The world is ending, and I don’t know how to handle it

Kofi Mframa, Opinions Editor

From hurricanes in California, fires in Hawaii, record high temperatures, to rising sea levels, it’s clear we’re in a state of climate disaster. We’ve been here for quite some time.

Earth’s average surface temperature is now around 1.1°C warmer than it was before the industrial revolution. The last decade was the warmest on record, and each of the last four decades has been warmer than any previous decade since 1850, according to the United Nations.

To make matters worse, the Paris Agreement is not enough to prevent temperatures from rising. The agreement is a global framework to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. We have about ten years to limit global temperature increases or the results could be irreversible. 

Beyond that threshold, scientists have found climate disasters will become so extreme that people will not be able to adapt. Basic components of the Earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered. Heat waves, famines and infectious diseases could claim millions of additional lives by the end of the century, according to the Washington Post.

This perilous reality often catalyzes feelings of existential dread. From that comes climate doomism, the view that humanity has lost the climate battle, and we feel nothing but helplessness and anxiety about it.

These feelings are valid, inevitable even, but ultimately inconsequential. Climate optimists say that accepting climate change as an unavoidable reality is harmful as it discourages us in fighting the climate crisis.

As consumers, it can often feel like our individual contributions to the climate dilemma are ineffective. Climate professionals are worried about perceived consumer effectiveness, or PCE, which is a consumer’s estimate of their ability to contribute to specific sustainable development-related outcomes through specific behaviors. 

If consumers don’t believe their actions can positively impact the climate, they are likely to give up altogether.

I do everything I can to curb my carbon footprint. I recycle when I can and shop sustainable whenever possible. I try to reduce my waste. I bought a reusable water bottle, not purely out of convenience, but for environmental benefits. 

Consumers shouldn’t be the only people taking steps to save the planet. Doing so becomes even harder when we realize that it’s major corporations that are contributing the most to climate change. A 2017 study found that 100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions. 

Here is where the antic lies. 

These companies get to dump waste in the ocean and destroy the ozone layer whilst consumers feel guilty when certain sustainable practices are out of reach. Corporations and governments bear the responsibility of rectifying the planet they are actively destroying. To get them to actually do that, though, will take more than voluntary agreements and empty promises. 

To make actual, tangible change, these companies and the ultra wealthy must fundamentally alter many of their practices. These changes would substantially affect their bottom line, the thing they are willing to kill us all for. Climate mitigation can only be effective with the dismantling of capitalism itself. 

So what do we do while we’re waiting for the revolution? It’s an evil catch-22. I feel guilty if I stay complacent, but I feel useless if I try not to. I also realize climate doomism and climate denialism are different means to a similar end where no climate action is taken whatsoever.

Nevertheless, I shouldn’t feel bad for not using a paper straw that immediately disintegrates in my drink when Kylie Jenner gets to fly her gas guzzling private jet from one end of Los Angeles to the other. 

To combat the climate crisis we need drastic changes and infrastructure to support those changes. We have the resources and the capability, but the measures we need to take don’t fit neatly with our current economic ideologies and social systems.

As difficult as it is, we mustn’t throw our hands in the air in defeat. Succumbing to climate doomism or nihilism only works toward the detriment of our planet. We may feel small but there is power in numbers.