I will be 24 this July. Almost weekly I confront myself with the idea of if I have even a glimpse of a future that’s worth living for or if it’ll be better for everyone if I take myself out of the equation before I’m 30, after it’s clear whether or not any positive change has occurred.
Since I was 16, I have been gripped by nothing but fear. Donald Trump’s election made me believe that the future state of the world was a sure apocalypse and the next four years only solidified that idea. However, 2020 (despite it feeling like an apocalypse in real time) was a brief respite as we saw a glimpse of a world where the artifices of car dependency and a presidential candidate who seemed to be promising a real acceptance of the truth and not a purely commercial MO.
By 2022 I was fully suicidal. I had done what I had thought to be useful; I joined the Sierra Club, I signed petitions when I could, I limited my driving substantially (much easier in college), but on the cusp of my graduation and a desire to fully understand the world I was heading into, I was brought in by a particular online community. Their name was r/collapse. I do not stand by their perspectives, not fully, but when I was first having all of my understandings of the global issues not just validated but enhanced by their extrapolations (where I learned buzz words like “Blue Ocean Event”), the brief cultural phenomenon of “Don’t Look Up”, endless articles from places like The Guardian and op-ed pieces from people like Jonathan Franzen, I was drawn endlessly into their worldview. I found myself hating myself for being American, wishing some poor Bangladeshi kid would get the chance to strangle me with his bare hands as some kind of retribution. I only was rescued by friends and family who cared enough to speak to me, although by that point I had grown to view their optimism as toxic and had to tune that out as much as the suicidal ideation.
Over 2023, my habits only changed as far as I cut Reddit out of my life entirely. I started attempting to engage more positively with the news and try and find something worth caring about to carry me forward. In my post-graduate program, I took up bike riding as much as possible and enjoyed Denver as much as I could (comparing it favorably in early 2023 to my hometown of Kansas City), including some very heartening reclaimed wetlands. Summer 2023 threatened to break me again, but instead of going to my old haunts, I discovered the direct tweets of front line climate scientists like Zeke Hausfather, Jonathan Foley and Michael Mann. While they did not disguise facts, they did provide the context that helped me to converse about it with the people in my life without being drawn into utter despair.
By 2024, I feel almost no better than when I started. Back in Kansas City, I’ve forgotten how manageable the heat can be, and thankfully live with parents who have converted our house into a low-emissions oasis with vehicles that pose almost no carbon additions along with a walkable neighborhood. I’m blessed in many ways. I also find myself despairing more and more as I try to understand the words of these scientists and contextualize them against the seemingly so much more apocalyptic predictions of the mainstream media. On an average day, my mind is as follows:
“114° with Index in the Keys but their record high around this time is closer to 126° so that means it’s just on the higher end and not the absolute peak”, “El Niño combined with climate change to produce 2023’s awful temperatures but does that mean 2025 will be cooler or did that push us over the edge?”, “Berkley says 2.7°C by the end of the century even if we make no further changes but now everybody is saying 3°C with certainty?”, “2016 was actually more of an anomaly temperature-wise but does that just mean things have gotten that much worse since then?”, “Are US emissions dropping or rising???”, “Climate scientists have been saying it’s an overreaction to worry about if you should have kids but now most of them are saying they regret it?”
I don’t know if I have any remaining ambitions for my future. My one desire for a long time now has been to raise a child and I don’t know that that is ever going to happen. The uncertainty surrounding literally everything in modern life right now has me questioning not only who to believe but if there is any hope. Even DailyKos can give me a lot to be optimistic about one second and then have me despairing the second. I can only imagine a lot of people my age and younger having similar concerns. There doesn’t even seem to be a consensus of if 1.5°C is a feasible climate goal or not or if the projected La Niña recovery is anything more than a mirage. Even Biden’s climate accomplishments feel like they don’t exist sometimes and every current model seems to suggest that no matter what emissions are rising, at least as far as I’m capable of understanding.
I’m tired, and I wish there was a way to find a single place that gave me some idea of what I need to do.