Climate Apocalypse Now

Fortunately, we have learned to be nice to people. It means that we do not dispute the jejeune opinions of members of victim groups.

So when the eminent New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, regales us with her deepest anxieties about the pending end of the world, when she shares her sense of irrevocable apocalyptic doom and confesses her feeling that she, for not doing enough to forestall the inevitable, is a “self-serving piece of shit” we feel compelled to assent.

If you have nothing else to torment yourself, if the obligations of being responsible for yourself and others are too much to bear, why not indulge a pathetic public freakout about the weather.

As it turns out, Tolentino has a male partner-- they are married but don’t you dare call him a husband-- and a baby. And yet, rather than care for the one or the other, she is having a nervous breakdown over the climate. Here, she describes it:

A couple of years ago, reading a climate report on my phone in the early hours of the morning, I went into a standard-issue emotional spiral thinking about it all. I woke up my boyfriend, seeking consolation; he took in my frenetic wheel-spinning and went back to sleep. The next morning, he drew up a list of thirty action items for us to consider, ranging from phone banking to ceasing international travel to committing eco-sabotage. There were tasks on the list that we had been doing for years—composting food waste, buying secondhand—but many that we had never considered. We had also recently had a baby, whose carbon footprint likely already exceeded that of entire villages in Burundi. I was playing whack-a-mole with my consumer desires. Every day, I felt like a self-serving piece of shit.

Forget, for an instant, about Tolentino’s consumer desires. Forget about her responsibilities toward her baby. What really matters is-- the villages in Burundi. You might not have known it, but now you do. And you have no excuse for not caring about Burundi.

This thinking sounds like it came straight out of middle school; it is just that pathetic.

So, deeply distressed about the weather, Tolentino goes looking for therapists. And she finds a man who had a nervous breakdown over climate change and who found a therapist who helped him to get over it. You will be amazed to discover that said therapist told the young man to give it all a rest. In short, to get out of his mind and into his life. The advice worked wonders. But, it does nothing for the smelts, so Tolentino dismisses it.

Tolentino explains that the right kind of therapist will counsel action, like the climate change activists who stopped traffic in Great Britain the other day, making it impossible for a young mother to take her sick baby to the hospital.

I was drawn to the idea that the right kind of therapist could channel such emotions in a way that prompted serious and sustained efforts to combat climate change. I was also wary of the possibility that a therapist would simply dispel those feelings, helping me to feel more calm about a world on fire. If the goal is for the planet to remain habitable into the next century, what is the right degree of panic, and how do you bear it?

Amazingly, licensed therapists arrive at a state of total conviction, not only about the fact that the climate is changing, and that the world is coming to an end, but that human beings are at fault. They even consider themselves to be eminently qualified to formulate opinions about atmospheric physics.

Leslie Davenport, a licensed therapist in Washington State, is a pioneer in the climate-therapy field. In the nineteen-eighties, she became anxious about what was happening to the planet, and did things to allay that anxiety: she signed petitions, she searched for environmental organizations that she could support. Then it occurred to her that climate change was caused by human behavior, and human behavior was her field of expertise.

So, climate change is caused by human beings, this being the epiphany that visited a woman who knows nothing about the climate or about physics. She has no qualifications in the field, but since she belongs to an oppressed minority group, we are obliged to accept her views as gospel.

Serious climate scientists, like Richard Lindzen, emeritus of MIT and William Happer, emeritus of Princeton, disagree with her. Who has more credibility on the subject? Link here.

We will ignore Davenport’s counsel, because if she thinks she is an expert on atmospheric physics, she needs some serious help. 

More importantly, she is describing an epiphany, one that corresponds to the larger freakouts sustained by Tolentino and her ilk. An epiphany is a religious experience, one that does not turn her toward God, but that makes her a cult follower of the Goddess of the Planet.

Tolentino is not describing therapy. She is not discussing how she can be a better mother or how she can better conduct her life. She does not even consider how she can be a better wife, because she, a married woman, considers herself a partner, not a wife. Climate science has taught her that she is a worthless piece of shit, so we can certainly agree that it has not enhanced her self-esteem.

From the depths of her atmospheric despair she wants to find solace in joining a cult, no more or no less. It supersedes all other duties and obligations. She has offended the Goddess and the angry Goddess will destroy all of us.

So, Tolentino recounts the sad story of an Alaskan whose community livelihood was wiped out by the catastrophe of the Exxon Valdez. That this was caused by human error, not by greenhouse gasses, does not cross anyone's mind.

He does not consider how to rebuild his community, but, he decides to consult with his ancestors. Ancestor worship, a staple of pagan religions leads you back to polytheism. 

You have to read it to believe it.

One rainy day, after the Exxon Valdez disaster, Lankard went down to Eyak Lake and, “ranting and raving,” asked his ancestors for guidance—for a green arrow toward becoming an activist. After an hour, the drizzle stopped and the northern lights emerged, chartreuse. Lankard went on to found multiple nonprofits, including the Native Conservancy, the first Indigenous-led land trust in the States. 

As for Tolentino, she is sure that the goddess will punish us in the end.

It may be impossible to seriously consider the reality of climate change for longer than ninety seconds without feeling depressed, angry, guilty, grief-stricken, or simply insane. The earth has warmed about 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit since pre-industrial times, and the damage is irreparable. Vast zones of hypoxic water expand in the oceans; wild bees, fireflies, and birds are disappearing; one study suggests that around half of trees currently alive will be dead in forty years.

By a new definition of insanity does not lie in continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result. It lies in the belief that we know to a certainty what is going to happen tomorrow.

As any serious scientist can tell you, there is no such thing as a scientific fact about tomorrow. And besides, climate fanatics like Tolentino do not for an instant consider the cost of shutting down the energy grid and plunging the world into darkness. She and her ilk do not consider what will happen to the baby who cannot go to the hospital because a band of fanatics is stopping traffic.

We ought to throw some serious doubt on people who insist that they possess absolute incontestable truth. For the record, and as you know already, science is based on skepticism. Incontrovertible truths are religious dogma. 

The real story lies in the fact that certain adults are grooming young people and are forcing them to have nervous breakdowns. These dogmatic beliefs can never be tested against reality, so you must take them as gospel truth. If you disagree the Goddess of the Planet will punish you severely.

In a commentary on Tolentino’s screed (via Maggie's Farm), Lisa Schiffren writes this:

Moreover: stop repeating overwrought tales of doom to an impressionable young people. Do not let your contributors write things like, “The ice sheets keep melting, the permafrost keeps releasing its methane, and the future continues to harden into a psychic zone of suffering and dread. By mid-century, hundreds of millions of people will be displaced because of global warming." No wonder "a 2021 survey of Gen Z-ers [found that] fifty-six percent agreed that 'humanity is doomed'.” That's what they've been taught since early childhood! The blame for their depression falls squarely on their teachers and the media for propagating this deception. It's deeply irresponsible.

To say the least.

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