How should we think about the end of the world as we know it?

In the 14th century, the Italian poet Petrarch wrote a letter to a friend in Avignon, describing his feeling of “harbinger” after an earthquake shook the foundations of Rome’s churches. “What should I do first, lament or fear?” Asked. “Everywhere there is a reason for fear, and everywhere there is a reason for sadness.”

The earthquake was only one of a series of misfortunes that the poet had suffered up to that point: floods, storms, fires, wars and finally, “a plague from heaven unparalleled through the ages”, the dreaded Black Death, which would eventually kill more than a third of Europe’s population.

In his letter, Petrarch was troubled by the suffering of the present, but equally concerned about what it meant for the future. His concerns were “not only about shaking the earth but its effect on minds”.

Six hundred years after Petrarch grappled with the horrific convulsions of his time, the impact of the cataclysm on minds has been the subject of several new articles published in the past few weeks by the New York Times, the Washington Post and New York Magazine. Some of them are concerned with the end of the world as we know it. They address a question at the heart of our collective ability to confront an existential threat: How should we think about – and through – the global catastrophe that is climate change?

After years of sea level rise, rising temperatures, and mass extinctions, why has this question surfaced on the surface of American culture now? For perspective, asked Elizabeth Weil, whose essay “How We Live in Disaster” appeared in New York Magazine last week. She believes the outburst of writing on the subject is connected to the increasingly destructive severe weather of the 1920s. “The idea that we weren’t really in the midst of a climate crisis has just faded,” she said. “You can’t deny it anymore.”

Since 2020, the Doomsday Hour has moved closer to midnight. We are at a moment that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists describes as “perilous and unsustainable,” listing among its causes for concern the fallout from the climate crisis, fears of nuclear war in Ukraine, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Regarding climate change, the scientists’ judgment of humanity’s response is “a lot of words, relatively little action,” an assessment that the negotiations at COP27 did little to prove wrong.

Ranking climate change second on his list of the “Top 10 Existential Fears,” The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach admits he’s a “cautious optimist,” positing that how you think about existential threats stems from your belief in humanity — or a lack of it. “Do you fundamentally believe in the human race?” Asked.

In his book Behind the Catastrophe in The Times, David Wallace-Wells also finds reasons for optimism in 2022. Aided by newly cheap renewable energy and “true global political mobilization,” Wallace-Wells envisions a “new climate reality” for humanity and the planet that will not make it The truth of the “most terrifying predictions” and not the “most optimistic”.

In her article, Weil consults activists and scholars, looking for strategies others have used when facing past disasters. “This is not the first time in human history when the world has been completely overwhelmed,” she said of her reasons for writing the article. (Petrarch agrees: he describes the late 1440s as a period of such misery that “no new forms of evil can be conceived”).

Weill’s article deals with the “intelligent vandalism” advocated by thinkers such as the Swedish environmental Marxist Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, as well as the “tools of religion” put forth by ecophilosopher Timothy Morton, and the “ritual comfort” of performing such as the funeral of a glacier It was organized by anthropologists Simien Howe and Dominique Boyer in Iceland in 2019. They installed a plaque titled “A Letter to the Future” with this message:

This monument is recognition

We know what’s going on

And what to do.

Only you know if we do.

Knowing what to do is one thing; Having the will to do so is another. We are not witnessing this catastrophe in the same way or at the same pace. Some of us are still in the anger and bargaining stages of climate grief, while others are beyond acceptance.

On a trip to Iceland in August, I stood on the edge of an aquamarine lake fed by melting Braamerkorjukull glacier. Icebergs—glittering shards that had broken off from the dying glacier—float upon, with volcanic ash, a record of Iceland’s ancient volcanic eruptions. I asked some Icelanders who were working there as tour guides how they felt about this place. The scene for me was amazing and tragic. The lake exists as such due to climate change, and despite its dazzling beauty, it is also a disturbing omen. But Icelanders didn’t see it the way I did, perhaps because in their country it had long been impossible to ignore how quickly the fabric of the natural world was being torn apart. They don’t have the luxury of being shocked. Watching the crowds of tourists snapping pictures of a seal frolicking in the water, they reacted stoically. “That’s the way it is,” someone said.

The truth about disaster is that even in its turbulent midst, we mostly move on, letting go of our terror. We adapt, rebuild, and convince ourselves that the fate of our neighbors will not befall us. When everything familiar around us crumbles, our first instinct is often to cling to whatever scraps of normal life are left. You can clearly see this instinct in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic; Around the world, panic quickly turned into grim routine.

On the other hand, as Weil points out in her article, there is nothing irrational about disaster when you are living through a real disaster. “Yeah, it’s a disaster,” she wrote. “And no, you’re not going to be any better off if you keep telling yourself otherwise.” In order to avoid the dangers of denial and despair, we will need to chart a practical course across the murky abyss that lies between optimism and doom. We have to live with hope, Will said. “And we have to live with a lot of fear.” To safely evacuate a burning building and put out the fire, you need to report an emergency; You also need to project confidence and encourage calmness.

This is another way to think about disaster: seek solace in the clarity of the work. Weil tells of Günther Anders’ re-imagining of the Great Flood, in which Noah appeared before the people in mourning dress, telling them that they were already dead because a total catastrophe would soon befall them. That night, a carpenter comes to his workshop and offers to build an ark so that “Noah’s terrible vision will turn out to be wrong.” A future that seemed destined to be changed through action.

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Anders’ story is like a common saying that warns against the folly of relying on faith only when you are in danger. “Pray to God, but stay off the rocks,” is one version in English, though similar warnings exist in other languages ​​and cultures. Faith in the human spirit may be a necessary balm to the mind in the event of disaster, but balm alone cannot save us from ourselves. Hope without action is just a wish.

In other letters from Petrarch, he comforts his correspondent with a quote from Virgil. He writes: “Hold on, and seek salvation in the hope of better things.” Our hopes for the future should not rest on preserving the fractured and unequal status quo. “Change is scary, and big change is really scary, but our world isn’t perfect. It’s very, very, very far from that,” Will said in our interview. “What if change really leads us to a better place? Although we are terrified? “

Also common

A new study finds that populations of sand dollars, sea biscuits and heart urchins, vital inhabitants of the Florida Keys’ coastal ecosystems, have remained “relatively stable” since the 1960s. This was true even as fish, corals, seaweed, and manatees declined in the area. The researchers don’t know why hedgehogs survive in greater numbers, but speculated that it might be because “they are not of commercial or recreational interest” to people.

Climate scientist and activist Peter Kalmos has been arrested at an airport facility for private jets in North Carolina, in an effort to raise awareness about climate change and fossil fuel emissions. This is the second time this year that he has been arrested for protesting. “It feels so weird to be doing this, and it got to this point,” Kalmos said. “I feel despair.”

In Israel, scientists are building a seed bank for wild crops in the hope that this genetic material will contain solutions to the growing problems of climate change and agriculture. Experts are especially eager to collect seeds in this region because it was once part of the Fertile Crescent, and has a history of cultivation that stretches back 10,000 years. Plants that were once domesticated and now grow wild have had many generations to adapt to changing conditions.

Kelly Pence is a writer and journalist whose work has previously been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Believer, and elsewhere.

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