The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times(19)

“But aren’t we pushing nature to the breaking point? Isn’t there a point at which resilience becomes impossible, a point where the damage suffered is irreparable?” I asked Jane. I was thinking of our emissions of greenhouse gases that trap the heat of the sun and that have caused temperatures around the globe to rise already by 1.5 degrees Celsius. And this, in addition to habitat destruction, is contributing to the horrifying loss of biodiversity. A 2019 study published by the United Nations reports that species are going extinct tens to hundreds of times faster than would be natural and that a million species of animals and plants could become extinct in the next few decades as a result of human activity. We’ve already wiped out 60 percent of all mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles—scientists are calling it the “sixth great extinction.”

I shared these fears with Jane.

“It’s true,” she acknowledged. “There are indeed a lot of situations when nature seems to have been pushed to the breaking point by our destructive behavior.”

“Yet,” I said, “you still say you have hope in nature’s resilience. Honestly, the studies and projections about the future of our planet are so grim. Is it really possible for nature to survive this onslaught of human devastation?”

“Actually, Doug, this is exactly why writing this book is so important. I meet so many people, including those who have worked to protect nature, who have lost all hope. They see places they have loved destroyed, projects they have worked on fail, efforts to save an area of wildlife overturned because governments and businesses put short-term gain, immediate profit, before protecting the environment for future generations. And because of all this there are more and more people of all ages who are feeling anxious and sometimes deeply depressed because of what they know is happening.”

“There’s a term for it,” I said. “Eco-grief.”





Eco-Grief



“I read a report by the American Psychological Association,” I continued, “that found that the climate crisis can cause people to experience a whole range of feelings including helplessness, depression, fear, fatalism, resignation, and what they are now calling eco-grief or eco-anxiety.”

“Fear, sadness, and anger are all very natural reactions to the reality of what is happening,” Jane said. “And any discussion of hope would be incomplete without admitting the horrible harm we have inflicted on the natural world and addressing the real pain and suffering people are feeling as they witness the enormous losses that are occurring.”

“Do you ever experience eco-grief?” I asked Jane.

“Quite often, and sometimes perhaps more intensely than others. I remember one spring day about ten years ago I stood with Inuit elders by the great ice cliff in Greenland and watched as water cascaded down and icebergs calved. The Inuit elders said that when they were young the ice there never melted, even in the summer. Yet it was late winter. They were weeping. That was when the reality of climate change hit me viscerally. And I felt pain in my heart for the plight of the polar bears as I watched rafts of ice floating where the ice sheet should have been firm and hard.”

Jane’s face was grim as she remembered the experience. “I flew from there to Panama,” she continued, “where I met some of the indigenous people who’d already been moved off their islands because the sea levels were rising from the melting ice and warming water. They’d had to leave because at high tide their homes were endangered. Those two experiences, so close together, made a profound impact on me.”

“It affects us viscerally when we see the places we love forever changed or destroyed,” I said.

“We’ve also had enormous wildfires rage across Australia, the Amazon, the American West, and even in the Arctic Circle,” Jane said. “It’s impossible not to grieve for the harm we have inflicted, the suffering of people and wildlife alike.”

It was just nine months after this conversation that the worst wildfire season in modern history began in California and other parts of the world. Over ten thousand fires burned four million acres or 4 percent of the entire state of California. One wildfire came within ten miles of where I now live in Santa Cruz. Almost a thousand families lost their homes in our area alone. For weeks on end the air was unbreathable; and on one particularly apocalyptic day, the sky remained dark and the sun never managed to break through the particulate-polluted sky. Touring the forests after the fire was like visiting an ash-covered, gray moonscape.

“I’ve spoken to someone,” I said, “who has great insight into how we can confront and heal our grief.”

I told Jane about Ashlee Cunsolo, who works with Inuit communities in Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada, who have been impacted by climate change. She was interviewing the communities about all they were losing—the ice that was breaking up; the temperatures that were rising; the plants and animals that were changing; and in many ways, an entire way of life that was disappearing.

“Cunsolo was hearing all these stories of despair and trying to write them up in her dissertation when she began experiencing radiating nerve pain in her arms and hands. The pain was so severe that she couldn’t type or work.

“She went to all the medical specialists, but they could not find anything wrong with her nerves. Finally, she went to one of the Inuit elders and he told her, ‘You’re not letting go of your grief. Your body is stopping you from typing because you’re intellectualizing it, not feeling it. Until you get it out of your body, your body won’t function.’ He told her she had to make space for her grief and speak it. And she also had to find awe and joy every day.”