We’re Screwed

Grocery stores on the west coast had to shut down last week.

Workers pulled meat and perishables off the shelves because refrigerators were malfunctioning under the extreme temperatures. They threw away what had already gone bad and covered the rest in plastic to keep it from thawing. That’s what happened in Washington during a heat dome that killed hundreds and split roads open. Massive pyro-storms unleashed hundreds of thousands of lightning strikes across Canada over a single night. Entire towns burned to the ground. Once again, meteorologists told everyone they’d “never seen anything like this.”

But we have.

Every day, we learn that the climate devastation we predicted a hundred years off is hitting us now, faster and harder than we imagined. We see consequences and side effects we hadn’t planned on, like food literally melting in grocery stores. We discover just how unprepared we are, and how little our leaders are willing to sacrifice or change.

We’re screwed.

Here’s what it means to be screwed.

You probably already know how bad things are. What you want to hear is whether or not you’re alone. Are you crazy?

No, you’re not.

Are you a nihilist? Are you a negative person for wanting to talk about the actual future we’re up against? No. You are sane. It’s completely reasonable to be scared, angry, and a little depressed.

When you or I read about grocery stores closing and food melting during heat domes, we don’t panic. We don’t catastrophize. We do, however, realize that we’ve got to get our shit together when it comes to addressing climate destruction, on the individual and collective level. We have to brace for bad things happening that we previously thought never could. We have to see just how lucky and privileged we’ve been most of our lives. We have to admit that not only is the era of things like constantly refrigerated goods about to end, but that the very desire for this ultra-convenient consumerist paradise has brought about many of the world’s problems.

It must end.

We should be thinking differently about how to feed and clothe ourselves, because the current way produces extraordinary waste, and it’s extraordinarily vulnerable. To say we’re screwed means an acknowledgement. We need major changes.

Not next year. Not by 2030.

Now.

And yet, look at what’s going on. We’re in the middle of another global surge in a pandemic, with a virus that continues to mutate. It’s 118 degrees in the Arctic circle. Entire towns are going up in smoke. Amidst all this, your boss is telling you it’s time to get back to the office. Gotta keep cranking out those sprockets. Gotta keep Karen happy. Gotta keep saving for that retirement, even if money is worthless by then.

Your neighbor is watering his lawn and grilling cow flesh that consumes roughly 2,000 gallons of water per pound. Companies like Starbucks keep promising us recyclable cups. It’s always next year.

We’re fatally complacent.

Millions of clueless suburbanites are never going to wake up in time to see what’s happening. They’re going to wait until one day it gets so hot outside their air conditioner craps out, and their refrigerator malfunctions. Instead of blaming themselves for being such idiots for the last 20 years, they’re going to get angry at immigrants. They’re going to point their fingers at windmills and liberal snowflakes like me. They’re going to storm more federal buildings with assault weapons and tear gas.

Saying we’re screwed simply means we’re in serious trouble, and we desperately need people to start realizing just how much their lives are going to have to change, if we have a prayer of survival. It’s already too late to continue living in this glorious world of palatial grocery stores. But the longer our leaders wait, the longer we keep burning fossil fuels and wasting precious resources, the worse it’s going to get.

Optimism is selfish as hell.

Here’s the thing about “optimism.”

It’s selfish.

It’s inherently self-centered to ignore dire warnings from scientists, to dismiss discourse about serious problems as “doomsaying,” and convince everyone that everything will be fine as long as they just keep living their best life. That’s what we’ve done for the last four decades.

Look where it’s gotten us.

Optimists want to talk about being a good person without actually making any difficult choices. They don’t want to read the news. They don’t want to talk about anything that’s too depressing.

Some of these people get fussy because nobody wants to read yet another of their listicles describing the same 10 traits of emotional healthy people, or the 5 habits of happy couples.

To those people, I have this to say:

Hey, I’m sorry nobody wants to hear your opinion about the 5 little things that make someone irresistible. We’re a little distracted by the droughts and wild fires destroying our primary food source. We’re trying to get other people to give a damn, so we can survive a little longer.

Is it okay with you if we talk about that?

Do you mind if we stop gushing over Steve Jobs for a minute to address the very real food insecurity, poverty, and homelessness that some of us deal with on a daily basis? It’s not theoretical for us. It’s not something we just see in the headlines and then avoid because it makes us feel bad. We see it every single time we leave the house. We have to deal with it. We’ve dealt with it for decades, back when nobody cared or listened to us.

If this isn’t what you want to read, then feel free to stick your head back in the sand and continue being part of the privileged group who doesn’t have to care about any of these problems.

Yet…

Here’s what you can do to help unscrew us.

The optimists love to hit you with the accusation that you’re simply listing out problems without providing solutions.

Well, here they are:

Read actual news analysis.

Call and/or email your representatives.

Vote democrat (they’re the only chance we’ve got).

Donate to charities and nonprofits.

Help register people to vote.

Help get them to the polls.

Educate yourself on sustainable living and net zero societies.

Consume fewer single-use plastics.

Stop buying stuff from Amazon.

Join a “buy nothing” group.

Use/wear things until they literally fall apart.

Eat less meat and dairy.

Eat more beans and vegetables.

Drive less.

Fly less.

Have fewer children.

Use less water.

This is just for starters. Unscrewing us is a daily process of figuring out how to be more involved, more active, more educated about the world. It’s about figuring out how to consume less and produce less waste. It’s about stating the problems so people can’t push them to the edge of their consciousness, because it’s easier to let someone else deal with them.

I do every single thing on this list, by the way.

I know lots of people who do.

Am I chaining myself to a tree? No. That’s not going to help. The world doesn’t need more martyrs. Have I completely given up plastic? No, but I’m close. My family throws away one bag of trash per month. I spent two years spraying off cloth diapers so I didn’t use the disposable kind. It was a pain in the ass, but it was worth it. What the world really needs is more people willing to do stuff like that, to put up with tiny little inconveniences like waiting a week for something to ship, or taking five minutes to email their state representatives, or donating some of their precious money to an organization that plants trees or protects democracy. That’s all. It might feel like an enormous burden at first, but you get used to it.

No, you’re not going to save the world on your own. There’s too much going on for one single person to handle. But you’re not going to help by continuing the same sanguine, wasteful lifestyle like most of us have been for the majority of our lives, and lashing out at anyone who dares to challenge the status quo. That’s not mature, or enlightened.

It’s childish.

Nobody is prepared for the real apocalypse.

I’ve been watching this show called “Doomsday Preppers,” a documentary series that aired on National Geographic until about 2014. It’s almost quaint compared to what we’re dealing with now.

Here’s the first thing that jumps out about the show. Almost every prepper hails from the white middle class.

Figures, right?

These are the people with so much extra time and money on their hands that they have the luxury to sit around and scare each other to death about who’s going to try and take it away from them. Every now and then, you get the occasional Daryl types from The Walking Dead who can actually trap and hunt. Even these families aren’t preparing for it to reach 118 degrees in the snowy peaks of Alberta, Canada.

The entertainment industry has trained us to see the apocalypse as some freakish event brought about by zombies or giant asteroids. If you want a glimpse of the real apocalypse, look at Somalia or Madagascar — where tens of thousands are already starving.

Even the most practical survivalists out there are living in a fantasy where they’ll get to grow vegetables in their back yard and shoot intruders with homemade crossbows. They don’t seem to get it. Ultimately, they’re engaging in a kind of therapy for pre-traumatic stress. They all have some vague idea of what’s coming. Some are preparing for a terrorist attack, others for a mild version of climate change. The best of them might hang on for a couple of years. In the end, their prepping serves one purpose. It makes them feel better. It gives them a sense of control.

It’s not going to save them.

Humanity won’t make it if we all branch off into a bunch of survivalist camps. It won’t make it if those with a voice and a platform don’t at least acknowledge that we could be doing more, and that we should be worried about the future.

We don’t have to be screwed.

Things are going to get worse. We should all finally admit that, and stop shaming each other for trying to be honest. There’s a lot of fear and pain out there. I see it. I also see people hiding it.

That’s not helping anyone.

The most important message I want to send is that we don’t have to be screwed, or at least we can be a little less screwed.

That’s going to take hard, immediate changes.

It’s going to take more than our individual efforts, but that’s not a hall pass to keep watering lawns and grilling beef and littering the ground with fireworks in vain celebrations of our greatness.

If we were all serious about making a brighter future for everyone, we would stop consuming red meat. We would come up with a real plan to ditch fossil fuels in the next 5 years. We would drive less. We would buy less. We would vote out every single member of the GOP, every fake democrat, and become single-issue voters on climate.

What I want to do is encourage people to say what’s on their minds. The way we’re living now isn’t acceptable. The expectations heaped on us aren’t reasonable. Our leaders aren’t doing enough to protect what’s left of civilization. We’re not going to keep pretending everything’s fine while the world burns before our very eyes. We’re going to demand more, of ourselves, and others. If we don’t, or won’t…

We’re screwed.