Yes, it’ll get worse
I’m always a bit annoyed when some ecoactivists are are all “Hope! Degrowth! The planet can heal!” without giving an honest time frame for that.
Like, even if we manage to end capitalism and degrow an all of that, the CO2 that’s already in the air will continue to heat up the planet for decades and the results of that will be with us for this century at the very least.
Yes, ecosystems can heal, yes, that’s worth fighting for. But it’ll get worse before it gets better and most of us won’t be there for the good parts. You can leave that out to spread “Hope”, but all that will do is make people optimistic for a short time only for them to feel hurt and betrayed when they figure out the truth.
An worse then feeling cheated our of a bright future, people acting on this false optimistic worldview won’t build the kind of support networks that we are going to need to survive our real future. Preparing for a more ecologically unstable earth must be part of our work, even as we continue to strive for the end of capitalism an a shift to a far more sustainable way of living.
Basically, if you’re trying to boost your movement this way, your eco-activism strategy is…ehhh.. unsustainable?
What are ways we can prepare for a more ecologically unstable Earth? I honestly don’t feel very hopeful that we’re going to overthrow capitalism in time and even if we do, like you said, the Earth is going to continue to heat up. Trying to find ways to cope with and prepare for that reality actually feel more hopeful and realistic to me and I’d love to learn about them.
There are a lot of things you can do, here’s a few:
Get into the habit of sharing stuff for free with others. We’re probably going to experience some forms of scarcity and when that happens, all we have is each other. Self-sufficiency is a myth, community self-sufficiency isn’t. Create neighborhood resources. A tool-sharing shed or a water filter for ground or rain water could make a difference here and now, but will also matter in the future. Advance mode: Start Mutual Aid collectives.
Learn first aid and other emergency medical skills. Whether your region is vulnerable to heat waves, wild fires, flooding, drought, extreme cold or electrical failures, there will be people in need of help an medical systems are unlikely to be able to cope with it all. Learning to take care of others is always useful, even if you’re lucky enough to not experience any disasters at all. Advanced mode: Start a DIY medicine collective or learn an advance skill like growing medicinal herbs or physical therapy.
Learn to break the law. As the crisis deepens, governments will let more and more people fall through the cracks. Refugees and undocumented people are likely to be the first targets but other minorities can be targetted too. Those people won’t be able to survive unless people are willing to break the law to get them housing, food, etc. Advanced mode: get experience breaking the law together and put it to work actually helping undocumented people.
Learn to support each other. Our mental health is as important as our physical health and to truly support each other we need more than good intentions. Learn psychological first aid, learn how to structurally support trauma survivors, people who are mourning, people struggling with depression and more. Advanced mode: start a Support & Recovery collective.
Work on building a community without discrimination and systematic injustice. All of the things to come will hit the most marginalized harder. We can only get through it together if our communities truly value everyone in it and we understand that an injury to one is an injury to all. Learn about systematic oppression, learn about privilege, learn about conflict resolution an mediation and put that to work in your community. Advanced mode: start a transformative justice collective.
… and more.
Important: don’t take on every burden, pick a few things you enjoy doing. None of us can do all of the above and none of us can single-highhandedly prepare our whole community for what is to come. Find a way you can support your community and trust that others will do the same.
@spidersleipnir Does this say that people become dismayed when they find out that the bright future they hope and work for may not happen in a short time frame and they may not live to see it? Doesn’t that suggest that the solution is to hope on behalf of future people who will be around to see it? It seems like forgetting those future people is kind of one of the various things that got us into this in the first place. Obviously it’s not as exciting but it doesn’t mean you should stop?
Valid question. My incomplete imperfect answer:
1. Yes, we should do things for the sake of people who live in the future, even hundreds of years from now, and when those things are ‘go vegan to the extend that your health allows’ and ‘stop flying’, those are reasonable things to ask. But activism tends to be a much bigger part of our life than that and very few people can really dedicate their whole life to a future for people they will never meet. And that’s sensible. We are not of less value than the people who come after us. We are allowed to consider the well being of ourselves and our own generation as well as the well being of people in the future.
2. When we are doing things for the sake of people in the future, we should be honest about that. Presenting life on a healed planet as something we can experience in our lifetimes - as some of the solar punk branch of climate activism does - is going to keep people motivated for a bit, but disillusioned later on.
3. We can not have a sustainable movement when we are overwhelmed by unprocessed climate despair. We need to process what is happening to our lives and mourn the safe stable future that we will not have. We can only do that by facing the reality of what our future is going to look like.
4. Probably the most important point: future generations won’t benefit from the better future if they’re dead. We can’t skip the challenge of surviving climate collapse and focus only on the far future. We have to prepare for surviving and minimizing suffering in the decades/century immediately in front of us. We have to prevent fascists from taking hold of a divided society or allow collapsing states to drag each other into a new world war. The better future for next generations can only become a reality if we build the kind of supportive and resilient communities that can make it through the dark times in front of us.
It should be mentioned that the ‘do it for future generations!’ narrative as used by some of the climate movement also allows them to focus on hypothetical white people while ignoring the immediate climate collapse experienced most acutely by people of color.
The question of ‘who survives to see this future?’ is very much one of race and geography and neo-colonial violence and borders.
If you’re not working on how people outside white-dominated countries (and minorities within white-dominated countries) are surviving climate collapse, then that ‘selfless’ focus on ‘future generations’ is kinda just for future white people.
