If you are visually impaired, or would rather listen than read, here is an audio recording of the blog.
I recently spent a fantastic weekend at Devon Transformed Festival – a 3-day marathon of progressive politics and socialism in beautiful surroundings with amazing music and creativity as a whipped cream topping. A triumph for all involved: kudos to the organisers.
Unfortunately, a combination of exhaustion from a busy few days/weeks and my own personal muddle of feelings about the climate crisis meant I came away a bit overwhelmed and confused. I needed to put some of those reactions into words; a personal reflection on some of the bigger things happening around us that are inevitably triggered when exploring the climate crisis.
Relentless positivity
At the core of Green New Deal Devon is positivity; relentless optimism in the face of multiple social and ecological crises. This is a hard stance to maintain with everything happening around us – the first wave of the climate crisis hitting harder and earlier than we thought, complete and utter inaction and denial from the rich and powerful, combined with worsening social crises of racism, poverty, inequality etc. Simply reading the news sends my anxiety into a spiral, and usually, after some tears, my brain, my anger kicks in and says no – there has to be something better. I truly believe that, but sometimes it feels as though hope is an ever-thinning sheet of paper sat in my brain, steadily worn away by crisis after crisis, with despair becoming increasingly visible behind it.
Everyone in the climate movement and beyond has these thoughts – and many advocate action to help combat those feelings of helplessness. So we go out every day and fight to build a Green New Deal, erect wind turbines, change our economy, force politicians to change, or spread the word throughout society.
So when I attended the last session of Devon Transformed on Deep Adaptation, having never heard of the concept before and not knowing what to expect – my initial reaction was visceral, heartbroken, and angry. Somehow, in the midst of fighting for better energy policy, campaigning for a Green New Deal, and protesting myriad bad decisions, the concept of Deep Adaptation had completely passed me by.
Deep Adaptation
Deep Adaptation was first proposed, and continues to be advocated for, by Jem Bendell, an academic who published a paper on the concept in 2018, supported by Roger Hallam, formerly of Extinction Rebellion, now Just Stop Oil. It’s a wide-ranging concept with many ways to explore and interpret it. The idea proposed in the workshop was that some form of societal collapse is inevitable, that tipping points are bedded in, and that we must let go of some of the things we will certainly lose. The Deep Adaptation website describes it as such:
The term social or societal collapse is used here to refer to the uneven ending to our current means of sustenance, shelter, security, pleasure, identity and meaning. […] Deep Adaptation refers to certain responses, based on compassion, curiosity, and respect, to this predicament – which different people may view as likely, inevitable, or already unfolding.
The workshop was run by some wonderful people who did a good job of helping us with such a grief-stricken realisation, but I found myself holding back tears most of the time, and there were tears from others around me. I’m sure someone well-versed in Deep Adaptation would say that this is part of the process of coming to terms with societal collapse and loss, but my tears were for the sheer number of people for whom hope had fled – leaking out of that hot tent and taken away on a fierce Devon wind. My tears were for the next 55 years of my life that had just been written off, any hope for future generations dissipated.
In the days that followed, I found myself regularly coming back to this concept, angry all over again at the idea that hope has been lost. I found more and more people in the circles I move in who were drawn to this framework. I’ve researched more about Deep Adaptation, taking in Jem Bendell’s deliberations on why this movement exists and what it stands for. And I found myself agreeing with his many critiques of eco-modernism, techno-optimism, and imperialism – he is absolutely correct that none of these approaches will solve the climate crisis. However, Bendell seems to gloss over, in a major way, the countless options in between moving to Mars and finding a bolthole from which to watch the collapse of society. In doing so, he erases and devalues the gargantuan efforts being put in by so many movements across the world, to fight for climate justice, to create just solutions, and to help communities around the world mitigate, as well as adapt to the climate crisis. No, the current system will not get us where we need to go, but we can reform that system to make it work for nature, for the climate, for all people. That absolutely won’t be easy, but there are plenty of people who are willing to try.
Deep Adaptation on the whole doesn’t ask people to give up. Most of the movement seems clear that we should continue fighting for our causes, but I question to what extent the average person’s psyche can hold up in a constant cycle of keeping up the enthusiasm for that fight, while simultaneously harbouring the knowledge that it is futile. Bendell thinks we are ‘telling people how to think’ by asking them to have hope, that ‘hope’ as a concept needs to be rethought and reconfigured in an age of collapse. I think this undermines the role hope and positivity play in taking climate, indeed any action – why would anyone continue working to achieve a goal, if they believe that goal to be genuinely unachievable?
There is also a part of me that has a deep aversion, even revulsion to the idea that we must just accept that millions of people will suffer and die. I am not naïve enough to ignore that many will suffer, and many already are, but if that number can be reduced, if that number can be helped by climate action, then we must do everything possible to fight for them. Simply sitting comfortably in 2070 in my self-sustaining, well-defended bolthole, will not assuage one iota of guilt of the millions that died while I did nothing to stop it.
Hope
I run sessions on the Green New Deal, helping people to imagine a positive future for us and future generations. I ran one of these sessions at Devon Transformed festival and I was struck by how many more people were interested in abandoning hope, than they were in finding it. Clearly Deep Adaptation holds something for many people across the climate movement and while I respect anyone’s need to find something that rings true for them, that they find compelling, I worry about the effect a broadening of this movement would have on climate action, and on people’s mental health, particularly young people who already feel terror for their future.
I’m not ready for Deep Adaptation yet. And I don’t think the world is ready at this point (especially given that Bendell’s science on tipping points is disputed). To give in to Deep Adaptation seems to me to be admitting defeat, and writing off the lives of millions of people for whom climate mitigations and societal improvements can yet be made. I understand and respect those who want to explore this path, but I personally cannot hold two realities of hope and despair to be true, and continue to fight and maintain my sanity.
However, there is certainly much to be acknowledged about climate anxiety, or just general anxiety about a wholly uncertain future, and how we as individuals and collectively can work to help each other through it, without necessarily succumbing to deep despair.
I believe imagining and creating a positive future is one way to counter that anxiety, and I will continue to fight for a Green New Deal, to imagine a better future in which we thrive, not just survive.
If you'd like to hear more about hope, rather than doom, come to our online event with Caroline Lucas, Asad Rehman, Ellen Fearon and Lucy Burke on 26th October.
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