are being supressed and that can tap into inexhaustible free energy from the quantum vacuum.
The other night, I said to one of these people, “Even if true, humans are not spiritually sane enough to responsibly use such awesome power and would surely make weapons out of it.
And, if the Power Elite already have this technology, then what chance do we have?” I then used Tim’s line, ” Yeah great, give the child a bigger gun.” The person walked away……
As someone who spent years of my life speculating about alternative physics and subtle energy fields - like the Vedantic concept of Prana, Wilhelm Reich’s *Orgone energy”, various esoteric concepts about the ether and etc., I certainly think that somewhere and sometime in the Cosmos beings such as ourselves have discovered such things and used them to power a civilization.
But here and now on planet earth, I just dont see it coming in to save the day.
Some of this is related to the 2012 phenomenon which Tim mentioned a while back, another thing I have followed for years.
At any rate, it seems a safe bet that believing in highly speculative ideas with a low probability of actualization can be the definition of childish magical thinking, I still keep an open mind about such things.
The danger here is that if we all cannot agree that we are responsible for cleaning up our act - ecologically and spiritually, then our fate is sealed, and we are indeed in serious, terminal trouble. Warm regards, Joseph
February 8th, 2008 at 9:11 am
THIS COMMENT EMAILED FROM VIVIENNE:
more Martin Prechtel Indigenous Wisdom:
from “Secrets of the Talking Jaguar”
Epilogue: In the Flimsy Hut of the World.
“When I divine the Earth Bodies of many people of today, their worlds look like a post-war country, bombed out, dry, flowerless, and tired. The flat devastation wreaked upon these people’s Earth Body needs renewing. Their World House needs reassembling, replastering; it has to be remembered back to life, so that the faraway native souls, their natural indigenous beings, can return to their homes. Maybe this is why Chiviliu (his Shaman teacher in Guatemala) sent me away, to sing and speak these people’s lives back together. After all, he said that the destruction was coming from them. Our world was being killed by people whose naturalness had been disenfranchised long ago. The violence they leveled upon us came from their soulless minds and angry, homeless souls, looking for permanence through violent business growth, killing, forgetting, and mocking everything that reminded them of their inadequacies.
For their to be a world at all, every indigenous, original and natural thing must start singing its song, dancing its dance, moving and breathing, each according to its own nature, saying its name, manifesting simultaneously its secret spiritual signature. Every Gypsy must be singing her ancient tune, every Bushman, Croat, Arab, Jew, Chuckchee, Hmong, Papuan, Celt, Yoruba, Saxon, Cree, Guarani, Sami, Inuit, Kazaki, Tahitian, Balinese, jaguar, honey creeper, anteater, beetle, butterfly, oak, birch, ceiba, baobab, dog, mosquito, shark, coral, lighting, tornado, mist, mountain, deer, desert, and so on forever, each must be making its magic sound. When any of these stops singing for being killed or destroyed, a piece of the World’s House is lost. This in a village is the equivalent of losing a family. When this happens in the village, it’s a call for all the people to come together to find or renew the family’s lost tribe - or to grieve their gaping loss. Our grief, when deeply expressed communally, as it is in a village, sends the lost sound like an echo back to its home. This puts some mud back into the void left in the World House.
If done passionately, grief strengthens the World House, because the creative substance of our songs is perceived by the spirits as canoes to take the dead home. Our tears are jade beads to adorn the Face of Life, the Earth Fruit.
Shamans say the Village Heart can grow a brand-new World House if it is well-dressed in the layered clothing of each indigenous soul’s magic sound, ancestral songs, and indigenous ingenuity. The wrecked landscape of our World House could sprout a renewed world, but a new language has to be found. We can’t make the old world come alive again, but from its old seeds, the next layer could sprout.
This new language would have to grow from the indigenous hearts we all have hidden. It shouldn’t be the tongue of oneness, not one language, not a computer tongue of homogenization, but a diverse, beautiful, badly made thing whose flimsiness and inefficiency force people to sing together to keep it well-spoken and sung into life over and over again, so that nobody forgets to remember. We need to find gorgeous, unsellable, ritual words to reanimate, remeasure, rebuild, and replaster the ruined, depressed flatness left by the hollow failure of this mechanized, orphaned culture.
For this, we need all peoples: our poets, our shamans, our dreamers, our youth, our elders, our women, our men, our ancestors, and our real old memories from before we were people.
We live in a kind of dark age, craftily lit with synthetic light, so that no one can tell how dark it has really gotten. But our exiled spirits can tell. Deep in our bones resides an ancient, singing couple who just won’t give up making their beautiful, wild noise. The world won’t end if we can find them.”
let’s continue to sing this World House back together Tarrie
it’s the work we came here to do,
“we are the one’s we’ve been waiting for”
love & light in community Vivienn
February 8th, 2008 at 9:31 am
I would love to sit in a circle, such as that described by Carolyn Baker in her recent post (http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/319/) with those of you who would agree to a full three days and to engage as colleagues and to identify and suspend assumptions in order to tap into a greater wisdom. But alas, all we have at this point is a very faulty and inadequate electronic connection. It’s not enough. We deserve more but most of us will not get it.
What I want to say is that most of these comments, even the ones that disagree hugely with the science or spirituality that make sense to me, most of the comments are made respectfully. So they get posted. However I have to say that some of the comments border on lacking respect. Please know that I will not post comments that are blatantly disrespectful. We can tolerate disagreement but will not tolerate disrespect.
If we could sit in a circle for three days, sober up as we contemplate the edge of the roof, assess accurately our predicament, feel our way into the meaning of that predicament for ourselves personally as well as collectively, we might be graced to find that at our cores are some really fine human beings, capable of great collective wisdom, brilliance, and perhaps even some effective action.
I see way too little of that in the world today. And that is what I am advocating here: much quiet, sober, heartfelt, deliberation that makes room for feeling deeply what is currently our situation. If we have to tie up energy to keep ourselves or others from feeling it all very deeply, we then tie up energy in psychological defense that could be utilized in becoming wise and creative and compassionate with ourselves. I have been a psychotherapist for over 25 years and have witnessed routinely the energy that is liberated when people are able to stop defending and start feeling.
There is plenty being written about the facts and figures and schemes and movements. There is very little being written about the process. That piece seems to have my name on it. Thanks for joining, to the limited extent we can via electronic means, in the conversation about “how” we get from denial to creativity.
Best,
Sally
February 9th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Oh how wonderful…Feeling…….How am I feeling………
Three months ago I was given the gift of sitting with a loved one and consuming your movie, or shall I say, it consuming my every cell of human being………………..Since then I have fallen deeply with the question of my own existence and what it looks like today and what it might look like tomorrow……….What I have decided is to BE in the feelings of today and prepare for the possible feelings of tomorrow………..I am fortunate to have been raised with the comforts of nature within the depths of my soul. I am also the type of creature that is able to adapt and flow with change very freely……When I read your words they grab my heart and I know the depths of your sadness…
I also can feel the depths of your faith in yourself and your loved ones……Which is something I too can find comfort in…..that place of knowing that we will stand strong and walk with wisdom through the feelings……………….We will be there to hold those that need holding………….
I will sit with you in circle and allow the creative force to come through and show us the ways to greater solutions…….be it through our feelings or our holding space for those in denial preparing for feeling the truth of our existance……….
We need one another………We need one another…………
February 10th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Sally
Sorry to hear about Jenny. She was a unique individual.
David
February 10th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Dear Sally:
My heart goes out to you and I wish that I could think of something to say that would comfort you. All of us who love our Mother Earth know your pain and desperation. I wish also that I could tell you that James Hansen is wrong in his projections. However, in the spirit which you have invoked of looking truth in the face, I have to admit that I believe that our situation is as grave as he and McKibben say it is. Furthermore, I do not believe that it can be “fixed” in the conventional sense of the word.
I say this as a scientist with 30 years of research experience. I am trained to look the truth in the eye without blinking. Nevertheless, when I read the Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (11/16/07), I could hardly believe my own eyes. Surely, I thought, I must be reading this wrong. I must have made some mistakes in converting from Centigrade to Fahrenheit or from meters to feet. I double- and triple-checked. I could find no errors. I was looking at a Doomsday document.
I had virtually the same reaction as George Monbiot. Why are not people running around screaming I wondered? Why was it not page one news? I Googled the Report one month later. There were about 150 references to it, most of them from Asia and Australia. In the same time period there were over 5,000 references to Brittney Spears
My wife, Lanie and I put on a program, called Oil and Culture at the local library. It is about the end of cheap energy, climate change, and how our cultural beliefs got us into this predicament in the first place. I excerpted and summarized the IPCC Report. I included it in the program. No one commented on it. I emailed it to the head of a local organization concerned with climate change. She replied, thanking me for sending it and said that it was “nice.” Then, I suppose, she turned back to honing her mission statement and giving out compact fluorescent light bulbs.
Your experience at the pond brought back to my mind reading about a similar one that Daniel Quinn had. You probably read his book, Ishmael, but fewer people are acquainted with his autobiography, Providence. It is in the beginning of chapter 7, and was I believe, a pure animist vision. You would probably enjoy reading it and be amused by the circumstances surrounding it.
One thing that you repeated bothered me. It was your references to “white male authority figures.” I think I know what you mean, but by framing it this way, you risk alienating 50% of the human race, and we need all the friends we can find. I suspect that you are really talking about patriarchy, which is one particular kind of culture, although I admit it has become widespread. Yet, we should keep in mind that it is only one kind of culture, and that human beings in their plasticity are capable of forming other kinds of cultures.
In fact, anthropologist’s studies of the still-remaining Hunter Gatherer groups, show a completely different way of relating to the world. Read Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s The Harmless People, and Turnbull’s The Forest People. For a more scholarly account of the culture which undoubtedly prevailed throughout 99% of mankind’s history, see Paul Shepard’s Coming Home to the Pleistocene. It is filled with the insights of a brilliant and profound mind.
To return to my original thoughts about Climate Change and Peak Oil. I do indeed believe that it is too late to change our course. Evolution has shaped our species to react to immediate threats – a saber toothed tiger, a hurricane, Pearl Harbor. I refer you again to Quinn. He has this metaphor of the boiling frog. Toss a frog into a pot of boiling water and he will jump right out. Put him in room temperature water and slowly turn up the flame and he will just sit there until he boils to death. The frog is us. It is not as elegant as Rumi, but you get the idea.
I will send you my IPCC Summary as well as a DVD we made of Oil and Culture. The video amateurish, but not the ideas. We are not professional movie makers as you are, but you may get some laughs, and perhaps you will find some good ideas in it. You are welcome to use them as you see fit.
I am sorry to say it, but I believe that the time has come to circle the wagons. Come to think of it that is an apt metaphor. After all, a wagon is pulled by horses, and it is handmade. I do not believe in Armageddon’s, whether biblical or man-made. I believe that we are not at the edge of a roof, but on a slippery ever-steeper slope. Some of us may be lucky enough to find a way off.
Peace be with you,
Ken Fischman, Ph.D.
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February 10th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I enjoyed this post, shared it with my email group and linked it to OpEdNews, where you can find some comments
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/link.php?id=51709
February 15th, 2008 at 2:24 am
Re: the Situation.
In the end, it would seem that population pressures in circumscribed areas and overpopulation are the main drivers toward the creation of hierarchial and/or *patriarchal* social systems.
It is also my understanding that the move from what is what is called an Immediate Return (IR) gatherer-hunter way of life - gathering-hunting as needed - to a Delayed Return (DR) way of life - where humans began to stockpile and store food against future shortages - was a major stage in the transition from gatherer-hunter egalitarianism to hierarchial society and that this stage was intermediate between, and overlaped with, gatherer-hunter and agricultural civilization.
It has been speculated that the emergence of the DR way of life might be the origin of our original distrust of the natural world and other people.
It is Agricultural civilization of course, where surplus food really kicked in and provided the means by which an extremely complex hierarchy of power could arise, with those managing the surplus becoming the original power elite.
Another major factor would be the move from a nomadic to a more sedentary way of life.
But look at it as you may, it would seem that civilization was inevitable because a hierarchial system is the only way to manage large populations.
In the gatherer-hunter stage, egalitarianism was possible because conflicts could be resolved by fission-and-fusion - small groups of people could simply split-off from the larger group and go their own way, and overpopulation and land/resource scarcity eventually makes this impossible, so hierarchial control kicks in to manage the complexity.
The rest…is literally…history.
I think a lot of what we are going through is a secular version of “How could God/Godess Let This Happen?” - the secular version being:
“How could The Cosmos Be Set Up In Such A Way That Human Beings, Simply Following Their Instincts, Overpopulate a Planet To the Point That a Massive Horrible Die-Off becomes Inevitable?”
Personally, I dont think there is an answer, and as for blame, well…you might as well blame the wind.
The Situation is ssssooo mind-boggling that people tend toward denial to save themselves the stress, strain and pain of facing The Situation, which comes down to facing death and…let’s face it…the utter meaninglessness of existence.
One can choose to transcend phenomenal/dualistic existence by the Realization of one’s essence as Infinite-Consciousness, or
one can take the route outlined by Derrick Jensen in Endgame.
There are no easy answers. Warm regards to everyone, Joseph
Or, you can take Derrick Jensen’s route.
February 18th, 2008 at 8:35 am
When I first read your blog, Sally, I thought I’d understood it, but I don’t think I can have done. I’ve done a lot of reflecting these last couple of weeks, about the world, what we’re doing to it and my own place in it. Then, yesterday it suddenly hit me, the full horror of what we’ve done, what could happen next and how the hell to find a place where survival is possible.
Me and my partner are planning a major change in lifestyle, away from mainstream culture, cities, wage slavery and the rat run, to what we dearly hope will be a sustainable future. I think it is partly because of this that my mind has finally allowed me to truly feel the impact of all the individual issues I’ve known about for so long but haven’t let myself feel - that we are fast destroying our only home, that we are gnawing away at it so greedily that soon not enough will be left to sustain us. There is simply no way that our expanding lifestyles and growing population can continue. I’ve been disillusioned with our culture for years, decades even, but I’ve never felt this way before and I wonder how I can have thought myself to be informed and aware when I’ve actually been hiding from the full truth of it. It’s almost as if the plans for our changes have opened up a part of my mind that had been closed off before, because it was too scary to confront.
I spent much of yesterday either sitting stunned or ranting at my man. The same phrase repeated itself over and over in my mind, ‘What have we done? What have we done?’. It’s still difficult to take it all in, and I’m not sure I have yet, but I have never felt so sobered.
I’d like to thank you and Tim for making What a Way to Go - it really brought a lot of information together in a way that needs to be done. I’ve done a lot of reading over the years, but this has helped all that gathered information to gel. It’s also fuelled my long-standing desire to live differently. And we’ve started talking to others - many don’t listen, but a few are asking questions. It’s a start.
We have many challenges ahead; it’s time to get to work on them.
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:35 pm
ive realized that were doomed years ago. i figure around 2030-40 is when itll all start to really unravel and its why i decided to not have kids. what i dont understand is why im saving my money instead of spending it traveling the world to see it before its gone.
March 3rd, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Wait, so are we past the tipping point or not?
If so, then who cares? If we are “over the hump”, then there is no point in stopping now. We may as well enjoy these last few precious years.
If not, then what’s the rush? If the tipping point is somewhere in the future, then we can safely proceed (and maybe come up with some alternatives) unless and until we reach that point.
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Thankyou thankyou thankyou for writing this blog. I first broke through denial about a year ago and I have been watching my friends have their first glimpses of it. Since then, I have tried creating a blog about global warming, not with hopeful science articles but to address the feelings of loss that people are going through. Truly I would like something more participatory, like a webforum. But then I think of Audrey Lordes, “We will never use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.” Who am I kidding? The internet would be impossible without the huge carbon footprint that I am accustomed to. But then, what else is there _to_ do? Even if I started living like a hunter-gatherer, my singular actions would not be enough. The entire world has to change. But who will start? Its a chicken-or-egg situation.
BTW, I recommend Derrick Jensen’s _Endgame_ for all breaking through denial. It was very helpful to me.
March 7th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
The Path:Localization; and communication with other localizing groups (Relocalize.net, AcresUSA.com, urban agriculture, local currencies, do the searches, you’ll find a place to start. This isn’t the only place that people are worried). The Goal: Net Creativity; where either individually, locally, or collectively (not necessarily always or all at the same time), we create more future usefulness for our children than we consume in resources. Food, music, art, technology, love are all usefulness.
The Method: Walk over to your neighbor with a pie and start talking about what the kids will be doing when the oil runs out (5 years ago, you would have been laughed at, but not anymore. Climate change can be left out for the time being because the economy crashing may do more than any intentional actions will).
The alternative: Give everyone a gun and tell them to shoot everyone they don’t like. Everyone will either end up a better neighbor or a better shot. Both are useful skills, but it’s a harsh way to live if you want to trust and be trusted by your neighbors.
March 8th, 2008 at 12:03 am
Oh GOD Sally !!
How we need more people like you !!!
I can finally admit I feel scared - seriously.
I just thought I was AWOL : )
March 8th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Though I respect the sentiments the writer expresses here, very deeply as I come from a Native American family, I do not see any “reality” in it, at least, not the way I define reality. I see a personal mythology packed with alot of emotion. This type of expression has its place, but will do absolutely no good out in the real world. It will change nothing. Unless someone is personally effected by global warming or the energy crisis or the economic crisis, they will continue to be couch potatoes watching American Idol on their new big screen TV and ignore everything else. That’s reality. The next time you’re depressed about the state of the world, don’t weep, hit the woodpile with an axe and you can get therapy and make enough energy independence to keep the cabin warm for a whole weekend with 1/2 hours work. grow things, create things, invent things, build, work out, eat healthy, get enough fiber, construct, innovate, self rely, invest in your intellect, do not waste your time feeling sorry for the state of the world or for yourself…look around…look around…there’s still great beuty to be seen.