Please Tell Me I'm Wrong

My kids recently revealed to me that they have been deeply scarred by my frequent, casual references, throughout their childhoods, to the coming of the apocalypse. "We’re out of shaving gel," I’ll say. "Well, I guess it’s good practice for when the apocalypse comes." Or: "Did you hear Linda’s learning how to make mead in her garage? That’ll come in handy after the apocalypse!" 

Of course I'm kidding when I say stuff like this. Kind of.

Jason Robards in "The Day After," the
1983 TV movie that traumatized a generation.

Like many of you, I grew up under the constant threat of annihilation, knowing that at any moment we could all be vaporized by Soviet missiles. The baby boomers before us were raised on the (now laughable) notion that if you curled up under your desk when the big flash came, you could survive a nuclear attack. By the time I came of age, the whole "Duck and Cover" facade had crumbled, revealing the horrors of "The Day After." Most of us were pretty clear that we would rather not survive that first strike, even if it were possible to do so. (My own plan was to run as fast as I could toward the incoming missiles and stand directly under them.) 

Lately it's hitting me hard that the apocalypse we are facing now is qualitatively different from the apocalypse of my youth. I've often reassured my kids -- and myself -- that if humankind managed to avert a global nuclear holocaust after decades of preparing for it with all its might, there's at least some chance we'll find a way to sidestep global warming too.

Here's the thing, though: all Reagan and Gorbechev had to do to avoid destroying the planet by launching thousands of nuclear weapons at each other was -- wait for it -- NOT launch thousands of nuclear weapons at each other. We might have been "two minutes to midnight" for my entire adolescence, but the moment we turned away from that path, the clock started ticking backwards. Yes, we had pissed away billions of dollars we could have spent on schools or renewable energy -- or ice cream, for that matter. And sure, we still face the challenge of safely "disposing" of all those useless weapons, not to mention millions of gallons of radioactive toxins buried in leaky storage tanks at Hanford. But we're still here, more or less intact, our day-to-day existence uninterrupted.

Global warming is a different matter, I'm afraid. Scientists agree that a "safe" level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is something in the neighborhood of 350 parts per million. Well, we're at 397 parts per million now and climbing, in what looks to be a self-escalating spiral. Even if everyone on the planet stopped burning fossil fuels at dawn tomorrow, the effects of what we've burned so far would build for at least another generation. We can still change course, I guess -- and we should probably try. But it won't stop the apocalypse.

Some people don't want to believe any of this is really happening, of course. In a recent Stranger cover story, Dan Savage likens the situation to the early years of the AIDS crisis. In response to gloating right-wing Christians, who crowed that the disease was "nature's retribution" for their "unnatural" sexual behavior, many gay men refused to believe the scientists who said AIDS was sexually transmitted. They reviled activists who tried to hand out condoms. People actually spat on Randy Shilts, the gay journalist who argued that San Francisco's bathhouses (where unprotected sex with multiple partners was the norm) should be closed. Says Savage:

Insisting that it wasn't true -- insisting that AIDS couldn't be sexually transmitted, or insisting that AIDS wasn't that serious because "only" 1,500 gay men were sick in the summer of 1983 -- didn't prevent a pandemic. It was true. It was deadly serious. We would have to live very differently if we wanted to survive in this world. We would have to fight back. We would have to transform ourselves sexually, socially, and politically. And we did that, all of that, but precious time was wasted before gay men began to make the changes that had to be made, and countless lives were lost as a result of the denial and delay that paralyzed us in 1983. 

Now, I know it's way past time for us to sideline the climate deniers who have cost us so much precious time. (Hell, it may be time to wrap them up in straightjackets and lock them away where they can't do any more harm.) But I don't blame them -- or those terrified gay men -- for not wanting to face the fact that life as they know it is ending. Plenty of people who accept the reality of human-fueled global warming find other ways to keep its unthinkable consequences at bay. I myself often cling to the illusion that I'm "making a difference" by taking the bus to work with my travel mug of organic coffee, or by firing off the occasional e-mail about coal trains and fracking. Frankly, some days this illusion is the only thing that allows me to get out of bed in the morning and tackle my to-do list, instead of spending the day curled up in the bathtub nursing a bottle of gin. Unfortunately, it's also contributing to our collective failure to make the radical structural changes that might have averted the coming disaster. 

Bridging this emotional disconnect is the focus of an upcoming film called "Midway," by photographer Chris Jordan. You might know Jordan from his series "Running the Numbers," in which he turns grim environmental statistics into giant compelling images, so we actually see the scale of human activity and its effect on the planet. The new film is about the albatrosses of Midway Island, and Jordan discussed the project at length at a recent event at Town Hall. 

Chris Jordan's Midway project documents
albatrosses on Midway Island who are dying
by the thousands, full of plastic. 

It seems the remote ocean waters where these gentle birds find their food are clogged with the floating remains of our disposable consumer culture -- bottle caps, tooth brushes, syringes, and so on -- and the adult albatrosses are inadvertently feeding this stuff to their babies, who are dying by the thousands. Jordan has been filming the birds since 2009: their mating dances, parenting practices, daily lives, and painful deaths. And he is photographing their corpses, each one opened up to reveal the brightly-colored collection of garbage the bird has consumed. 

Jordan is an artist, not an activist. He's not trying to rally a Save the Albatross movement, or start a campaign to clean up the world's oceans.  He presents the albatrosses of Midway island as a metaphor: a brutal, poignant, devastating message from a dying planet. He's still figuring out where exactly that message leads us: the talk was as much a description of his own (clearly unfinished) spiritual journey as anything else. But he believes the only path forward is one where we face our fear head on and walk further into our despair, instead of walling ourselves off from these painful feelings. He says if we can fully embrace both the indescribable beauty of our world, and the horror of what we’ve done to it, our grief will open us up to how much we love what we are losing. And love, he believes, is the key to change. As the film’s trailer asks: "Can we allow ourselves to feel deeply enough that it transforms us and our future?" 

It may be that fully experiencing our grief is a necessary condition of transformation, but I’m not sure it’s sufficient on its own. I left Town Hall that night in a sorrowful daze: unable to put my blinders back on, but equally unable to imagine how the path through fear and horror and grief would eventually lead us to action of any kind. It seemed like many of us would probably stall out somewhere along the trail and head back to our bathtub gin, or back to the bathhouses to pack as much pleasure as possible into our remaining time on earth. Even if everybody did achieve the kind of spiritual transformation Chris Jordan seems to be undergoing, the result could well be a kind of global apocalyptic cult, with thousands of people praying and weeping together on the beaches of the world, drawing mandalas in the sand, trying to get right with God while we wait for the end. Which may be where I end up -- there are worse ways to go, after all. But it's not exactly what you'd call Plan A, is it?

In 2008 Tim DeChristopher disrupted a
drilling rights auction in Utah by bidding on,  
and winning, all the parcels. The entire 
auction was later declared illegitimate by
the incoming Obama administration, but
DeChristopher served two years in
federal prison. 

I was still thinking about Chris Jordan and his albatrosses when I watched "Bidder 70," a documentary about Tim DeChristopher, a the climate activist who disrupted a drilling rights auction by entering as a bidder and winning all the parcels. There’s this moment in the film where DeChristopher and environmental scientist Terry Root are recalling an intense conversation they had after Root presented the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to an audience in Utah. Says DeChristpher:

It looked like the IPCC couldn’t find any possible scenario in which we avoided all the worst case consequences of climate change. And I said, 'So what am I missing here?' And you said, 'You’re not missing a thing. There are things we could have done in the eighties and things we could have done in the nineties, but I really think it’s too late.' I remember you put your hand on my shoulder and you said 'I'm sorry. My generation failed yours.' 

"We did," Root nods solemnly. "We did, and we have!"

"To have a Nobel Prize winner say it was too late for me to protect my own future, it shook me to the core. I went outside the hotel and I cried. I mourned for my own future. I mourned for the future of all of us. I was totally shattered by that."

"Sorry," says Root, looking slightly shattered herself.

"No, but that was good!" says DeChristopher (a little shakily, perhaps, but we'll take him at his word). "It woke me up, it made me -- you know, it finally sank in all the way, how serious this was."

DeCrhistopher struggles with this devastating epiphany throughout the film. Sometimes he seems to deny Root’s conclusion that it’s too late: "What kept me going was the idea that there was still a chance. Maybe if none of the political plans on the table [are good enough] -- if Barack Obama’s plan isn’t good enough -- then we’ll have to find another way." 

Other times he’s bitter, defeated, only able to pull the most cynical sliver of hope out of his despair: "I know that we’re probably fucked. In all likelihood it’s probably far too late to defend anything close to a livable future. But the value in what we’re doing, is that we’re building this network of people willing to fight for a better world despite the odds. And when things fall apart that’s the kind of people we’re gonna need." (Full disclosure: this made me cry.)

In his best moments, DeChristopher makes it sound like the climate crisis is actually a tremendous opportunity: "If you look at the facts of the science and the political situation just now, it’s hard to not feel despair. But if you look at the movement of people who are starting to come together to fight back, it’s hard to not feel hope. Hope not just that we’re gonna survive, but that we’re gonna completely overhaul our system and create a more just world." 

In some ways it feels like DeChristopher has mapped out the missing leg of Chris Jordan’s journey -- the route from despair through love to action. When he raised his paddle at that auction, he wanted to protect the land he loved, sure. (He says at his trial that he was motivated in part by the sight of a friend standing in the back of the room, crying.) But he was also acting to expose the sneaky, greedy, unconscionable manner in which the government was distributing drilling rights on public lands. He was attacking the corrupt power structure that has failed to keep us safe from harm. 

The activists we meet in "Bidder 70" are connecting the dots in a way earlier generations of environmentalists didn't, and the picture that's emerging is a concrete vision of what "transforming our future" might look like. The environmental movement can no longer focus solely on wilderness and wildlife, saving whales and solar power. It has to become a struggle for justice, equality, and democracy as well. It has to be about making sure the people in power are accountable to the rest of us: that they’re making decisions with everyone’s long-term welfare in mind, not just their own bottom lines. It has to fight to give ordinary, vulnerable people -- those who will bear the brunt of the coming crisis –- a place at the table as we prepare to meet it. 

Of course, overhauling our system and creating a more just world are not simple tasks, even at the best of times. Courageous, tireless people have been working at this stuff relentlessly for many generations, with some notable successes and many, many setbacks. I find it hard to imagine -- as the seas rise and the crops wither in the fields, as freakish storms level whole towns and cripple vast cities, as resources dwindle and desperation spreads -- that the job will get any easier. 

Now, I have long embraced the idea that we need to make radical changes if we want to create a world where life is livable and meaningful for everyone. That said, I often struggle to maintain my belief that such progress is possible -- to hang on to that slender strand of hope, or faith, or whatever you want to call that mysterious force you draw upon to keep you going when (just for instance), public transportation gets slashed 17% and the Voting Rights Act is gutted and the women of Texas are reduced to heartsick screaming in the face of a brutal legislative assault. 

So you can see how I might find myself quailing at the prospect that we have to fight that grueling uphill battle -- not for a better world, not anymore -- but for a diminished, desperate one, more justly governed.

Poor and rich neighborhoods bordering each
other somewhere in India. My cousin Frank
 always says, "The apocalypse is personal; it's
already happening to some people." I think
about this every morning as I walk past the
mattresses lined up under the freeway on King
Street, and wave good morning to the
people waking up there.

A diminished, desperate world unjustly governed is even more terrifying, though. It's easy to see how it will play out: the rich and powerful will continue to isolate themselves in gated communities and private institutions, buying their way out of the inconveniences and hardships that steadily diminish everyone else's lives. This is nothing new, of course, but the trend will surely accelerate. I just heard about an app that summons a helicopter to whisk you away to the Hamptons, so you don’t have to sit in traffic. When things fall apart, you'd better believe that the people who killed the Kyoto Protocol will be far, far away -- sipping their stockpiled booze, sitting on a lifetime supply of antibiotics and batteries, leaving the rest of us to descend into chaos and cannibalism. Well, I'm quite clear that I don't want to live through that. 

So what's a weary, heartsick, grieving, quailing mother to do? Tim DeChristopher says, "It's really healing and healthy to be going all out, knowing that we're doing everything we can... Regardless of how hard it might be externally, internally it's really healing and peaceful to be engaged in that." Perhaps when I'm a little less of a mess, I'll be able to  think about what it might look like for me "to be going all out," and maybe find something to do that makes me feel that way. But right now the idea of looking my children in the eye and saying, "We did everything we could, kids -- too bad it wasn't enough!" honestly doesn't feel all that much better than saying, "My generation failed yours." 

The future was fraught enough when I was the kid, growing up in the shadow of The Bomb. We used to make these dumb jokes in high school: Should we bother to finish our geometry homework, or apply to college, or whatever -- when we could easily all be dead by morning? Mostly we opted to proceed as if our geometry homework mattered –- probably because we knew if it didn’t, nothing much else did either. 

Kids today can't make that all-or-nothing gamble; they're playing different odds. Geometry and college might still matter, but shouldn't they also be learning how to live on seaweed and raw squirrels?  If we want to prepare them for the road ahead, do we sign them up for solar engineering classes, or lessons in cave defense? 

I don't know what the future will bring, or how my children will cope with it when it comes. I'd like to imagine them among the survivors (and I'd give anything to know they'll be glad they made it, not marooned in the treehouse wishing a tsunami had put them out of their misery). I hope they'll be part of Tim DeChristopher's crew, that network of people "willing to fight for a better world despite the odds." We've tried to raise them up in that spirit, I think. 

I hope they'll have a strong community of loving people -- maybe even each other -- to help them through the dark times. Because dark times are coming, I'm afraid. I hope they'll have the creativity and patience to work out new ways of living on this fragile, damaged planet. And finally: I hope they'll have the courage and resiliency their mother has been unable to muster of late.