ecospirit

For quite some time now – you can trace it through these posts over the years – I have been trying to find a middle way, to shoot the gap through the World Bull’s horns. It is a quandary.  I am a born pessimist, leading to a tendency to adopt a Climate Doomer perspective (buttressed by deep study of the science and the recalcitrance of short-sighted political leaders), but pay attention to those who offer some hope for world civilization.  Every time I settle into acceptance of our end, something bubbles up, suggesting the possibility of stopping the slide into catastrophe either by techno-fixes of various sorts or the Great Turning, where we actually change our values – in its boldest form, even consciousness - and thus behavior. You could state it quite simply as spending uncomfortable time on the horns of the dilemma between the stoic and the heroic, never forgetting the possibility of metanoia. 

It is virtually impossible to hold both of these perspectives at once. The best I can do is go back and forth. I am aware of holding back despair, shoring up acceptance, over quite a long time now.  But I found myself  uncommonly committed to the 2024 election, shoring the Democratic dike against fascism. And at the same time, improving the chance of more than one political term to work on mitigating climate change. Those hopes are now dashed, and we must rely upon companies, cities and states, local communities, and the rest of the world's governments to keep climate faith. 

Last week, I read an eloquent essay by Elizabeth West, “Learning How to Die.” West addresses the preponderance of evidence that global civilization is in endgame, heading into a death spiral (like many on the left, she speaks of the death of the Earth, which I must return to). Instead of remaining in denial, she counsels to confront the death of our world and our species and live through it with guts and grace. Above all, we need to work to find meaning in this crucial time in human history. 

West’s essay was shared on the Quaker Earthcare Witness list-serve, eliciting a range of responses.  Several agreed with her, which is a lot more than those who would have agreed five years ago.  Others said, no, never give up.  One searing response was just as eloquent as West’s, and it came from a college geology teacher, Allen McGrew. As a geologist, he knows clearly that the Earth herself is not in danger anytime soon.  However, McGrew agrees that we will lose much that we love, including complex civilization, and many species.  But having gone through a near-death experience in which his own deep faith worked together with a highly trained medical team to save his life, he feels it doesn’t make sense to give up when there’s a chance that life – as he puts it – “one humble species” – can be saved. Here’s what he writes from that newborn sense after such a victorious ordeal:

We are held in the palms of a Life larger and more beautiful and more enduring than any of us can imagine. Every moment of striving for that one Great Life is a moment worth striving for. Even if we die, even if our children die, even if human civilization collapses, even if the human race dies out, if by our intent loving labor we can save just one humble species -- if just one little alpine primrose on a remote mountain range somewhere can eek through due to our efforts that would otherwise have perished, it will be worth it. Even if our efforts yield no physical result at all, the labor will still have been worth it, because the labor is love itself.

Much will die, but the Life that embraces us is a Life beyond death. The Life that enfolds us transcends our failings and our human weaknesses. It has given us life and we owe it all the life that we can return to it.

West overstates the issue with the Earth (overreaching from the Sixth Extinction to planetary death), but she gets the essential underlying mood of the moment, the elephant in the room.  It’s the coming end of capitalist civilization, coming faster than we think.  But what of Allen McGrew’s response, a sober scientist, his love for life passionately renewed by the mysterious gift of his own life?