We have to get over our climate nihilism

It’s a luxury we can’t afford

The lure of nihilism is becoming increasingly difficult to resist, especially for young people. Every day, we’re faced with a barrage of news stories about how time is running out, it’s already too late, or how whichever corporation did another evil thing that nobody could stop. As we’ve covered before, climate news has a very unhelpful bend towards the apocalyptic.

Those stories are having their inevitable consequences. In a recent poll of Canadian youth, 76 percent said that they find the future frightening. Nearly 80 percent say that climate change affects their overall mental health. And, most distressingly, almost 50 percent believe that humanity is doomed. 

We need to talk about it. Growing nihilism is a huge barrier to action, something we must resist with everything we have. But how do we actually do it, especially when hopeful stories are so few and far between? 

Let’s first look at the word itself. Nihilism, or the belief that things are meaningless and there’s no point trying to change them, comes from the Latin word nihil, which means nothing. It also features in the word “annihilate,” which means to destroy completely. As the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche puts it in his work Will to Power, “Nihilism is . . . not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one’s shoulder to the plough; one destroys.”

We think that our nihilism is somehow neutral; a checking out, a neutrality, a resignation. But this is false; nihilism is an actively destructive force. When we succumb to it, finding no more meaning or purpose and simply resigning ourselves to the idea that it doesn’t matter, it actively works against those trying to build something different. Just as a plant begins to die the moment it ceases to grow, so too do we begin to collectively collapse as soon as we stop building towards something different. 

It has become almost trendy to adopt a nihilistic stance online, or to simply check out of the conversation. But nihilism is a luxury that many in this world simply do not have, and one that none of us can afford. Those in immediate danger of losing homes, land, or who are driven out due to the effects of our changing climate do not get to be nihilistic. They do not get to throw up their hands, ignore the problem, and remain comfortable. They are forced to act. Not everyone has that comfort to fall into. People–especially marginalized people–have been faced with existential threats for a long time; the difference now is that those who have been historically insulated from these threats are now beginning to feel them for the first time, and it’s crippling. 

As Sarah Jaquette Ray writes in Scientific American,

“The prospect of an unlivable future has always shaped the emotional terrain for Black and brown people, whether that terrain is racism or climate change. Climate change compounds existing structures of injustice, and those structures exacerbate climate change. Exhaustion, anger, hope—the effects of oppression and resistance are not unique to this climate moment. What is unique is that people who had been insulated from oppression are now waking up to the prospect of their own unlivable future.”

None of this is to make us feel even more guilty or ashamed. I feel hopeless often, even though a large portion of my work is dedicated to combating these defeatist narratives. I read a news story that’s particularly gloomy and think “Am I wasting my time? Are the systems really too big, the drive for capital expansion so powerful that nothing we do will ever really change things? Are the billionaires and corporations going to drive us to extinction, and there’s really nothing we can do to stop them? Maybe we should just accept our extinction, hope that other life will thrive after we’re gone, and I should just try to have a good, easy life while I’m here.”

Honestly, I arrive at places like this often. But I try to catch myself now when I’m prophesying or catastrophizing and remind myself that we can’t know how things will turn out. And regardless of the outcome, it still matters what we do now. 

It’s not bad to feel this grief or sadness when faced with distressing news about our future. In fact, it’s necessary. The prospect of losing all of the beauty, the complexity, the things that we’ve built because of shortsightedness and greed is a profoundly sad thought. It’s inevitable to feel hopeless sometimes when faced with an issue as large and potentially catastrophic as climate change–especially in a world as unequal as ours, where not all voices and actions have equal impact. We must contend with these emotions, but the important step is what comes after; whether we allow ourselves to be consumed by that feeling, or whether we feel it for a while and then get back to work. Whether we let it crush us, or whether we channel it into something bigger. 

As Rebecca Solnit–one of the great writers in service of remaining actively hopeful–writes about this sense of defeatism, 

“I wonder sometimes if it’s because people assume you can’t be hopeful and heartbroken at the same time, and of course you can. In times when everything is fine, hope is unnecessary. Hope is not happiness or confidence or inner peace; it’s a commitment to search for possibilities. Feelings deserve full respect as feelings, but all they inform you about is you. History is full of people who continued to struggle in desperate and grim circumstances. Some lived to see those circumstances change because of that struggle. Maybe this is what Antonio Gramsci meant with his famous phrase “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”. Some days I think that if we lose the climate battle, it’ll be due in no small part to this defeatism among the comfortable in the global north, while people in frontline communities continue to fight like hell for survival. Which is why fighting defeatism is also climate work.”

So how do we do it? How do we actually fight defeatism in our own lives? 

Working Through Nihilism

There are no easy answers, and each of us will ultimately have to find what’s true in our own lives. But there are some places to start. 

First, we can practice letting go of outcomes. We’re so focused on answering the questions of “Can we win? What are our odds?” Frankly, nobody is in a position to answer those questions. We aren’t psychic. And it also doesn’t matter. The question is whether we’re going to give it our best effort; if we are going to try, no matter how things unfold. We also must get comfortable with long-termism, with the truth that we may not see things shift in a meaningful way in our lifetimes, but that we must lay the groundwork for future generations to pick up where we left off. 

We also must work to accept reality as it is, while retaining the knowledge that it could be different. Sometimes, it almost feels like hopefulness is a kind of delusion, of pretending things aren’t as bad as they are. But this doesn’t have to be the case. We can be clear-eyed about our situation while also recognizing that it is not unchangeable. The reality is that it is not too late, and there are no silver-bullet solutions that will magically fix things. We have to inhabit the messy place between those two poles and chart our way forward imperfectly.

Then, we must work through our guilt and shame. Both emotions are natural, but ultimately unhelpful. They do the opposite of driving us to action. We feel them, but then we must move into some form of action. We must look at our own lives and find ways to give that align with our talents, interests, and inner motivation. We don’t try to do everything, nor do we do nothing. We do what we can, and leave it at that–no self-flagellation, guilt, or shame. 

The topic of the degree to which individual action matters is a big one, and deserves a piece of its own. But one thing to remember is that we’re all different, and we all have different circumstances. Some so-called “green actions” are accessible to us, and others aren’t. It isn’t helpful to berate ourselves over the ones we can’t or don’t want to take. We live in a system that makes acting in sustainable ways very difficult. We just have to try our best to live in accordance with our values despite these imperfect circumstances. 

The thing is, it actually feels better to live this way. We feel good when we act in accordance with our values, and it feels bad when we don’t. If we feel shame every time we make a fast fashion order or when we think about getting involved in a campaign but don’t make the plunge, or when we fly when we could easily take the train, we can look deeply into these habits and try to make choices that feel better. The actions we take should come from a place of wanting our lives to feel aligned, rather than from a place of pure sacrifice or guilt. 

And if we live in a place where the train system is woefully underdeveloped and the best option is to fly, we fly and move on. If we decide that the cost of living is making it so work is the highest priority and we don’t have time to get involved in local actions without burning ourselves out, we don’t get involved in the campaign. We know ourselves and our situations best. But action of some kind is one of the best ways to combat defeatism. Action begets more action, and slowly we develop a sense of our own agency. 

Life is long. These actions do matter on one level, because they make up big trends that shift things on a macro scale, and they also aren’t that consequential on another level, because a lot of the change we need to see comes from corporations and other systemic actors. Both are true; we have to hold them at the same time. So we take the actions that we can, the actions that interest us, and the actions that make us feel good and aligned with our values. And we learn to let go of the rest. 

Climate change as a story problem 

Hopelessness is a natural product of the moment we find ourselves in. We are in between stories, in a liminal moment where the old story, one of domination over nature, extractive capitalism, separation, and endless technological progress is showing its deep cracks and driving us into ecological disarray. The new story, however, is yet to emerge. We’re left disoriented, confused, and unsure where to find any hope, because it’s unclear what we should feel hopeful about, especially at a society-wide scale. 

Climate change, at this stage, is predominantly a problem of story, not of science. We have so much information about what to do, but we lack large-scale action–the will–to realize what we know we must do. In large part, this is a culture problem. And we, as young people, are often the setters of culture. 

The problem is that we do not feel ourselves, at this stage, to be active authors of our collective story. In a fascinating study by Heidi Hendersson and Christine Wamsler, they conducted interviews with university students completing degrees in sustainability-related fields. They found that even though these young people were dedicated to working on climate issues, they did not feel like they were actively part of the story. As the authors write,

“Even though many of the participants saw their life paths paved by the looming threat of climate change, deciding not just their behavior and consumption but also their career and education choices, they tended to be reluctant to acknowledge their active part in the story. Some of the participants even stated that they saw themselves more as passive storytellers than actors, and one said that if she were to play a role in the story she wrote, she would be cast as one of the “bad guys” due to her privileged status as a Westerner.”

They also write that guilt and shame rob us of our entitlement to the story, making it difficult to feel like we truly have a stake. This feeling of separation from the story of climate change is a core issue we must address. None of us is separate from this story; we are living it, and it is shaping our lives in immeasurable ways. Nihilism arises when we feel ourselves to be passive side characters in the story, not able to shape the ending. Hope is what arises when we acknowledge that we don’t know how it will end, but we find ways to maintain our agency. To keep trying despite the uncertainty. 

The reality is that we are writing our future in every moment. Each of us is an author, despite what we might feel. We are living in the unfolding of our collective story, right now, in this moment. We may not feel like active authors; like everything is happening to us, without our input. But collectively, we absolutely have the power to rewrite the story. The question is whether we are going to rise to the task. 

So let us pick up the pen. Let the story we write be one of collective liberation, of stumbling imperfectly towards justice, of refusing to give in despite the uncertain future ahead of us. Of finding ways to be joyful and connected as the forces of our culture try to divide and frighten us. Let each of us find our thread in the tapestry of our future and begin weaving. It matters, regardless of the outcome. It matters that we try. 

1. This article from the New Yorker, titled “The Stark Inequality of Climate Change,” profiles two books about disaster preparation and the aspects of privilege that play into them. A favourite quote: “To survive the climate crisis, he argues, we will need to establish what he calls “commonwealth” values, which will animate a way of living and relating to one another that’s not zero-sum, but where ‘my flourishing is the condition of your flourishing, and yours is reciprocally of mine.’”

2. The book Ideas to Postpone the End of the World by Ailton Krenak, an Indigenous activist and leader, is an important and confronting look at what’s at stake, and how we can move through the perilous moment that we find ourselves in.

3. This article for Public Books by Deanna K. Kreisel titled “A Messy Utopia is All we Might Get” is a great read, offering insights into the role that future visions play in forming the path forward.