I can’t get this out of my head: Atmospheric CO2 is almost at 400 ppm. Scientists estimate that the upper safe limit when climate won’t get changed dramatically is 350 ppm. I can tell how this is undermining my mood, something akin to the political depression Ann Cvetkovich names: A sense of hopelessness about being able to make a dent in the politics of oppression. As I pointed out in my Earth Day post, we are clearly not turning things around with all of our ecological activism (this post is the sister post of that post). It might be time to prepare rather than try to prevent.

And in the midst of all this despair, I want to just go dance. Hide from reality like the rest. It seems too overwhelming to do anything, everything I try too little, not worth the effort, the sacrifice. And then I get stuck because I also know that this is not exactly an ethical response. If I were to see a child run into a street while a car was approaching in a way making a collision very likely, I would not turn on dance music. I’d try to save the child. Well, I hope at least. So why is the prospect of billions of children’s lives in danger so paralyzing?

Cvetkovich suggests that we get stuck in depression because we cannot figure out a solution to the problem(s) that ail us (68). This rings particularly true to me right now as I cannot figure out what my role could be in this climate disaster (or the social one or the economic one) we’re starting to experience.

I learned last year that depression gets triggered when we ruminate on a problem that does not have a solution. My guess is that this is what I am doing. Instead of trying to find The Solution to these crises maybe I need to honor my wish to mourn. 400 ppm.

Cvetkovich points out the therapeutic ability of writing about our experience… Having put my despair “on paper” seems to have lifted it a bit… I am no longer holding it all in!

(This is a post in three parts. The other two are here and here.)