Sad view from yesterday’s city walk: four cut-down trees, their stumps invoking #ClimateGrief in me… and yet, there is a strange beauty in this loss: admiration of the trees’ age, bright orange color, memory of their strength still lurking… and perverse wish for the VENGEANCE to be cast on those who wielded such destruction! #climateDiary#Amsterdam
It's amazing to imagine a forest of trees all bright orange on the inside, full of life, but dressed up in drab, grey-brown colours on the outside. As if camouflaged.
Reading an essay (in French) about millenials and gen Z. One of the chapters is about eco-anxiety and the fact that it is fuelled by inactions of older people.
Happy to see that it is not all-older-people
#ClimateDiary Normally I avoid reading things about #ClimateAnxiety or #ClimateGrief (maybe a form of denial?) but I did read this and am glad I did. All three tips spot on:
Build social cohesion, to help your community weather adversity
Dispel the silence about climate crisis with open discussion
Stay abreast of international issues and apply what you learn locally
It’s spurred me on to do more of all three! #ClimateAction
@pvonhellermannn i'm going to be getting my ham radio license too. mostly for (potential) disaster related reasons.
i'd also add that many US cities have community emergency response teams and will train people for free; you can learn all sorts of stuff.. like how to react if a building looks like it might collapse/light search and rescue, organizing, responding to casualty events, and CPR.
"Instead, if we accept the reality of #ClimateBreakdown, we have a chance to make amends and save as much of the natural world as possible while we still have a relatively intact society with the social order to get things done. Think orderly descent — powering down the global enterprise."
It's not the death of our hopes and dreams. It's the fact that we're not allowed to grieve it and move on. Imagine trying to grieve the loss of a friend or a parent when half of everyone you know won't even admit they're dead. Imagine you're stuck in a real-life version of Weekend at Bernie's.
Occasionally I am contacted by people who have severe climate anxiety (or climate depression). In my experience there is very often something else in the background going on. But I wonder if anyone on here has good resources to point people towards (other than psychological help) #ClimateAnxiety#KlimaAngst#KlimaDepression#ClimateDepression
I see people with climate anxiety a lot in my work, and sometimes in a clinical setting - my experience is also that there’s usually other things underneath when clinical help is needed, e.g. trauma, previous anxiety disorders
"[S]haring painful feelings with others energizes, nourishes and invigorates the participants – and brings to life humor and a sense of togetherness.
[W]hen people open up to the flow of their emotional experiences, which can include despair, sadness, guilt, rage, and fear, they feel as if a burden has been lifted from their shoulders. When we dare to test the depth of our pain, we realize that it is not bottomless."
"What amount of warming puts Greenland into irreversible loss? That's what will destroy all the coastal cities on earth. The answer is between 2 and 3 degrees."
A nice article on #ClimateGrief and the guy who said we are f*ed
Recently I catch myself becoming more and more fatigued not by the #climateAnxiety , but by the stubborn unwillingness of people to imagine any alternatives to our current course.
I get it, I am not a writer, my #writing is slow and subpar. I'm better at research, creating prompts and such.
It's just so disheartening to share all my work with yet another aspiring writer only to hear... "but I was thinking of a cyberpunk dystopia, but with an evil socialist twist this time!".
I absolutely get it, this is the current culture, the themes, hieroglyphs and symbols they're surrounded with, they know how to work with them.
What I share is not as attractive, it's alien and weird, hard to imagine.
So they world rather stick to what they know, where tensions are violent conflicts, where the good things about a given society must be devious lies hiding the governmental plots, where every human is evil and corrupt deep inside.
I hope that the @SolarpunkPrompts could help long-time, that the ideas will slowly spread, someone will try their hand at them better than I can.
In the meantime, I am taking a break from organizing Solarpunk writing contests and such, knowing well I don't have a good idea how to explain alternative visions to local writers in Poland.
I compiled everything I've done the last few years at https://solarpunk.pl/ , it's a resource we could link to, so I don't feel it's wasted.
dear #ClimateDiary this post https://hachyderm.io/@edsuom/110913820661600680 made me think about #ClimateGrief and how reading other peoples thoughts here helps me process that feeling that I had seasons with snow and my kids will have seasons with fire.
and how I am so unprepared to teach them what they will need to know.
just trying to build memories of outdoor activities now - while we still can.
A friend recently proposed that the reason my #therapy sessions have reached a plateau is because no therapist can address the existential dread and grief I feel for the planet & its inhabitants. No matter how you deal with your #ClimateEmotions, once your eyes have been opened, you cannot forget that every choice you make affects everyone else.
Yes there is existential dread and grief, but your choices have no effect (unless you have the power to choose to change human nature or to end capitalism of course.)
Abiogenesis... evolution... greed plus intelligence... capitalism... climate crisis...
I have kept up to date with the state of climate change research, multiple crises, ecological economics, social injustice and human rights thinking for many years.
My introduction here asks what I feel is the crucial question arising:
"Is there an ecological economic alternative to capitalist growth that can gain political traction?"
No answers forthcoming yet, so I am very keen to hear yours.
At the end of that post is a list (not for the faint-hearted) of the complex of interacting problems we face, a Gordian knot if you will. This awaits the new Alexander, a charismatic Eco-socialist hero.
There was previously no term for the feeling of desolation in the face of ongoing environmental destruction. Now in German there's #Solastalgie (from "solace", English, and -algie, Greek "pain").
You can also listen how to cope psychologically with #Klimaangst/ #Climateanxiety in this interview/podcast. (In German)
@theappletree heute habe ich ganz besonders schlimme #Solastalgie - und kann wie immer mit niemandem drueber sprechen, da man ja nicht immer Traurigkeit verbreiten will. Daher freue ich mich ueber deinen post, es ist immer ein Trost, wenn man weiss, dass es anderen - natuerlich - ganz genauso geht. #Maui
@pvonhellermannn Liebe Pauline, das tut mir sehr leid für dich. Du bist ja auch ein sehr emphatischer Mensch, da ist es oft besonders schlimm. Von den Beiträgen hier weißt du bestimmt auch, dass du mit deinen Gefühlen und Gedanken überhaupt nicht alleine bist. In dem Interview zu meinem Post geht es darum u.a. auch, dass Klimaaktivismus auch zu Traurigkeit führen kann, weil man sich ständig damit befasst, wie schlimm alles ist. So wie bei dir halt. Alles Gute und Stärke für dich!