Thinking about the wildfires in Québec tonight. I'm used to BC and Alberta having fires, but not this side of Canada.
Thinking about the ramifications of this is terrifying.
I've done a lot of grappling with climate change over the last couple of years.
It genuinely has brought me to the point of despair. I have questioned whether it would be right for me to have children. To even live another day.
There was news many years back now about a lawyer who set himself on fire in New York, in protest and despair. I empathized with him even then.
I am too rational to lie to myself. I will not be free from the suffering. My future children will not be free from the suffering. I genuinely am not certain that in 50 years, our government, our society, our infrastructure, agriculture, trade, peace, borders... I'm not sure any of it will still be intact.
And the ecological damage to the rest of living Earth. It will be vast. It will be apocalyptic.
And I also do not believe we will deviate from our path. Humanity will not correct itself. We will not recognize the dangers, and even if we do, we lack the will to do anything about it.
But I also don't believe that all life on Earth will be eradicated. I believe there will be a mass ecological extinction, yes. But life itself will survive. I don't even necessarily believe that humans won't survive.
And nothing will be as it was, but there still will be. Climate change will kill us but it will not kill the planet. Nature will survive. We have made her sick, we will change her permanently, but she will survive us. We are a brief illness in the course of her existence. And eventually, billions of years from now Earth will be subsumed into a black hole, and finally end, but we will not be the ones to make it end.
We will be the end of ourselves. So perhaps the above seems of little solace.
But it comforts me. I am one tiny speck of existence, being pulled along by forces infinitely greater than myself. I always feel guilty to non-human life for being innocent bystanders caught in our mistakes. But to be honest as one single ordinary human, I am just as powerless as a bird, an ant.
All I can do is try to keep on going. Like all life.
And that is honestly how I thought my way out of climate despair. I do not know how things will turn out. They may turn out okay for me. They may turn out okay for my children. They most likely won't turn out okay for my children's children's children. It's a matter of when, not if.
There is a chance to survive. And all living things will take that chance. We take that chance every day we wake up. Everyday, we do not know what will happen tomorrow. We do not know if life will be better, or worse. But we keep going, because that is all we can do.
When I really zoom out and expand outside of myself, I feel immense grief for nature. But also awe and pride. I know that things will change, but it will not end.
I do not know what ecosystems will look like in 500 years. (500 years. Think about it. Such a short period of time. 5 or 6 lifetimes. Only.) I do not know which species will be alive or extinct. But they will survive, and they will adapt, and they will diversify, and they will thrive again.
And the curious part of me thinks, I wish I knew how it would all play out. What an epic story. A galactic odyssey. Post-human Earth. It fills me with love and pride.
I am sorry that we are abusing you. I am sorry that we have exploited your gifts, destroyed our fellow living creatures.
I cannot personally do anything to change what is happening to you. I'm sorry for that too. But I will be thankful. Thank you for sustaining all of us. Thank you for giving us life.
Thank you for allowing us to exist here, on this beautiful planet, with all these beautiful plants and animals and landscapes and experiences, for this brief time in the universe.
A speck of carbon in a vast space-time to you. But it was everything for us. All of human history, unwritten and written. Cultures, civilisations, endless individual lives. Endless love stories and tragedies. Births and deaths. It was an eternity, cut short.
Thank you. I will do my best to persevere. To live. Like all living things strive to do. Forgive me. But I know there is nothing to forgive. Forgiveness, after all, is a human concept. You are far beyond such things.