Denial And The Future of The Environmental Movement

We don’t need to simply wake people up to climate change, we need to wake them up to wanting to build a whole new civilisation.

“Revolutions happen in two phases - first when everybody realises that something is wrong; the second is when everybody realises that everybody else realises it too” Alexei Yurchak

Soon (I hope) more and more people will realise we are not here to save the world - we are trying to save civilisation. As George Carlin put it, the planet is going to be fine without us.

Instead, we need to expand our awareness enough to realise that we are living in a spike in human development powered by fossil fuels that stands out on the Big History timeline like a skyscraper in a meadow.

We’re not here to save the planet, we’re instead living through what it feels like to realise that our current mode of civilisation is over - the challenge is to be OK with that because it’s flawed, it’s insufficient and it is an evolutionary dead end. There’s no point in clinging on, it’s simply attachment to something impermanent and broken - but it’s all we have ever known, it’s comfy and it’s ours.

Realising this is scary so people hide in denial of varying kinds: from outright climate denial to denial of the scale of the challenge we face.

To be clear, this is an inter generational challenge that will take hundreds if not thousands of years to unfold as we learn to build a different kind of civilisation - one that works not only with but as Nature.

I’ve been wrestling with the tension that arises from the need for patience in an emergency. It is not easy but focusing on the longview brings solace and identifying with the life in all things brings me peace. It reminds me to surrender the illusion of my ego, the part of me that wants a resolution here and now and instead rediscover the part of me that is in all things, that’s in you and in every tree.

To remind myself that the planet ‘peoples’ just as an apple tree ‘apples’. And from that perspective things make a lot more sense.

From that viewpoint I can see that climate change and ecological crises are lessons that are teaching us how to live in the next civilisation.

And that future civilisation will be beautiful.

But it’s not going to emerge until we are ready for it. Enough of us may not be ready for it for some time, so I take solace in working for Phase 1 of the revolution, whilst carrying on with building a world that’s ready and waiting for Phase 2.

For me, this is what lies at the heart of the next phase of the environmental movement beyond disruption.

We don’t need to simply wake people up to climate change, we need to wake them up to wanting to build a whole new civilisation.

And as so many are already paralysed by fear, we need to wake them up with as much love as ice cold water as we can.