The two oceans, the twin hearts. The atmospheric rivers of warm moist air moving above us like sinuous fire hoses, now impacting the Antarctic. The slower echoing response of the deep ocean currents in this billions year old dance of our planet's energy budget. This place is so achingly beautiful still, but sea levels are riding in China with unprecedented rapidity, The watchful satellites report ever increasing number of worldwide lightning strikes as this place is storing energy like an overcharged battery. We humans are wonderfully adaptable, but we can't cope with the loss of our sustaining mass agriculture and that's what's going to get us in the end. America in 2070 may have no Midwestern breadbasket. I fear the horseman Starvation is coming back if we don't start on the road of drastc negative population growth. Either we do it voluntarily or have it forced on us much more painfully. Reducing carbon production is absolutely necessary but it's only half. We must reduce our numbers and quickly. We're destroying this place.
Really thanks. It's in our nature, it seems, to avoid the horror, to focus on the often desperate needs in front of us: family, bills, what's for dinner. For a long time my approach has been to rub my face in the worst news and the emotions that follow; to use the facts as sandpaper against my inattention. Now? I've learnt the need to balance that with hope, as so many authors and activists are realising and sharing. ("Not Too Late" does look good.) My thanks to you is for being open to looking at and discussing the sandpaper, particularly in the way you have, with an open heart and apologies. It means - it feels - like another way to cope and move forward, this sharing. It is how we've always gotten through grief, isn't it?
This doing something for the planet, for tangled wet forests, for cow-faced manatees and curious grasshoppers, feels burned into my DNA. My sense is that it's the same for you, and so many others. Often it seems linked to a particular childhood - the seventies - when nature presented herself to roaming kids in glittering creeks and climbing trees, tadpoles and tangled brambles, and the admonition - "Be home by the time the streetlights come on" - left room for a bond and friendship and extended family that is unbreakable, one that leads to a profound sense of defend and nurture that you would have with any friend, with family.
Reasoning along these lines led more to start writing workshops into the felt reality of these familial kinships in the world. Creativity, deep ecology, a journey to connection. And I'm going on, I apologise, this is meant to be just a comment and a simple profound thankyou. Your contribution has stirred me up, which has been sorely needed. From here to where I last ran the workshops (and a local bookstore) there has been a biblical fire season, ditto floods, and lockdowns. And they are just the abstract labels, the signposts to emotions and traumas so many of us are trying to swim through, trying to keep a wet blanket over our heads and run through, smoke and tears in our eyes.
After a lot of work, substack has come to offer a path. I've been researching how best to start, how to be effective, but I'm scared. Of what? Of getting it wrong, perhaps. What I feel I have to share feels so much a part of my being that if people don't care, what does say of me? (I only just realised that and typed it quickly to outrun the fear.) Of remaining isolated. But I know that even on the possibility that what I have to offer may help in some way, that I have to try.
But where. To. Start.
So, thanks. Sorry for the unasked therapy session. But you've moved me to reach out and start in small way, and for that, too, I am grateful.
Thank you, Jason. In my search of the internet I read about the Antarctic with real horror. An undercurrent can be a deadly thing and this does not bode well. In a more carefree time of my life we talked about 'the undertoad'. Thank you for so clearly and carefully setting out the current information about what is happening. Pun intended.
Another thoughtful and moving essay. The image of pushing sand in the face of the incoming tide is particularly impact. I have a slightly off-topic question... do you have a source you trust for the number of species scientists estimate are going extinct everyday? I'm playing with an idea for an art piece...
The two oceans, the twin hearts. The atmospheric rivers of warm moist air moving above us like sinuous fire hoses, now impacting the Antarctic. The slower echoing response of the deep ocean currents in this billions year old dance of our planet's energy budget. This place is so achingly beautiful still, but sea levels are riding in China with unprecedented rapidity, The watchful satellites report ever increasing number of worldwide lightning strikes as this place is storing energy like an overcharged battery. We humans are wonderfully adaptable, but we can't cope with the loss of our sustaining mass agriculture and that's what's going to get us in the end. America in 2070 may have no Midwestern breadbasket. I fear the horseman Starvation is coming back if we don't start on the road of drastc negative population growth. Either we do it voluntarily or have it forced on us much more painfully. Reducing carbon production is absolutely necessary but it's only half. We must reduce our numbers and quickly. We're destroying this place.
Thanks, Jason.
Really thanks. It's in our nature, it seems, to avoid the horror, to focus on the often desperate needs in front of us: family, bills, what's for dinner. For a long time my approach has been to rub my face in the worst news and the emotions that follow; to use the facts as sandpaper against my inattention. Now? I've learnt the need to balance that with hope, as so many authors and activists are realising and sharing. ("Not Too Late" does look good.) My thanks to you is for being open to looking at and discussing the sandpaper, particularly in the way you have, with an open heart and apologies. It means - it feels - like another way to cope and move forward, this sharing. It is how we've always gotten through grief, isn't it?
This doing something for the planet, for tangled wet forests, for cow-faced manatees and curious grasshoppers, feels burned into my DNA. My sense is that it's the same for you, and so many others. Often it seems linked to a particular childhood - the seventies - when nature presented herself to roaming kids in glittering creeks and climbing trees, tadpoles and tangled brambles, and the admonition - "Be home by the time the streetlights come on" - left room for a bond and friendship and extended family that is unbreakable, one that leads to a profound sense of defend and nurture that you would have with any friend, with family.
Reasoning along these lines led more to start writing workshops into the felt reality of these familial kinships in the world. Creativity, deep ecology, a journey to connection. And I'm going on, I apologise, this is meant to be just a comment and a simple profound thankyou. Your contribution has stirred me up, which has been sorely needed. From here to where I last ran the workshops (and a local bookstore) there has been a biblical fire season, ditto floods, and lockdowns. And they are just the abstract labels, the signposts to emotions and traumas so many of us are trying to swim through, trying to keep a wet blanket over our heads and run through, smoke and tears in our eyes.
After a lot of work, substack has come to offer a path. I've been researching how best to start, how to be effective, but I'm scared. Of what? Of getting it wrong, perhaps. What I feel I have to share feels so much a part of my being that if people don't care, what does say of me? (I only just realised that and typed it quickly to outrun the fear.) Of remaining isolated. But I know that even on the possibility that what I have to offer may help in some way, that I have to try.
But where. To. Start.
So, thanks. Sorry for the unasked therapy session. But you've moved me to reach out and start in small way, and for that, too, I am grateful.
Thank you, Jason. In my search of the internet I read about the Antarctic with real horror. An undercurrent can be a deadly thing and this does not bode well. In a more carefree time of my life we talked about 'the undertoad'. Thank you for so clearly and carefully setting out the current information about what is happening. Pun intended.
Another thoughtful and moving essay. The image of pushing sand in the face of the incoming tide is particularly impact. I have a slightly off-topic question... do you have a source you trust for the number of species scientists estimate are going extinct everyday? I'm playing with an idea for an art piece...
Thank GOD ( Globalists Organisation for Die-off) for genocide.
Psychopaths are a natural phenomenon so nature does have it's protective mechanism for dummies.
Unfortunately GOD is as cruel as it's nature.
Why everyone is so shocked is beyond me. This is so much fun to watch. Been waiting 30 years for this, while planting trees for all the tissues.