In my life and my work, I deal with deadlines. I need to write to deadline and I set deadlines for other writers. I joke (but it’s very true) that I couldn’t get anything done without a deadline. I love deadlines.
But when I read the expected deadlines for climate change to become catastrophic, these points of no return meant to frighten us into action, all I can feel is dread.
In the past few years, we’ve become more familiar with the concept of eco-anxiety (also known as climate anxiety or solastalgia). This is a sometimes debilitating anxiety people get when engaging with climate change, sometimes triggered by news articles about climate change. I’m pretty sure I have a low-level amount of it. I think in some ways it would be hard not to. I’m already an anxious person, and I have to engage with the most up-to-date information about climate change for my job.
Every time I need to read an article that deals with climate change, I can feel a tightness in my body. It’s a physical response, the churning in my stomach and my shoulders hunching over, as though I’m trying to protect myself from the information. I read it anyway, focusing on the quality of the writing and the strength of the argument. Sitting in my office chair, I feel a little like the dog meme who says to himself, ‘this is fine’.
The overwhelming temptation is to not think about it too hard. I’m an avoider and procrastinator by nature, so this falls straight into my bad habits. But climate change is also, for all my privilege, becoming difficult to avoid, at least without employing some serious cognitive dissonance. It creeps in when I walk through my suburb and notice that each year the wild freesias are coming a bit earlier. I think about it when I am at an airport, and instead of wondering about where all the people are going, I think about all the jet fuel that those planes will be using.
There are, of course, many people who don’t have the privilege of thinking about climate change selectively. The real people who are, or soon will be, directly and adversely affected by climate change and the ways we pollute our planet: the people who don’t have enough food and water, the people who live in smoggy cities, the people who live in cities or countries threatened by natural disasters, melting ice and rising water levels. Climate change is already disproportionally affecting the most marginalised.
Australians are becoming more worried about climate change, but can still be stuck in a Western tendency to separate the environment from humanity, and by extension, see climate activism as less important or pertinent. But in many ways, environmental justice is social justice — we are all coexisting and implicated.
"It is hard to keep confronting the realities of climate change. Our minds are literally fighting against us to do so."
From 16 of September, media organisations from around the world will be participating in Covering Climate Now, an initiative started by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation to emphasise the emergent nature of climate change in the lead up to the United Nations Climate Action summit on the 23rd of September. Eureka Street will also be taking part, publishing a week’s worth of climate change coverage.
We will have articles that talk about nuclear power and politics, explore what sovereignty might mean when countries no longer exist, list ways we deny climate change is happening, and how consumerism factors into all of it. The writing we have commissioned is in different styles and tones, but underlying in all of the works is a sense of urgency.
The word deadline has a brutal history. The term comes from the American Civil War, and according to Merriam-Webster, it meant a ‘line drawn within or around a prison that a prisoner passes at the risk of being shot’. There’s a stark literalness to the word — cross over this point, and you are dead.
It is hard to keep confronting the realities of climate change. Our minds are literally fighting against us to do so, and it’s important to check in with ourselves about our mental health, take steps to manage our own self care and talk to others about how we’re feeling.
We do, however, still need to keep engaging with it. It could look like taking part of the Climate Strike on the 20th of September. It could be learning how to fix things you would normally throw away or join your local climate action group. Maybe it'll be reading Covering Climate Now stories. The learning and talking and protesting is all part of getting through this. We have a deadline to work to.
Neve Mahoney is Assistant Editor of Eureka Street and a student at RMIT university. She has also contributed to Australian Catholics and The Big Issue.
Image: Woman looking at her phone screen with a worried expression (pxhere)