[D66] The great unravelling: 'I never thought I’d live to see the horror of planetary collapse'

[R.O.]

  The great unravelling: 'I never thought I’d live to see the horror of
  planetary collapse'

By
Joëlle Gergis
theguardian.com
10 min
View Original

It breaks my heart to watch the country I love irrevocably wounded 
because of the Australian government’s refusal to act on climate change

  * This is part of a series of essays by Australian writers responding
    to the challenges of 2020

by Joëlle Gergis

If you’ve ever been around someone who is dying, it may have struck you 
how strong a person’s lifeforce really is. When my dad was gravely ill, 
an invisible point of no return was gradually crossed, then suddenly 
death was in plain sight. We stood back helplessly, knowing that nothing 
more could be done, that something vital had slipped away. All we could 
do is watch as life extinguished itself in agonising fits and starts.

As a climate scientist watching the most destructive bushfires in 
Australian history unfold, I felt the same stomach-turning recognition 
of witnessing an irreversible loss.

The relentless heat and drought experienced during our nation’s hottest 
and driest year on record saw the last of our native forests go up in 
smoke. We saw terrified animals fleeing with their fur on fire, their 
bodies turned to ash. Those that survived faced starvation among the 
charred remains of their obliterated habitats.

During Australia’s Black Summer, more than 3 billion animals were 
incinerated or displaced, our beloved bushland burnt to the ground. Our 
collective places of recharge and contemplation changed in ways that we 
can barely comprehend. The koala, Australia’s most emblematic species, 
now faces extinction in New South Wales by as early as 2050.

Recovering the diversity and complexity of Australia’s unique ecosystems 
now lies beyond the scale of human lifetimes. What we witnessed was 
inter-generational damage: a fundamental transformation of our country.

Then, just as the last of the bushfires went out, recording-breaking 
ocean temperatures triggered the third mass bleaching event recorded on 
the Great Barrier Reef since 2016. This time, the southern reef – spared 
during the 2016 and 2017 events – finally succumbed to extreme heat. The 
largest living organism on the planet is dying.

As one of the dozen or so Australian lead authors involved in 
consolidating the physical science basis for the United Nations’ 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment 
report, I’ve gained terrifying insight into the true state of the 
climate crisis and what lies ahead. There is so much heat already baked 
into the climate system that a certain level of destruction is now 
inevitable. What concerns me is that we may have already pushed the 
planetary system past the point of no return. That we’ve unleashed a 
cascade of irreversible changes that have built such momentum that we 
can only watch as it unfolds.

‘Australia’s horror summer is the clearest signal yet that our planet’s 
climate is rapidly destabilising.’ Photograph: Adwo/Alamy ‘Australia’s 
horror summer is the clearest signal yet that our planet’s climate is 
rapidly destabilising.’ Photograph: Adwo/Alamy

Australia’s horror summer is the clearest signal yet that our planet’s 
climate is rapidly destabilising. It breaks my heart to watch the 
country I love irrevocably wounded because of our government’s denial of 
the severity of climate change and its refusal to act on the advice of 
the world’s leading scientists.

I mourn all the unique animals, plants and landscapes that are forever 
altered by the events of our Black Summer. That the Earth as we now know 
it will soon no longer exist. I grieve for the generations of children 
who will only ever experience the Great Barrier Reef or our ancient 
rainforests through photographs or David Attenborough’s documentaries. 
In the future, his films will be like watching grainy archival footage 
of the Tasmanian tiger: images of a lost world.

As we live through this growing instability, it’s becoming harder to 
maintain a sense of professional detachment from the work that I do. 
Given that humanity is facing an existential threat of planetary 
proportions, surely it is rational to react with despair, anger, grief 
and frustration. To fail to emotionally respond to a level of 
destruction that will be felt throughout the ages feels like sociopathic 
disregard for all life on Earth.

To confront this monumental reality and then continue as usual would be 
like buying into a collective delusion that life as we know it will go 
on indefinitely, regardless of what we do. The truth is, everything in 
life has its breaking point. My fear is that the planet’s equilibrium 
has been lost; we are now watching on as the dominoes begin to cascade.

With just 1.1C of warming, Australia has already experienced 
unimaginable levels of destruction of its marine and land ecosystems in 
the space of a single summer. More than 20% of our country’s forests 
burnt in a single bushfire season. Virtually the entire range of the 
Great Barrier Reef cooked by one mass bleaching event. But what really 
worries me is what our Black Summer signals about the conditions that 
are yet to come. As things stand, the latest research shows that 
Australia could warm up to 7C above pre-industrial levels by the end of 
the century. If we continue along our current path, climate models show 
an average warming of 4.5C, with a range of 2.7–6.2C by 2100. This 
represents a ruinous overshooting of the Paris agreement targets, which 
aim to stabilise global warming at well below 2C, to avoid what the UN 
terms “dangerous” levels of climate change.

The revised warming projections for Australia will render large parts of 
our country uninhabitable and the Australian way of life unliveable, as 
extreme heat and increasingly erratic rainfall establishes itself as the 
new normal. Researchers who conducted an analysis of the conditions 
experienced during our Black Summer concluded “under a scenario where 
emissions continue to grow, such a year would be average by 2040 and 
exceptionally cool by 2060.”

It’s the type of statement that should jolt our nation’s leaders out of 
their delusional complacency. Soon we will be facing 50C summer 
temperatures in our southern capital cities, longer and hotter bushfire 
seasons, and more punishing droughts. We will be increasingly forced to 
shelter in our homes as dangerous heat and oppressive smoke become 
regular features of the Australian summer. Looking back from this 
future, the coronavirus lockdown of 2020 will feel like a luxury holiday.

Australia’s Black Summer was a terrifying preview of a future that no 
longer feels impossibly far away. We’ve experienced, first-hand, how 
unprecedented extremes can play out more abruptly and ferociously than 
anyone thought possible. Climate disruption is now a part of the 
experience of every Australian.

We are being forced to come to terms with the fact that we are the 
generation that is likely to witness the destruction of our Earth. We 
have arrived at a point in human history that I think of as the “great 
unravelling”. I never thought I’d live to see the horror of planetary 
collapse unfolding.

As an Australian on the frontline of the climate crisis, all I can do is 
try to help people make sense of what the scientific community is 
observing in real time. I use my writing to send out distress beacons to 
the wider world, hoping that processing the enormity of our loss through 
an international lens will help us feel the sting of it. Perhaps, then, 
we will finally acknowledge the terribly sad reality that we are losing 
the battle to protect one of the most extraordinary parts of our planet.

I often despair that everything the scientific community is trying to do 
to help avert disaster is falling on deaf ears. Instead, we hear the 
federal government announcing policies ensuring the protection of fossil 
fuel industries, justifying pathetic emission targets that will doom 
Australia to an apocalyptic nightmare of a future.

Recording-breaking ocean temperatures triggered the third mass bleaching 
event recorded on the Great Barrier Reef since 2016. Photograph: Greg 
Torda/ARC Centre Coral Reef Studies/EPA Recording-breaking ocean 
temperatures triggered the third mass bleaching event recorded on the 
Great Barrier Reef since 2016. Photograph: Greg Torda/ARC Centre Coral 
Reef Studies/EPA

The national conversation we urgently needed to have following our Black 
Summer never happened. Our collective trauma was sidelined as a deadly 
pandemic took hold. Instead of grieving our losses and agreeing on how 
to implement an urgent plan to safeguard our nation’s future, we became 
preoccupied by whether we had enough food in the pantry, whether our job 
or relationship would be intact on the other side of the lockdown. We 
were forced to consider life and death on an intensely personal level.

When our personal safety is threatened, our capacity to handle the 
larger existential threat of climate change evaporates. But just because 
we can’t face something doesn’t mean it disappears.

As many trauma survivors will tell you, it’s often the lack of an 
adequate response in the aftermath of a traumatic event, rather than the 
experience itself, that causes the most psychological damage. And if 
there is no acknowledgment of the damage that has been done, no moral 
consequences for those responsible, it’s as if the trauma never happened.

How can we ever re-establish trust in the very institutions that let 
things get this bad? How do we live with the knowledge that the people 
who are meant to keep us safe are the very ones allowing the criminal 
destruction of our planet to continue?

Perhaps part of the answer lies in TS Eliot’s observation that 
“humankind cannot bear very much reality”. To shy away from difficult 
emotions is a very natural part of the human condition. We are afraid to 
have the tough conversations that connect us with the darker shades of 
human emotion.

We are often reluctant to give voice to the painful feelings that 
accompany a serious loss, like the one we all experienced this summer. 
We quickly skirt around complex emotions, landing on the safer ground of 
practical solutions like renewable energy or taking personal action to 
feel a sense of control in the face of far bleaker realities.

As more psychologists begin to engage with the topic of climate change, 
they are telling us that being willing to acknowledge our personal and 
collective grief might be the only way out of the mess we are in. When 
we are finally willing to accept feelings of intense grief – for 
ourselves, our planet, our kids’ futures – we can use the intensity of 
our emotional response to propel us into action.

Grief is not something to be pushed away; it is a function of the depth 
of the attachment we feel for something, be it a loved one or the 
planet. If we don’t allow ourselves to grieve, we stop ourselves from 
emotionally processing the reality of our loss. It prevents us from 
having to face the need to adapt to a new, unwelcome reality.

Unfortunately, we live in a culture where we actively avoid talking 
about hard realities; darker parts of our psyche are considered 
dysfunctional or intolerable. But trying to be relentlessly cheerful or 
stoic in the face of serious loss just buries more authentic emotions 
that must eventually come up for air.

As scientists, we are often quick to reach for more facts rather than 
grapple with the complexity of our emotions. We think that the more 
people /know/ about the impacts of climate change, surely the more they 
will /understand/ how urgent our collective response needs to be. But as 
the long history of humanity’s inability to respond to the climate 
crisis has shown us, processing information purely on an intellectual 
level simply isn’t enough.

It’s something Rachel Carson – the American ecologist and author of 
Silent Spring,//the seminal book warning the public about the dangerous 
long-term effects of pesticides – recognised nearly 60 years ago. She 
wrote: “It is not half so important to know as to feel … once the 
emotions have been aroused – a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of 
the new and unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love – 
then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. 
Once found, it has lasting meaning.” In other words, there is great 
power and wisdom in our emotional response to our world. Until we are 
prepared to be moved by the profoundly tragic ways we treat the planet 
and each other, our behaviour will never change.

On a personal level, I wonder what to do in the face of this awareness. 
Should I continue to work my guts out, trying to produce new science to 
help better diagnose what’s going on? Do I try to teach a dejected new 
generation of scientists to help fix the mess humanity has made? How can 
I reconcile my own sense of despair and exhaustion with the need to stay 
engaged and be patient with those who don’t know any better?

Joëlle Gergis: ‘Something inside me feels like it has snapped, as if 
some essential thread of hope has failed.’ Photograph: Lannon Harley/ANU 
Joëlle Gergis: ‘Something inside me feels like it has snapped, as if 
some essential thread of hope has failed.’ Photograph: Lannon Harley/ANU

While I hope this will be the summer that changes everything, my 
rational mind understands that governments like ours are willing to 
sacrifice our planetary life-support system to keep the fossil fuel 
industry alive for another handful of decades. I am afraid that we don’t 
have the heart or the courage to be moved by what we saw during our 
Black Summer.

Increasingly I am feeling overwhelmed and unsure about how I can best 
live my life in the face of the catastrophe that is now upon us. I’m 
anxious about the enormity of the scale of what needs to be done, afraid 
of what might be waiting in my inbox. Something inside me feels like it 
has snapped, as if some essential thread of hope has failed. The knowing 
that sometimes things can’t be saved, that the planet is dying, that we 
couldn’t get it together in time to save the irreplaceable. It feels as 
though we have reached the point in human history when all the trees in 
the global common are finally gone, our connection to the wisdom of our 
ancestors lost forever.

As a climate scientist at this troubled time in human history, my hope 
is that the life force of our Earth can hang on. That the personal and 
collective awakening we need to safeguard our planet arrives before even 
more is lost. That our hearts will lead us back to our shared humanity, 
strengthening our resolve to save ourselves and our imperilled world.

/• This essay will be part of the anthology Fire, Flood and Plague, 
edited by Sophie Cunningham and published by Penguin Random House in 
December/


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