Peter Kalmus: ‘As a species, we’re on autopilot, not making the right decisions’ | Climate crisis | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/21/peter-kalmus-nasa-scientist-climate-protest-interviewPresident Biden is begging Opec to expand production. He’s opening new lands for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and public lands of the US. Right now, what I’m seeing from world leaders, including Biden, is that they’re using the bully pulpit of their position to urge the expansion of fossil fuels. They’ve completely stopped talking about taking climate action.
The leaders of the world are squandering a historic opportunity to make that transition to renewables. Instead, they’re using it as an opportunity to expand the fossil fuel industry, and the fossil fuel CEOs are rubbing their hands in glee at what’s happening right now. They can’t believe their good fortune that Putin invaded Ukraine.
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People need to understand that all degrowth really is, is a switch in the goal of the economic system. We need to change the goal of the system from the accumulation of capital to the flourishing of all people, not just people in the global north, also people in the global south, and the flourishing of all life on this planet, because our economic system is embedded in the biosphere. If we take down the biosphere, we lose everything, and we don’t have an economic system any more. That’s why we desperately need to change the goal of the system to the flourishing of everyone and all life on the planet.
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I’m constantly fending off this sort of ocean of climate anxiety that’s in my brain. When that ocean rises to a high enough level, I can’t really function any more. I get stressed. I am not very fun to be around. My ability to write degrades hugely. The strongest practice I have to keep that ocean of anxiety at bay is a meditation practice, called Vipassana. ...
I’m doing it, then I have zero climate anxiety. I’m fully aware of the emergency, but it unlocks my ability to be able to do everything I can, to work as hard as I can to sound the alarm, basically.
I used to take vacations in the High Sierra, to kind of recharge through nature, but it doesn’t work any more. Because last summer we took a five-day backpacking trip up there with my younger son and my partner, the three of us. It was too depressing to me, because in the two years that I’d walked on that trail, the John Muir trail, the tree mortality was just outrageous. There were so many dead trees all along the path. Streams and ponds that had once been flowing at that time of year, two years earlier, were bone dry, because of the drought. I can’t go. It’s just too painful for me now. When I’m in the mountains, I’m constantly feeling climate grief. That’s not a way for me to deal with my climate anxiety any more, unfortunately.,
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If I were in their place, I would also choose not to have children. It’s a hard thing to say. It’s so heartbreaking to have this sense that the future is getting worse, and that it’s going to be worse for your kids. Now it feels like it’s getting worse at a very fast rate. One thing I desperately want before I die is to have a feeling that the future is going to be better.
That we’ve switched this corner and we’ve started to change the system towards flourishing for all, and we’ve come out of this madness of billionaires, and fossil fuel, and money in politics. That’s what I want to feel. I’ll feel grief from maybe the loss of the Amazon rainforest, and the loss of most of the world’s coral reefs, but mixed with that grief, I long for a feeling of solidarity. I long to feel a faith in humanity once again, because right now I’m not so sure. There’s some tremendous people out there, but it feels like, as a species, we’re just on autopilot and we’re not making the right decisions. I long to feel that we’re doing things better.