Whether or not the rainforest or taiga are burning or not (and they are, most of the time), most USAmericans go through their day without thinking once about climate change, especially its potentially destabilizing social and economic effects. The percentage of people who do so is probably around 1% of the population. So what's up with these “one-percenters” (that is, people like me)?
Possibly it's people who were raised in religious households, who imbibed stories of the Apocalypse from an early age, and then lost their faith. The psychological imprint of a vividly depicted "End of Days" is hard to erase, and easy to re-attach to similar scenarios produced by science (i.e., the study of physical reality). And an End of Days without the Millennium and the Last Judgment (in which you, the Chosen, will be resurrected body and soul) becomes a grim scenario indeed. Possibly it's people who dislike the state of the world as it is and so want it to end - perhaps as a kind of secular Last Judgment for our ecological sins, or a Deluge to erase everything and make the way for re-evolution. Possibly it's those few persons with an extraordinary adherence to reason, ability to face facts squarely and to assess the best practical actions to take to bring about the best possible outcome. If these people exist, they are not in politics. Or, possibly climate-change obsessors constitute a portion of the many, many people who suffer from chronic or recurrent depression. The theory of neurodiversity holds that the many neurological dispositions that we see as pathologies are in fact evolutionary adaptations. So perhaps depressives are the only ones who can see and admit how bad things are – the ones who sound the alarm or at least deal with nasty realities. Anyway, perhaps neurology explains why some of us can't look away from the train wreck – why, instead of insulating oneself from this baddest of bad news (as the neuronormative world does), depressives may seek it out, want to know the gory details. But then: what do you do with that? Put a depressive in the White House instead of a narcissistic sociopath, perhaps. Or maybe rationalize away all the doom and gloom as just another psychological symptom, rather than a legitimate reason for concern. Or maybe you write about it. In any case, a lot of writers are world-class depressives (or bipolar). In some cases, it was or is the source of their genius or inspiration. I wouldn't be surprised if Octavia Butler was or if Margaret Atwood is. But at what price? It is difficult, socially speaking, to depict things the way you see them – esp. in the U.S. – if you don’t “keep on the sunny side of life,” even if there ain’t much sunlight left. And if you are honest and tell the truth as you see it – especially if you aren’t funny – it will get you ignored, or even shunned. That’s why climate fiction has such a small audience – as do Extinction Rebellion and Sunrise. I’m guessing that Cassandra may not have been a seer, but just a depressive. She was right, of course; but look where it got her. Who wants to go down that road? Problem is, we may be hurtling down it anyway.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |