By Sesa Graham
On Feb. 23, the Delta College President’s Speaker Series welcomed Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Elizabeth Kolbert and climate master Jennifer Atkinson. This environmental summit was conducted virtually through Zoom from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Kolbert is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. She works on environmentalism with The New Yorker magazine as an observer and commentator.
Atkinson is a well-known author and associate professor at the University of Washington, Bothell teaching environmental humanities. The seminars she has done on climate anxiety and eco-grief have been watched nationwide. Facing It, Atkinson’s podcast can be downloaded on Apple Podcasts and Audible.
Kolbert discussed the dangers of climate change and its universal effects on us socially and environmentally. She expressed how impactful the rising sea levels are becoming and that it is due to oceans warming up, the temperature on lands rising, and how much water is coming off of ice sheets.
In this century, global sea levels have risen 10 inches which is exceptionally problematic. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), sea levels are predicted to rise one foot along U.S. coastlines by 2050.
The beaches are disappearing with houses that are along the beachfront. Flooding is occurring more and more in places such as Miami during storms, creating salt waters on the roads.
“What is so crucial is that people need to simply talk about climate change; there is still a phenomenal amount of denial,” Kolbert expressed.
The thing about climate change is that it makes wet areas wetter and drier regions drier. And because of this, places such as Lake Mead are experiencing a drought due to lack of rainfall. With droughts come wildfires. The wildfire season in California is getting longer and spiked in 2020.
Climate change has indirect and direct effects. Take the coral reef, for example, home to over a million different species.
All of the coral reefs were once beautiful and vibrant, now are turning white and dying. When this happens, it’s called bleaching. As the water temperatures rise, more coral bleaches happen. If the bleaching lasts too long, the reefs will die. Bleaching occurs due to runoff and pollution, which dilutes the water in the ocean.
“It is likely that reefs will be the first major ecosystem in the modern era to become ecologically extinct.” -Charles Sheppard, Simon Davy, Graham Piling; The Biology of Coral Reefs
When the world is full of bad news, we have to figure out how to cope.
Atkinson shared climate change’s impact on her students at the University of Washington. Some of the students had shared with her on the first day of class their fears of not wanting children because the future seems so dark. While some had fears, others had nightmares of water wars or social collapse.
“Some of them have noted that they want to switch majors because the environmental topics feel so heartbreaking and depressing,” Atkinson stated.
It’s not just students in the U.S. that have these concerns for the future; it’s the entire world.
“… I had always thought of grief as a bad thing, a dark state to avoid or overcome as quickly as possible. I thought that feeling grief was like succumbing to a preventable illness or that once it took hold, I might fall into a bottomless hole of despair. But in time, it dawned on us that maybe we were seeking solutions to the wrong problem. We all wanted to fix the way we felt so we could go back to feeling happy, but grief isn’t something to be fixed because it’s not dysfunctional. In fact, it’s a healthy and necessary process we have to undergo in order to heal.” -Jennifer Atkinson
Published in The Lancet, the most extensive research study on this topic showed that the climate crisis had put widespread psychological stress on young people.
Because of climate change, many of those who hunt for food struggle to find resources because colder areas are warming up.
Climate change isn’t only a threat to the environment but also to culture and mental health.
Some of the emotional feelings that individuals may feel due to climate crisis:
- Eco-anxiety- fear of environmental damage or ecological diasaster, a sign of attachment to the world
- Climate Trauma- physical impact of climate chaos that has psychological impact on someone
- Global Dread- an experience of angst, nausea, dread, or despair for the fear of the world
- Pre-traumatic Stress- stress trauma that we experience when confronted with imminent or irreversible loss
- Ecological Grief- emotional response to ecological loss such as species or land
- Environmental Melancholia- emotional response of mourning in response to ecological degradation
- Solastaglia- emotional response of distress caused by environmental change
We have to be open to the new reality that climate change is real and it is happening. The coral reefs are dying, the ice caps are melting, the land is drying up, cities are flooding, species are becoming extinct, CO2 is burning up the ozone, and so much more.
We can’t go back and fix it, but we can grieve with the raw facts of what is happening to this world. The important thing is that we accept this and open our arms out to a new world, a new transformation, and a new beginning, taking care of that new beginning the way other generations didn’t.
What would you do if we had a year before we knew this Earth couldn’t give us the supplies we needed to survive? Now take that information and do something with it because we are never promised a tomorrow. Clean energy and clean technologies need to be the future. There is no planet B.
Elizabeth Kolbert’s work with The New Yorker: Link
Jennifer Atkinson’s website: Link
