Grief

During a daytime drive after the election, I was hit by a familiar light, and it blinded me. The light is metaphorical, of course, and it came in the form of a resigned biologist talking about the inevitably of ecological and social collapse. Hearing this biologist on the darker side of a discussion about global warming didn't hit me as much as detonate the news about record warmth that has been coming in percussively year-after-year, and now month-after-month. The despair of this particular scientist, and his willingness to retire early and give up as an advocate sent me into a bit of a tailspin.

It was a familiar story.

I had heard something nearly as psyche shattering when I was an undergraduate taking a course in Environmental Ethics. The professor (Dr. Bowman, a professor of theology, and the yearly "Voice of God" in our Christmas Feast of Lights show) sketched out the scenario of runaway greenhouse effect, where life quickly becomes hellish, and every sort of human behavior is quickly unleashed under the stresses of ecological and social collapse. This was hour one of day one, and we were wrecked as a class. During the class break, we all left the class and stared out the windows at what seemed a doomed world. After the break, the professor told us "that's the worst-case scenario, and here are other possibilities." We were challenged throughout the semester to see how we could contribute to making sure the worst-case scenario didn't play out. Over the course of the semester, we set about planning a life of advocacy and activism.

This one despondent scientist drove me to the Internet to see if what he was saying is indeed true, and to my horror, I could neither fully confirm, nor confidently disprove his case. After poring through a wide range of both experts and dabblers, there emerged a range of expectations between full extinction by 2030 and gradual change over 100 years (complete skepticism was rejected). Alarmingly, I found other very smart scientists who have also dropped out of their practice because what they discovered was too alarming, and their attempts to communicate results ridiculed (being cast as Cassandras). Like my earlier seminar, I was left on the doorstop of the desperate scenario without assurances of the better possibilities.

This made for more than a few sleepless nights. It was only in the depths of my anxiety that I realized I had not only confronted this 25 years ago in a seminar, but that I had confronted this anxiety from other existential threats as a child in church and in bible study. In a sense, we all have to deal with our certain personal annihilation, and with the potential demise of life around us. We live in a tenuous web, and we are only certain to disconnect from it ourselves. Nothing else is guaranteed

This realization also forced me to recognize that facing my own demise exacts a responsibility for those around me. My limitations require me to account for how I spend my time, efforts, and attention. Knowing that changes--possibly terrible ones--sit on the horizon, made me recognize that I have lived in a bit of a comfortable blindness. As much as I hoped I could be back to the earlier beliefs, I couldn't. That earlier person was dead.

I needed to accept that fact, grieve for a period, and then move on. It was at that moment that I decided that following the hopeless scientists was not an option. Neither was following the steps of the optimist, or the extreme skeptic. Instead, I would need to find the environmental version of Pascal's wager. I had to find a path that I could believe in, no matter the scenario that unfolded--from rapid catastrophe to comfortable glide path.

Now that I have buried the person who considered our stewardship of this planet as a side-issue, I must hit the road of the person who has left familiar country, and who is on a journey to figure out how to live consonant with the values of a person who wants to care for the people, the animals, and plants and the planet that he has called home. I'm now a pilgrim creating a path that will connect my footsteps to a better future--whatever form that limited time may take.