Feeling the fear and doing it anyway: Making a transition from fearing the future to a life sustaining society

As I learn more about climate change I find it harder to avoid despair. With such an urgent call to save the planet, I often feel scared and useless. And it is the green movement that's pushing the fear hardest. The language of climate change is anxiety-based and blame-ridden. We talk about an imminent cascade of crises, environmental catastrophes and extreme weather. My anxiety about this future is then further exacerbated as a new mother whose child has his whole life ahead of him! But, then I remember that this fear is a complete waste of energy.

Now I’m not denying there’s a crisis, but where’s the fun in all that doom and gloom? Yes, there is a clear mandate for a transition to a low impact, post-materialist society, but must we fear that? How are we serving the next generation if we despair of their future? Surely joy and fun will also be part of a sustainable future alongside clean energy and low carbon buildings?

In order to maintain happiness, I aim to live lightly on the planet both in word and deed, and to remember that having a laugh with a friend might be as important in creating a brighter future as any action I take to reduce my carbon footprint. I have found solace in the writings of environmental philosopher Joanna Macy. She suggests that in order to quell the need for haste that comes with fear, we must hold a wider perspective about who we are as humans, recognising that we are a short life in a long history of many short lives. She says:

“As humans we have the capacity and the birthright to experience time in a saner fashion. Throughout history, men and women have labored at great personal cost to bequeath future generations monuments of art and learning far beyond their individual lives. And they have honored through ritual and story those who came before. To make the transition to a life-sustaining society, we must retrieve that ancestral capacity – in other words, act like ancestors. We need to attune to longer, ecological rhythms and nourish a strong, felt connection with past and future generations. For us as agents of change, this isn’t easy, because to intervene in the political and legislative decisions of the Industrial Growth Society, we fall by necessity into its tempo. We race to find and pull the levers before it is too late to save this forest, or stop that weapons program. Nonetheless, we can learn again to drink at deeper wells.” (Macy 1998: 136).

If I can detach from fear I can tap into Macy’s concept of “deeper time” which helps me to envision a brighter future. By projecting myself outside of my own generation, both to the past and the future, I can gain a better perspective about the present. I still feel the fear: don’t get me wrong, this crisis is real. But I live my life anyway, with as much laughter, snowball fights and kitchen discos as we can fit into a day.