I was born at the end of the eighties. The shadow of the oil crash of the 70s was dissipating. The Berlin Wall was about to collapse. There was terrible music on the radio.
My childhood was busy with being bored in class, building tree houses, running in the forest, and extrapolating the size of the sea monster living in the lake up the hill. Seasons went on: turning leaves red, flooding the ground with kilotons of melted snow, turning dead-looking hanging pieces of wood into burgeoning life clusters, and finally harassing us with soothing heat that would make playing soccer uncomfortable. I remember the maroon throwing battles in autumn. Sliding down the hill behind our house on trash bags in the winter. The wet grass and mud stuck to our pants as we played around in spring. The absent friends and long walks in the forest’s “fraicheur” in the summer.
My childhood never felt comfortable. Yet, I could trust there would be another day to experience and explore. As a soon-to-be thirty-six-year-old adult, I’m unsure about that anymore. How could I even look forward to tomorrow. How could I make plans and projects. How could I believe in the future when it’s not even certain there is (a liveable) one ahead.
As a kid, climate change was a distant word. We had a hole in the outer ozone layer, sure. The amazon deforestation was already raging, sure enough. Famine and droughts were common, I’ll give you that. Still, it felt like a future was possible. Old white men in suits would come to reason. They would gather in a big halls. They would shake hands, the heart-sided one. Eventually they’d agree to do something about it. A piece of complex machinery would start, and cogs would start rolling. It would take time, but eventually, we would sort things out.
It didn’t work that way, and both the kid I was and the adult I become are incredibly fed up.
The climate is derailing. Temperatures are rising. Species are disappearing. Oceans are acidifying. Biodiversity is hitting an all-time low; in a fashion that’s comparable to every great extinction that preceded us.
And I feel like it is expected of me to:
a. Accept this state of facts. To trust that the “progress” and “technology” that very likely took us there in the first place will “save the furniture”, as we say in French.
b. Pretend everything will be fine. Living as if nothing were happening.
I feel terrified. I might see a not-so-distant time in which the life I’ve known is long gone. In which acquiring food is challenging because nothing grows anymore. In which accessing water is difficult because the dry soils don’t retain it anymore. In which flowers, birds, insects, and slightly warm summer evenings will be just a memory.
I feel angry. Against the previous generations for creating this situation. Against ourselves for not being ready to compromise to save us. Against myself for not knowing what to do about it.
I feel depressed. Many of my life choices are now either driven or heavily influenced by the forecasted fallout of the sixth mass extinction we’re in the midst of. Not having kids. Not thinking or planning the future much. Trapped in the form of self-destructive nihilism that keeps me from even remotely feeling joy considering the future.
The kid I once was believed that there was a life ahead. The module I’ve become dreads the memory of the possibility of one. It’s the end of the world, and we’re all wondering what outfit to wear to the event.