The climate fact no one will admit: 2 °C warming is inevitable

[GliderGuider]

36. I would like to strongly support Boomer's suggestion about detachment.

My slide into despair began in 2004 with Peak Oil, then expanded over the following few years to include climate change, species extinctions and the all rest of our depredations of the biosphere. For almost four years I was angry and depressed to the point of being suicidal. My behaviour became anti-social. I lost my marriage because I was so unpleasant to be around.

I knew the bell of of knowledge couldn't be un-rung, but I also knew I couldn't go on the way I was. I decided to try and find some way to achieve equanimity while still acknowledging what I had learned. One of the things I discovered in that process is why so many people in our circumstances have begun to follow the principles of Buddhism.

Buddhism and its various Eastern relatives such as Taoism have some very important things going for them, that bear directly on the issues that arise when ecology collides with psychology.

To start with, they are the original "complex system" philosophies. One of their core principles is that everything is connected to everything else. No object, state or process exists in isolation. Everything depends on everything else. This is the fundamental ecological principle that is finally being rehabilitated into Western science, as an antidote to its methodological reductionism.

Another fundamental principle of these philosophies is that conscious human agency is far less important to how things turn out, compared to the state of the larger universe we live in and the principles that drive it though changes. This is recognized most explicitly by Taoism in the concept of "wu wei" or "effortless doing". Unfortunately, this perception of the minuscule power of human agency within the big picture is often mischaracterized and denigrated as fatalism or nihilism by those who are afraid of it, those whose identity is bound up with the need to control outcomes.

The third thing that Buddhism etc. bring to the table is the concept of non-attachment. This is the idea that it's perfectly OK, natural and right that the universe does whatever it does, and a recognition that the mental anguish we experience as a result is mostly because we cling to the desire that things should be different than they are. (IMO "should" is one of the most dangerous words in the English language...)

Even though I don't label myself a Buddhist, I've found that by integrating these three teachings I've finally been able to approach some measure of emotional balance and peace of mind, and have been able to discard most of my dread and despair.

There is definitely a price for following this path. Most of the committed environmentalists I know utterly reject the idea of non-attachment, seeing it as a convenient excuse for being morally lazy. As a result I have lost most of my previous sense of connection and shared struggle with the mainstream environmental movement.

Fortunately, there is a growing number of ex-environmentalists (e.g. Paul Kingsnorth) who share these perceptions. We are finding each other on-line, and loose communities of different sorts are beginning to appear. For someone who is experiencing the kind of grief and suffering you are, they can be healing oases of sanity.