Faith during the apocalypse
I recently wondered if we are living at the beginning of our own extinction.
Texas and Louisiana were drowning. California, Oregon, Washington and Colorado burning. More than 200,000 Americans dead from COVID-19. Black people killed by police, immigrants in custody. A constitutional crisis this autumn?
An inherent contradiction in an apocalypse is that if it is happening, you are powerless to stop it; at the same time, you have a moral obligation to try to stop it.
There is, perhaps, no better example than the climate crisis. Climate scientists Anne Stoner and Katherine Hayhoe recently published a climate change forecast for the Houston area. According to the analysis, Houston has already experienced significant increases in temperature since 1950 because of climate change. Over the rest of the century, the region will see even longer summers, more days of 100-degree heat, hotter nights, more intense rainstorms and stronger hurricanes. A key aspect of the report is that nothing will stop the effects of climate change. It’s already happening, and will continue; we can only reduce the effects.
I asked Hayhoe, one of the scientists, how she talks about her projections for the future — that seem so dim — without discouraging people into inaction.
“This message should be empowering, which is that we have a choice to make,” Hayhoe said. “And our choice really does make a difference.”
Their analysis details various outcomes based on different pathways of emissions: a high emissions scenario and a low emissions scenario. The analysis details how the effects of climate change will differ if we reduce greenhouse gases in time under each.
The way Hayhoe looks at it, reducing emissions is not for naught. In the same way that slowing the spread of a disease is not for naught, because saving more lives is inherently better than saving fewer lives. More time is better than less.
Hayhoe acknowledges that “the dice are loaded against us.” But she still has faith in our ability to change. We can see the odds are stacked against us and keep playing to win.
Even now, in 2020, while suffering feels endless, all around are rebuttals to the apocalypse. The stay-at-home orders of the pandemic has shown us how feelings of intimacy and isolation can co-exist. The George Floyd and Breonna Taylor cases have demonstrated how justice and injustices can happen in tandem. Each hurricane and wildfire proves we may drown and burn at the same time as we build and flourish.
We can — we must — have faith in our capacity for change in the face of devastation and despair, even when it feels like a great contradiction.
In May, a few months after the stay-at-home orders lifted, I began to reckon with one such contradiction: I hadn’t seen my family in Colorado since January, and they really needed me. At the same time, experts were projecting the pandemic could go on for several more months, if not years. How could I both stay home and travel during the pandemic? Do my actions even matter?
The most dangerous part of a crisis is believing that there’s no chance of stopping it. That it’s all up to the “system,” or the elites, the Big Bad Corporations, The Left or The Right.
We can lose faith in elections and maintain faith in democracy — which requires us to vote. We can know that climate change is irreversible and that we still have time to prevent the worst effects — which requires reducing emissions.
So in May, I acknowledged the real and present danger of spreading COVID-19 across the country, but I decided to maintain faith in my personal power to prevent it. I packed up my car with a month’s worth of supplies and two days of food. Gloves and masks for stops at the gas station. Disinfectant wipes for surfaces.
Sixteen hours later, I was in Fort Collins, Colo., where I quarantined with my family for a month before the long drive back to Houston.
The idea that we don’t have power to effect change in the face of a global pandemic, global racism, a global climate crisis, is ironically what will ensure we don’t.
Our choices are not always about solving the massive, overwhelming problem. Sometimes, all we can do is hold ourselves accountable and not make the problem worse.
In the long run, maybe that is the solution.