On How We Cope (Or Not) With An Overwhelming World

Caring about our future doesn’t have to be a full-time job of heartbreak

Caring about our future doesn’t have to be a full-time job of heartbreak (created by author)

My social media feed has become a scrolling obituary. That’s what it amounts to, basically. There’s this unshakable impression that we’ve crossed some invisible line. The ice caps are melting, authoritarians are winning, privacy is vanishing, robots are learning, infrastructure is failing — somehow everything’s deteriorating and my grocery bill keeps climbing higher. It’s the lamest dystopia imaginable, the kind where you are still paying your student loans in your mid-30s.

We had the chance to prevent runway carbon emissions, but instead, we were manipulated into addiction. Now we might be past several climate tipping points. The planet’s already cooking in heatwaves and megafloods, and the only people still optimistic are the ones selling carbon offsets. It really feels like we’re witnessing the sixth mass extinction, but instead of dinosaurs and asteroids, we have Copernicus alerts showing new temperature records.

It’s totally understandable that doomscrolling disaster would make us want to hide under weighted blankets and never come out. If the planet were dying for lack of climate anxiety tweets, I’d rally my most cynical writer friends and we’d save the world by dinnertime. But if we’re truly headed toward a world of underwater cities and permanent “fire seasons,” who wouldn’t think to board a rocket to Mars?

Our desire for information depends on whether we expect good or bad news, or whether we win something or not (Source: Valuation of knowledge and ignorance in mesolimbic reward circuitry)

Well, that’s the stupidest thing I could do. Those “climate-proof bunkers” barely exist beyond flashy promotional videos and luxury real estate brochures. And even if they did, escaping while the planet burns instead of joining the movements that could actually change our trajectory is basically being a selfish prepper with extra steps.

Because if carbon emissions are pushing us past planetary boundaries, shouldn’t we be demanding systemic change instead of spaceships past the stratosphere? For people supposedly witnessing the collapse of ecosystems, our response has been less mobilize-and-transform and more doom-and-complain, panic-and-paralyze, like-and-forget… and catastrophize-and-carry-on.

Sun Day movement for a Sun-powered planet is refusing to stay watching from the sidelines. The means can be debatable; their will to mobilize and transform, certainly not. (Source: Sun Day)

Maybe climate change has finally outpaced our ability to respond (even though this system keeps selling us a techno-salvation fantasy), so people talk like we’re headed toward extinction. Yet the way they act and live and breathe is comically…consumerist business-as-usual. My father-in-law is experiencing his doomism phase, where every conversation has an “end-of-the-world” undertone to it. In the meantime, he just booked flights to Bali. “Yeah, so the planet is burning, the Arctic ice is basically gone, and we’ve got maybe ten-twenty years left before feedback loops make everything uninhabitable. Anyway, I just ordered this cute swimsuit for my surf-and-dive trip next month.”

Now, if the coasts are about to be underwater, why is everyone still buying beachfront property?

A Full-Time Job of Heartbreak