

But talking about death is a big no-no in environmental circles—not to mention our wider culture. There is an incredible amount of resistance within the climate movement to any message which might provoke despair. In fact, some climate scientists have been encouraged to soft-pedal their findings due to the fear that, if the hard truth about climate change were widely known, people would just give up.

Despair is a cardinal sin among climate activists. Activists (myself included) resort to all sorts of strategies for avoiding acknowledging how hopeless our situation is:

Denial: Climate activists have our own form of denial. We don’t deny that climate change is happening, but we deny what it means—the inevitable death of human civilization and possibly the human species.

Anger: Plenty of justifiable anger is on display in climate demonstrations, usually directed at the fossil fuel industry or policy makers. I wonder how much of our anger is a cover, a way of avoiding our own complicity, and way of staving off a creeping feeling of despair.

Bargaining: The idea that we can replace fossil fuels with renewable energy without a corresponding decrease in human consumption is a form of bargaining, and most climate activists (myself included) are guilty of it.

All of these strategies are employed to avoid despair. But eventually, some of us work through these stages of grief and arrive at depression. We despair.

The Yoga of Despair

“Some will be afraid of this knowledge, witchcraft should be liberated by it, liberated from petty concerns to pursue lives of beauty, liberated from the sleepwalking into death that our culture has made for us and our children. So I counsel, confront death.” — Peter Grey, “Rewilding Witchcraft”

Here’s the thing though. As someone who is going through this process now, I can tell you, despair isn’t as bad as it seems from the other side. For one thing, there is a kind of clarity which comes with despair. A sense of peace settles. Priorities come into focus. And, strangely, a new feeling of power emerges out of surrender—not the power over nature, with which we are so familiar, but rather power with nature.

Father Bede Grfiiths says despair is a yoga. A “yoga”, in this sense, means a path or method of enlightenment or awareness. The idea of despair as a path to enlightenment is pretty foreign to most people in the West. Most activists equate despair with paralysis. People avoid it, suppress it, medicate it. But there is a wisdom to be found in despair.

Imagine a patient who is given a terminal diagnosis. There are many ways a person might respond to the news. They may pass through some or all of the stages of grief. They may search desperately for miracle cures. Or they may despair. They may give up hope of survival. But some of those who give up may discover a new peace. They may decide that they want to live more meaningfully and intensely with the life they have left. They may decide to focus on healing their relationships with others or fostering new ones. They may devote their time and resources to creating a legacy for the next generation.

We have been given a terminal diagnosis for our civilization, and quite possibly our species. As Peter Grey has written, “The inevitability of our physical deaths is now being played out on a planetary scale.” Despair is a natural response to this news. But despair is not something to be avoided. Despair is a teacher. Despair teaches us about our limitations. Despair teaches us where we belong. Despair teaches us what matters most. Despair teaches us how to live.

Shaun Chamberlin’s experience of despair, which he writes about on his blog Dark Optimism, is illustrative:

“… the harsh truth is that I cannot save Nature and/or humanity from the ongoing devastation, though I could burn myself out trying. … And facing that reality hurts. “But, beyond agony, joy. “I sit with that pain, and its attendant tears and rage, I refuse to run from it or to distract myself with entertainment or with frantic work, and I find that it does not end me. “Eventually, I come out the other side, somehow empowered. The psychic energy I have been using to suppress that fear and despair is released, and I look at the world with fresh eyes. “‘Ok’, I breathe, ‘here I am, in a dying world’. It’s the same dying world I lived in yesterday, but today I see it for what it is. ‘What now?’ “And this time the question feels less desperate, less anxious. What story do I want to tell with this day, with this life? The question is suddenly filled with possibilities. “The knowledge that we are all going to die becomes liberating, rather than oppressive. … “And then maybe, yes, I decide to spend my time trying to preserve dying species, to right injustices, to create more joy and wonder, maybe even to work for reform or revolution—maybe those are the stories I want my life to tell. But now it comes from such a different energy; from a deeper wellspring. Maybe that new energy will even bring other stories, other possibilities? But certainly it banishes the sense of desperate obligation, the futility and frustration, and leaves the simple expression of who and what I am. “There is no fear of burn out, for now I am doing and being exactly what I choose at every moment. No, the impossible struggle towards sustainability is not what I’m here to do, but for now, maybe it is what the thing that I’m here to do looks like, from the outside.”

Another End of the world is possible