What now?

Jan. 31, 2008

Dear Patty,

In her book "On Death and Dying," the Swiss psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross famously described the five stages of grief. In the first stage we deny the reality. In the second we become angry. In the third we bargain, hoping that things aren't as bad as we fear. The four stage is depression, hopelessness. The fifth stage is acceptance, when we can finally ask, What now?

Dr. Steven W. Running is a climate scientist at the University of Montana. He also is a Nobel laureate. He was a member of the group of scientists who compiled the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Running thinks Americans are grieving the changes that are occurring to the Earth.

Some are still in denial. Though atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen every year for the past 50, and the warmest air temperatures over the past 1,000 years have been recorded in the past 12 years, and the most credible scientists on Earth say we are causing the climate to change, some people won't believe it until the north and south poles actually switch places.

To paraphrase an e.e. cummings' poem, plato told him, jesus told him and lao tsze told him, but it took a piece of steel in the top of his head to tell him.

Running says many of us go directly from denial to hopelessness without passing Go. Those who don't move on to anger and blame the messengers for the bad news and can only imagine an alternative in which we must choose to live the way people lived in the Stone Age.

People who have a disease at some point hope to strike a bargain with the disease or God for more time or a better outcome. In the bargaining stage of climate grief we think mild winters save on utilities and ignore what they really augur.

Running admits to visiting the depression stage himself occasionally. It can seem impossible for little ol' me to right the damage that has already been done to the atmosphere. Psychologists say one of the ways out of depression is to do something. Act. It's inertia that is deadly.

Acceptance is the most powerful stage of grief. It's happening. What now?

We know there are ways individuals and countries can reduce greenhouses gases. Running points out that these will not end modern civilization as we know it. Global warming could.

He advocates a "Marshall Plan," a national commitment to the goal of reducing greenhouse gases.

When Galileo figured out that the Earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around, the Church attacked him in the name of upholding the Biblical passages that seemed to say the Earth is immovable. The Church ultimately forced Galileo to recant and placed him under house arrest.

Climate scientists aren't under that kind of threat, but they are attacked by those who feel threatened by climate change. Some of those people ought to be ashamed. They are the scientists who are shills for energy companies that prefer $100 barrels of oil and will spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere until they are forced to stop.

The rest of us, whatever our stage of climate grief, must not get stuck.

The Earth is sick. What do we do when we are sick? We don't throw up our hands. We take steps, however minuscule, however monumental, to restore our health. Every little act is an act of faith.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a reporter for the Southeast Missourian.