A circle of atoms swirling around photo of galaxies

The Quadra Project: Environmental Guilt

More and more sobering news on the environmental condition of our planet keeps coming from scientists, from the United Nations’ COP meetings, and from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We are not doing enough to avert catastrophe, and we are not doing what must be done fast enough. Indeed, we never did enough fast enough, a conclusion that comes with the burden of guilt. And now we may be reaching the point where we will never be able to do enough fast enough.

Guilt is confirmed by the current terminology of “mitigation” and “adaptation”. “Mitigation” doesn’t mean stopping the climate situation from getting worse, it means trying to slow the process. And “adaptation” affirms that we are already in an unstoppable deterioration, so the best option is to reduce the damage it can do—primarily to us. Both terms connote defeat. And neither term conveys optimism.

For environmentalists of all kinds, no matter when they tried or how hard they tried, the verdict must be that they have failed in whatever they attempted to do. They did not try hard enough. Everything they attempted was based on the mistaken assumption that active effort could create an ecological equilibrium in which things could be “saved”. But, how is a forest saved if it is going to burn in uncontrollable fires or desiccate in droughts? How are salmon saved if they are going to starve in acetic oceans or die in hot ones? How are plant or animal species saved when the global populations of insects, mammals, birds and amphibians are in free-fall because of ubiquitous pesticide use, habitat loss and climate change?

Even the heroic work of environmentalists—even if they were doing such work—may never have been enough. Everything they did is now tinged with the guilt of failure because the natural ecosystems upon which all protection depends seem to be collapsing. Perhaps the outcome would have been different if environmentalists had only started earlier and tried harder.

This, of course, is sad to think and even sadder to acknowledge. But the evidence seems to support this uncomfortable conclusion. All the latest environmental news contributes to a mood of sinking hope and impending despair. Even the worst case scenarios that scientists predicted decades ago have been too optimistic. The models that climatologists have been using for predicting levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature rise have been quite accurate. What has not been accurate is the extent to which rising temperatures alter weather and affect species. In almost all cases, extreme weather events have surpassed worst-case predictions. The same for species extinctions. These trends have ominous implications.

For anyone who studies history, the frenetic present is both momentous and unprecedented, a consortium of events that will be noted as pivotal to our existence as Homo sapiens: environmentally, philosophically, psychologically, sociologically, culturally, technologically and mythologically. It seems that “the end of history”, a naive prediction of harmonious political and economic stasis made in 1992 by the American historian, Francis Fukuyama, has taken a surprising and ironic turn as we become the victims of our own ingenuity—a colossal human success that is being dwarfed by the magnitude of its failure. The famous American biologist, E.O. Wilson, said that our age will not be remembered for its technological accomplishment, but for its mass extinction of species. The “Anthropocene” is not a badge of honour, but a synonym for guilt—enough to last for millennia for those who are brave enough to honestly confront who we are and what we have done.

Actually, guilt has been a motivating force in environmentalism for over half a century. When conventional political measures failed to effect the appropriate changes, desperation began to be expressed more dramatically in the antics of Greenpeace. But Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are just more radical expressions of the same frustration that is transforming the energy of guilt into anger. Corporations are not the only target of the growing exasperation. If the public is inconvenienced by roadblocks or demonstrations, so be it, for society’s indifference and passivity has made it complicit in the unfolding catastrophe. Indeed, every individual must carry a portion of that collective guilt.

The science that was available to environmentalists half a century ago was available to everyone else, too. The prognosis for nature and climate under threat was clear, unequivocal and accessible, even then. Most of humanity chose not to respond to the warnings. Now, as time passes and the present meets the future, excuses seem to pale in the reality of extreme weather and species extinction. We cannot go back, and we cannot stop what is coming. The best we can do now is to slow what could have been stopped when that option was possible. But, by a failure of character, of psychology, of mythology—or of whatever other futile rationalizations we care to invent—we have earned a collective guilt that will weigh upon us for as long as we have a sense of history. If ever such a mythology as “original sin” existed, we are in the process of committing it—perhaps for the second time. Indeed, all humanity is guilty of an irremediable and unforgivable disobedience to natural law. And once we finally recognize what we have done, we will never again be the same. 

Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra

Top photo credit: The stunning Atoms for Peace galaxy was given its nickname due to its superficial resemblance to an atomic nucleus, surrounded by the loops of orbiting electrons. “Atoms for Peace” was the title of a speech given by President Eisenhower in 1953, in an attempt to rebrand nuclear power as a tool for working toward global peace. Somewhat ironically this galaxy has had anything but a peaceful past — it was formed in a catastrophic merger between two smaller galaxies nearly 1 Gyr ago. Photo by Judy Schmidt (European Southern Observatory/ NASA)