Britt Wray - Generation Dread : Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis

Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction

The emotional journey that comes with facing up to the environmental crisis can be very intense, disturbing, and extremely painful. Youll know this if you have ever cried upon reading that a species you love is going extinct. Or anticipated that youll soon lose a coastline you call home to the sea. Or witnessed livelihoods shrivel as year-on-year drought choked the land. It is stressful to live in fear of dangerous climate tipping points that, once surpassed, will unleash cascades of self-reinforcing environmental changefrom ice sheet disintegration to permafrost loss and dieback of the Amazonthat cannot be stopped or reversed. It is infuriating to learn that this was predicted and preventable but that a handful of powerful figures with entrenched interests knowingly and continuously sacrifice the future and peoples well-being for profit. It is haunting to connect the dots between imperialism, colonialism, genocide of Indigenous peoples, racial capitalism, industrialism, and extraction, and to reveal the shadowy footprints of these logics in the places where those who are most vulnerable to environmental traumas now dwell.

Swarms of people are waking up to a sense that, if nothing drastically changes, the fate of humanity will be like the Slinky pushed off the top stair, with no good structures in place to halt its energetic descent. Nothing could be further from what people want, but many feel powerless to stop this from happening, which has whipped up tidal waves of grief, anxiety, pessimism, and existential dread. The worst outcomes are not inevitable, and much can still be healedbut as emotions get bulldozed by world events and scientific predictions, the ability to create a more just and healthy world depends largely on how these difficult feelings are tended to. The young people who must confront the ill state of the planet theyve been handed, and the elders whose cries for environmental change have been disregarded for decades, are in an especially frustrating positionbut also a potentially powerful one, now that their voices are finally being heeded.

The artists at the Bureau of Linguistical Reality, who are coming up with new language to better describe our changing world, have named a quintessential sentiment of the times brokenrecordrecordbreaking: a recurring feeling of dj vu, quiet terror, and slow shock which is both acute and familiar that occurs when opening a newspaper, radio program or website and reading a headline that that year (month, season, day) has broken the record for the hottest on record. Many are struggling to stay afloat as we process the steady stream of scary environmental news that tells us things are unravelling even faster than scientists expected. Some lose themselves in activism, while others keep their distance or close their eyes just enough to pretend that the reality we face isnt nearly as bad as it is. For some whole communities who may be contending with the immediate practical threat of hurricanes, heatwaves, floods, rising sea levels, drought, or raging wildfires, closing ones eyes isnt an option. Increasingly, even for those far away from hazard zones, neither is taking the time to examine ones emotional response.

Over the last few years, especially but not exclusively in liberal circles, the term eco-anxiety has become all the rage. It describes a condition that robs sleep from those who, when all is dark and quiet, stir in thoughts of how uninhabitable the Earth will soon become. Tools are cropping up to help people cope with eco- and climate anxiety, grief, and a pervasive sense of powerlessness to halt natures destruction. Self-care guides, climate-conscious therapists, and a cottage industry of coaches have emerged to help folks grapple with ecological uncertainty, find community support, and focus on the pro-environmental actions they can take. But acknowledging and reckoning with difficult emotions is still not the norm, and mental health resources are cost-prohibitive or simply unavailable for many people who need them.

Too often, though, the conversation around eco-anxiety reveals its own amnesia. Only some of us are being forced to grapple with the threat of annihilationand the emotional weight this carriesfor the very first time. For so many people whove been marginalized, the oppressiveness of how bad things are is a tale as old as the hills. As a white, cis-gendered, economically secure woman, I have the luxury of dreading the future (in light of problems like climate change) while others already acutely fear the present, and have long been suffering for how they were treated by dominant power systems in the past. Unfortunately, the climate crisis creates a double injustice here, as the most marginalized, those who had the least to do with creating this messpredominantly poor people of colourare disproportionately harmed by a warming world.