The Critical Difference Between Climate Doom-Saying and Despair

A nagging pain has a message for you

We have pain in the human body to tell us to do something.

It is the same with the earthly body. Nature is not scolding, destroying, punishing, or avenging our presence. She is simply warning us, a sort of reality therapy, approach.

With reality therapy, what we learn is to base our behavior on doing things in a way that align with avoiding negative consequences, and rewarding those behaviors that benefit the greater good.

Nature, above all else, does not play favorites.

It is how we know nature, and natural laws, don’t lie.

I am fond of saying that nature invented love, also parasitic wasps.

Nature’s habits, like facts themselves, do not care about your individual feelings. Whether Gaia, as a super-organism, “cares/regulates” is heavily debated, but either way, nature shows us when to act. We can perceive it when we note our physical response feelings of flight, flight, or freeze.

We project onto nature, or any other scapegoat, because that is our human nature. We must acknowledge this, too, and act on our very real responses.

We didn’t start the fire

Many environmentalists through the decades have been criticized for doom and gloom, “sky is falling” catastrophizing. They have also been criticized for not telling it like it is.

Things as complicated as pandemics are so multi-factorial, that it is not possible to know with certainty that ‘masks work’ without knowing the setting, the timing, the number and gender of people, the type of mask, the demographics, and much more.

So people react as though the ‘science got it wrong.”

However, with climate disruption, there are decades of data that say one simple, and straightforward message: burning too much carbon pollutes and raises global temperature overall.

The message is simple. The details, and effects however, are as complex as every organism on Earth.

The truth is that science is a process of discovery. Those who criticize ever-updated evidence do not fully understand that is how the process works. Science and technology tweaks are sort of like that old Oprah advice: when you know better, you do better.

But in the case of collective climate warming denial, there has been voluntary and largely unconscious, “not knowing better.”

With climate crisis, we had too many vested interests, and too many people just invested in the status quo, who did want to hear bad news.

As a result, we now have climate anxiety, climate despair, stress, conflict, and refugee issues, degradation of natural healing places, and great, great loss.

Doom-saying, for the venting of bad news is not helpful. It also can spread apathy. Despair, which is very real, is a sign of one’s humanity. If we are concerned, it displays one’s need to react.

We need to realize our negative emotions are real. We must acknowledge, and even embrace them in the same way one would of noticing a broken bone and getting help for it.

No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it

Fighting the fire is critical to our physical, mental, spiritual, and earthly health. We are disconnected to nature as a result of our over-indulgence in disposable life-styles, but we can use that knowledge, too, to do better.

Every time an article comes out about the present emergency, there is always a voice decrying the “doom and gloom.” It’s a form of renewable denial that seems indestructible in a way that finite things — like earthy resources — are not.

There are also voices that criticize optimism as being toxic. However, obeying our natural tendency — to want to do every single possible thing that we can — is the ultimate optimism. Cooperation, collaboration, creation, and constancy are our best tools. We must use them.

It is like paddling a sinking rowboat. Don’t criticize that action just because you want to go down whining about doom-saying, or even if you feel a need to complain about toxic positivity.

Reacting with alarm is natural, healthy and necessary. Reacting with actions, both tiny, and huge, is the most important reaction of all.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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