As runaway abrupt climate change and it’s brutal reality bares down on us with the speed of a tsunami, another little discussed side affect is grief. I shall try to cover it in this blog and provide some avenues for readers to seek solace and solidarity below.
Those of us who are monitoring the unraveling of the biosphere will be fully aware of this aching phenomenon already but our numbers are relatively few (sic) due to the lies and obfuscating taking place regarding the severity of the crisis, yet when the awareness of the imminent demise of our species dawns on the afflicted planets populace, all the symptoms of grief will manifest on a monumental scale!
Sadness, depression, anger, denial, resignation, pick your poison (sic), try and be gentle with yourself and those you interact with. Embrace your grief, acknowledge it, share it with those you trust. Support those of your friends, colleagues and neighbours who are suffering, it really is best shared.
In recent times renowned climate bloggers have been courageous enough to admit in public how their research has driven some of them to the edge of despair, you are not alone;
Michael Slezak writing for The Guardian Environment;
My professional detachment has finally turned to panic
“One day in his office, he reviewed a new study about the release of methane from the ocean floor and saw, more starkly than ever before, the conundrum the world faced. It wasn’t simply that they needed to consume less, to bring humanity’s impact on the biosphere under control, it was that there were just too many people, and even allowing for technological change and economic restructuring, the planet was on a collision course with disaster. In the United States and India floods covered millions of square kilometres, in Africa and Europe the heat was growing ever more intense and in Indonesia and Brazil and Malaysia the forests were burning, yet he and Ellie were trying to have a baby. What sort of world would that child inherit? Were they really doing the right thing by bringing another life into it?”
More on the much under reported methane risk here;
Arctic Methane Emergency Group
“Dr. Maria Salta, a biological oceanographer and lecturer in environmental microbiology in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, echoed this dire outlook on the state of the oceans.””For shrimpers, 80 percent of everything caught is bycatch and thrown back for dead. It is a mode of mass marine extinction.”
“It is clear that if we continue like this, in a few years time, there is not going to be much left,” she told Truthout, speaking about the impacts of ACD, pollution and overfishing. “We are losing species every day without ever knowing about them. Sometimes humans can be like a plague to the environment.”
The rest of Dahr Jamails’ great article is embedded below;
Dahr Jamail | Global Fisheries Are Collapsing — What Happens When There Are No Fish Left?
Another case in point Neven Curlin from the Arctic Sea Ice Blog;
“But a problem was emerging — Curlin wasn’t just tracking the change, he was feeling it too. As he wrote in 2012, shortly after the record fell:….this stunning melting season has made me even more acutely aware of the gravity of what is taking place….To be able to watch and write about the Arctic sea ice, I used to block out the realisation of risks, so that I could make a joke here and there and be scientifically reticent in my own amateur way, keeping up appearances, acting objective.But my bubble has burst. I’m already watching past the minimum. As the melting season ends, it feels as if things are only beginning. The age of consequences.”
I highly recommend this podcast courtesy of Deb Ozarko speaking with Dahr Jamail;
Passion, Courage and truth: Reporting from Ground Zero with Dahr Jamail
From the excellent climate blogger Eric Holthaus;
“There are days where I literally can’t work. I’ll read a story & shut down for rest of the day. Not much helps besides exercise & time.”
On our recent NZ wide speaking tour Professor Guy McPherson and I spoke to audiences in university’s and public venues and a very important aspect of the tour was addressing the emotional response to our message as the cold hard reality of what we have collectively inflicted on the biosphere sunk into our audiences psyche. They were to a large degree already aware of the severity of the crisis but often feel isolated due to the grief denying culture many of us live in.
Most of the N.Z. presentations have been embedded below by my dear friend and colleague Wolfgang Werminghausen.
Schneller als gedacht / Faster than previously thought
From Professor McPherson’s website;
“I’ve received many requests for a workshop focused on emotions rather than evidence. Such a workshop is described here . It is available in your hometown and also in Belize.”
A number of Facebook groups have been established to help people come to terms with their grief for our afflicted biosphere. For the sake of brevity I have embedded a number below in no particular order. If joining please ensure you observe the philosophy of the groups and remember we are there to support each other in any way we can.
Much respect to the diligent, hard working admins.
Near Term Human Extinction Love
Near Term Human Extinction Support Group
Near Term Human Extinction Evidence group
Ruppert’s Restaurant Named after the late great Michael C Ruppert
My dear friend and colleague Pauline Schneider is in the process of editing a documentary based on footage shot on our recent NZ speaking tour. A Facebook page has been created with a short trailer embedded here;
Only Love Remains Dancing at the Edge of Extinction
To those of my many darling friends, especially my ‘Tribe’ on Rakino Island who often ask how I am feeling, chronicling the unraveling of the biosphere, I must quote my dear friend Professor Guy McPherson; “I have a long list of people I would like to see dead, my name isn’t on it”.
“At the edge of extinction, only love remains”. Be gentle with one another, starting with yourself.
Aroha Nui. Much love, be gentle.
K
I’m editing this blog on 13/03/22 to include this magnificent discussion on Grief from two of my closest friends on the planet;
I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
I just watched you, Beril Sirmacek, and John Doyle on the 12/29/21 video conference (zoom?) and it really fits here. I’m surprised you haven’t posted it.
It really fits here. And yes, John is definitely the talker/storyteller. I’m 7 years older than you and John…I was an adult teen mostly homeless living on the beach reading about the Greenhouse Effect, the Club of Rome projections, the book Population Bomb, and a ton of others. Libraries keep one sane when homeless. My brain never let me stop reading my entire life I think I’ve lived with this in my head longer than all three of you. That’s a scary thought…
And you disappeared at 30 minutes! Glad you weren’t lost. Was a HELL of a conversation. Ten years…or less if Shakova was correct 9 years ago when she said AT ANY TIME the methane blow-out will happen.
I would not be surprised if it happens tonight. Tomorrow. Sunday or next week. At this point it’s not about ‘expecting’ it’s about knowing there is nothing you can personally do to change this. Fuck yeah the kids are going to freak when they finally figure out all the bullshit about ‘fixing’ it by using electric cars, squiggly light bulbs, etc etc don’t mean diddly.
Very VERY good listening to you three, hearing the tone of the voices and the back&forth between you three. I will admit that Zoom tends to make you climb on top of each other’s sentences quite a bit. I have never used it of course, don’t have a computer camera or anything so I don’t understand the tech.
Announce the next time you all were mentioning with more participants.
sealintheSelkirks
LikeLiked by 1 person
George Monbiot describes his grief.
https://www.monbiot.com/2022/01/10/losing-it/
LikeLike
Stories about wildfires, drought, food and extreme weather insecurities were enough to make me feel GRIEF more intensely than when I was a Baby Killer for God, Country and the profits of Ike’s multiple complexes.
LikeLike
My new friend and colleague Beril Sirmacek takes us through her journey;
LikeLike
No longer available?
sealintheSelkirks
LikeLiked by 1 person
Try again bro, it plays here for me
LikeLike
Ah, there we go. Still has the unavailable notice but putting the cursor over it and copying video URL and pasting on a new window and up it popped.
Beril on depression…and what to do with our lives. Get busy and do something… Funny that she talks about the hippies and millions of other emotions not just happiness.. Being a ponytailed weed-smoking surfer teen in the 60s Southern California I probably have a better grasp on that reality than her… But she got it right, it wasn’t just ‘flower power’ and be happy all the time, there was a hell of a lot more to it than those simplifications.
___
I had a lodgepole pine crash sideways into another tree yesterday, about 30 meters+ tall, which ended up leaning at 50 degrees on the larger conifer which of course moved under the weight; snowload that was rained on the other day added way too much weight much like my roof last week. Aiming for the power lines and I had a neighbor going by called the shop phone to let me know. I walked down and holy shit the next wind or snowstorm was going to drop it as the root ball was 3/4 out of the ground. Power company emergency crew was out there last night with a very tall bucket truck chainsawing it into pieces after the guy limbed it and then tied it off to a huge Bull Pine with a come-along so it wouldn’t fall. They knew their job, no doubt about it. So I watched the entire process which was far more social than reading the horrible climate and human political mess we’re in. Been a while since I stood with people and talk socially but standing on a frozen icy road was rather conductive to conversations,,,
I guess it’s the start of next year’s firewood supply! If somebody doesn’t come along and steal the cut pieces off my property. People do that around here.
__
Read last night(?) that Onslow in western Aussieland just cracked a heat record for the Southern Hemisphere of 123’F.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jan/13/hottest-day-on-record-in-parts-of-western-australia-as-temperature-reaches-50c
__
On that note, I’m going outside not to garden as 2 feet of snowpack precludes that and it looked cold where she was in that snowcoat she had on. But instead to cut a pile of firewood rounds and move a couple wheelbarrow loads to the house that I did not get to yesterday.. Not freezing here, was 5C yesterday and the water is still dripping off the roof out the window. I need to dig more off the rest of it before the next snowfall.
IF there is a next snowfall. Who the hell knows? With what has happened here the last two winters (even more earlier but…) I’m not sure winter is going to go on much longer. New ‘heat dome’ anyone? Somehow I don’t think this is going to be a very enjoyable year but as Beril said (and others in comments) just do something that can bring you into the here and now which is the only place we really live in anyway.
Cutting firewood with a chainsaw one definitely needs to be here and now!
Ta-ta
sealintheSelkirks
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLike
Broken heart syndrome. Being so full of grief that is mis-shapes the muscle we call the heart. Physical alteration by emotional distress. That shows just how powerful grief can be…
This popped up on counterpunch.org subscriber only, so I’m having to paste it instead of just providing a link as it wouldn’t work for anyone.
It’s Hunziker, like I’ve never read from him before. Very much like the basis of my book, Kevin, and damned interesting to read this. So here goes.
sealintheSelkirks
We Cannot Truly Die
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/13/we-cannot-truly-die/ counterpunch+ link
The extraordinary statement “we cannot truly die” is found on page 133 of Joseph Selbie’s book, The Physics of God (New Page Books, 2021). Indeed, it’s a book for people who want to understand and believe that there is more to life’s course than earthly corporeal existence.
Based upon reams of fascinating scientific and metaphysical research, Selbie connects the dots in a masterful blend of science and religion taken to the edge of multi-universes and beyond to the heart of the astral plane.
Our existence is much more than a boring standardized physical life on Earth. Selbie offers an uplifting view of so much more with considerable science-based evidence as well as personal experiences by people of intellectual stature. Life on our planet is but one small leg of a much bigger journey, a phenomenal journey unlike anything ever experienced or ever dreamed, in as much as, we truly cannot die.
The portals to this miraculous nirvana means that we not only exist in the three-dimensional universe that we all know so well but also simultaneously exist in a two-dimensional energy-verse. Saints, sages, and near-death experiences all claim that we each have our own personal holographic energy template.
Selbie’s book is an uplifting trip in the face of the current extinction event no. 6, which is humming along at a rapid clip. More realistically, it’s faster than any of the prior five paleoclimate-recorded extinction events. As such, a lot of people express concern about the acceleration of the 6th mass extinction because of its staggering numbers of loss of wild vertebrates and marine life, numbers on the order of 70% and up to 98% depending upon the species, respectively. Curiously enough, those are already extinction level numbers, but humans have dodged the bullet, so far.
(The Permian-Triassic, aka: The Great Dying, extinction 252 million years ago witnessed 95% of marine life and 70-75% of terrestrial life annihilated.)
One comforting aspect of The Physics of God is even if the 6th mass extinction event really took hold in earnest, not all would be lost, not at all, according to Selbie’s thesis: We truly cannot die.
Then, what happens?
A condensed version of life’s true course is explained: “Our three-dimensional physical body allows us to exist in the three-dimensional physical world of space, time, and matter… when we die, our space, time, and matter suit ceases to function, and we are no longer able to operate in space, time, and matter. When we die, our awareness shifts to our nonlocal, two-dimensional energy body in the energy-verse.” (Pg. 133-34)
Nonlocal phenomena are omnipresent, everywhere at once, meaning “there is no necessity for them to go anywhere; they are already there. They are infinite in time as well, present at all moments, past present and future, meaning they are eternal.” (pg. 129)
The energy-verse is dazzling, gloriously exquisite, a spellbinding array of glistening lights as far as the eye can see, on and on forever, timeless, filaments-of-light-humans in two dimensional light energy, an uplifting experience of serenity and calm: ”Physicists are not alone in describing a much larger nonmaterial cosmos beyond the physical universe. Saints, sages, and near-death experiencers have also described heavenly worlds of pure energy, luminous nonphysical realms that permeate our physical universe.” (pg. 61)
“Over the span of the 20th and now the 21st centuries, branches of physics have produced an astonishingly vast and predominately nonmaterial view of the cosmos, a cosmos of which our enormous physical universe is only a tiny part. Current theories in physics, quantum theory, and especially string theory relegate our physical universe… as essentially organized energy held in stable patterns- a small, self-continued, three-dimensional energy ‘bubble’ in a virtually infinite two-dimensional ocean of energy – what I like to call the energy-verse.” (pg. 61)
It’s this energy-verse that we are, and have always been, so much a part of. Over the centuries, energy-verse has been discovered by saints and sages viewed through transcendent experience.
Moreover, physicists have been forced to accept that the measureable matter and energy in our universe cannot fully explain why the universe behaves as it does. There is something more at work. Quantum physicists have posited that the universe must have a significant, ever-present but undetectable background energy. Of all the branches of physics that posit the energy-verse, the one that deals with it most centrally is string theory.
Michio Kaku, string theorist: “I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence. To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance.” (pg. 129)
“Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial – mental and spiritual,” Sir James Jeans, physicist.
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as a derivative of consciousness,” Max Planck, Nobel Prize winner in physics.
Thousands of near-death experiencers confirm something remarkable after floating free of their bodies; they all describe irresistibly drawn towards the distinctive allure of spectacular light, motioning them in.
According to Selbie: “I have read hundreds of books, containing stirring accounts of near-death experiences as well as inspiring descriptions of transcendent realms given by monks, yogis, Sufis, adepts, roshis, saints, sages, and mystics from all religions and eras. The more one reads the more one finds compelling consistency… They have perceived beautiful luminous realms and angelic beings and have experienced nearly indescribable and overwhelming feelings of well-being and oneness.” (pg. 37)
Typically, near-death experiencers tell the identical story: (1) “Then, suddenly, I was in light.” (2) “Everybody there was made of light. And I was made of light.” (3) “I try to explain it by saying there are flashes of light and brilliant colors or every spectrum everywhere.”
As the foundation of the scientific method is empirical repeatable results, it is indeed fascinating that, according to the Selbie: “There are clear similarities between the experiences described by those having near-death experiences and the descriptions of transcendent experiences given by enlightened saints and sages. Those who achieve perfect stillness and inner absorption – whether achieved by intention (meditation or devotion) or by accident (near-death experience) – have the same empirical results.” (pg. 36)
Additionally, human thoughts can be powerful, especially over our physical bodies, as found in numerous physiological changes that have been witnessed with multiple-personality sufferers that move from one personality to another, e.g., scars and moles can appear or disappear almost instantaneously and visual acuity can increase or decrease and even eye color has been seen to change reinforcing the view that our deeper-than-conscious thoughts shape and inform our personal, nonlocal, holographic, energy template, which in turn shapes our physical body. (pg. 172)
There is considerable evidence that “thought” is a nonlocal, interpenetrating phenomenon- undetectable and bound neither by space nor time but present everywhere. Thought then is part of the energy-verse and powerful beyond a normal description or understanding, e.g., objects have been seen to move via thought processes.
“We are beginning to see the entire universe as a holographically interlinked network of energy and information, organically whole and self-referential at all scales of its existence. We, and all things in the universe, are non-locally connected with each other and with all other things in ways that are unfettered by the hitherto known limitations of space and time.” (Ervin Laszlo – philosopher of science and advocate of the theory of quantum consciousness, pgs. 81-82).
Albert Einstein famously said (did he say anything not famously?): “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.” (pg.128).
“We must liberate man from the cosmos created by the genius of physicists and astronomers, that cosmos in which, since the renaissance, he has been imprisoned. We now know that we extend outside the physical continuum. In time, as well as in space, the individual stretches out beyond the frontiers of his body. He also belongs to another world.” (Dr. Alexis Carrel, French surgeon & biologist, 1912 Nobel Prize in Physiology, pg. 102)
The Physics of God unifies the fields of science and religion and brings to surface deep thoughts about the existence of life and afterlife, whether life is really an endless journey led by an energy force reflected as light with Earth simply one station along the energy-verse pathway towards blissfulness throughout infinity. It’s something that should be looked forward to with great anticipation, and above all else, not feared.
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Summary
Background
Climate change has important implications for the health and futures of children and young people, yet they have little power to limit its harm, making them vulnerable to climate anxiety. This is the first large-scale investigation of climate anxiety in children and young people globally and its relationship with perceived government response.”
https://guymcpherson.com/science-snippets-down-in-the-dumps/?fbclid=IwAR1uj8oAZw0GC8OK6cwh6MBBhThkulB0bOMW1ISfentYfBvB-Cdb0iJx7FQ
LikeLike
When will this anxiety in the young become grief, and then turn to anger? In some it already has but when they realize that absolutely nothing but ‘calming words full of bullshit’ is all that will be forthcoming from our exalted leaders (as they rake in more fossil fuel cash) I expect the backlash to be profound.
sealintheSelkirks
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reblogged this on syndax vuzz.
LikeLiked by 1 person