Climate Grief

I (The Bunker Admin) am going to write a ongoing series on climate. I make the comment frequently - "climate disaster will kill me" - and I think such a statement requires more explanation. Dropping that cursed prediction on people with no context does no one any good. So I will be writing almost purely anecdotal, occasionally researched, hot takes on the topic of climate disaster.

The Weight of Knowing

I am wanting to write more about my experience with climate change—to tell the stories that live in my body, the ones that sit heavy in my chest when the heat becomes unbearable or when another day passes without meaningful action. These are not abstract concerns for me. They are lived experiences, felt in my bones and carried in my daily exhaustion.

Growing Up Against Denial

When I was young, my family was not big on climate science. They still aren't. Despite my families extensive education, the last generation remains climate skeptics, so far down that rabbit hole that even wearing sunscreen becomes a contentious issue.

I vividly remember the first time I talked to my family about water conservation. I was young; must have been around 8-9 years old. I remember being excited. Here was something I could do to help the planet. That thing, turn off the taps when brushing my teeth, was among other simple water use lessons. Water conservation that anyone would say was a good thing.

I remember it being outright dismissed because I came at it from a climate perspective. These folks, people who believed in the power of the river deeply, could not reconcile that consumption of resources would ever effect the things we loved. I remember the effect; it actually put me off of brushing my teeth. As youth it is tough to parse so I simply shut down, causing myself harm for some time.

Abstract

All climate denial is self-harm. Climate is ignored using the same mental pathways that enable addiction, self-harm, and other destructive behaviors. Their roots are the same; likely a mix of post-truth, colonial, and capitalist ideologies that are built on the extractive model of human organization that attempts to place the human outside of nature. By attempting to make mother earth into a product, we do the same to ourselves.

A big chunk of my extended family makes their wealth directly from or adjacent to the oil & gas industry. They are required, almost by the circumstances of their birth, to be adherents to ideologies that are causing them and their families harm.

This reality shaped my childhood in ways I'm still processing. I remember fighting—sometimes even physically—to be taken seriously about climate change. Even then, I knew what all the educated people around me knew: that life was going to be challenging. That our lives would be made difficult because of the choices of oil executives and warlords, whether through the immediate violence these organizations engage in or the slow burn of long-term climate disaster.

The Paradox of Love and Betrayal

There is a feeling of deep betrayal that is hard to process. My family believe strongly in leaving a campsite better than they found it. I can't remember a single day that they did not care for the land I grew up on. They care deeply for their homes and children.

Yet simultaneously, they dismiss climate change, vote for policies that cause further harm, and cannot reconcile their lifestyles with the carbon impact of it all. This contradiction sits at the heart of my climate grief—loving people who see the world burning around them and simply accept that destruction, or who choose not to see it. My insistence towards pointing out the truth is probably exhausting for them too. It is hard to believe the harm.

Feeling It in My Body

I burn easily. The heat, even for an hour or two, exhausts me completely. The long, scorching days are hard on my mind. Swings in temperature and pressure render my body and mind useless for labor.

I wonder almost daily if this sensitivity stems from my youth—having had sunstroke dozens of times without adequate protection. Am I now more susceptible to what our changing climate demands of my body? This is to say: I feel climate change. In my bones I feel it. The dramatic swings in climate hurt my mind. Every day there seems to be less breathable air. The water becomes murkier. Eventually, the day comes when the river runs dry.

Question

What will we do when the river runs dry? The provincial government is using the last of our water shed coming off these mountains to build coal mines for foreign billionaires. The need of millions of Albertan's, put aside for money for someone who has never even seen the land.

The Sound of Denial

I can hear my family now: "That's just how it is; the cycles of the earth are predetermined." It feels like a religious declaration; as if the faith of just accepting the earth being cooked is okay because it is a part of some greater plan. As if the cars, the industrial machinery, and oil plants in my own city are not putting out measurable heat. How has public life been so perverted in this place that could be paradise, twisted instead to serve parking lots and what feels like blood sport?

The climate denial is like some sort of living creature. I've realized, after countless attempts to share the scientific truth, that I am not dealing with rational people. When talking to those who are captured by the thought virus of climate denial there is no evidence that will ever be convincing.

I think that might be why I have finally landed on just writing anecdotally on this topic. No number of articles from nasa showing dry lakebeds, or charts showing the mass-death happening across all ecosystems, are going to do it. Instead, it is going to take me just writing my experience, sharing it in a way that is venerable and terrifying.

Forgive me. I know not what else to do. Climate change will kill me and is already stealing blue skies away from future generations.

The Exhaustion of Living in This Reality

I am so tired. What happened? How is it that people have been so propagandized that they accept less breathable air? Public spaces filled with four-wheeled machines that can kill whole crowds of people? It is astounding to me that we don't hold oil executives accountable for what amounts to killing future generations—my parents' grandchildren—for their wealth.

Sometimes the rage feels so pure I think we should eat them alive.

Being the Bearer of Unwanted Truth

I am often seen as a harbinger of cursed knowledge. My family sometimes likes to get me worked up about these issues, and I think they must feel something themselves for it. Deep down, they know, even if they cannot feel it, or accept it. Why else would this violence be so normalized? Why else would they provoke the person among them who carries the weight of what's coming? Who tells them, outright, that these things hurt?

Where This Leads

I want to tell more of these stories—not because they're easy to tell, but because they're my truth. Because climate grief is not just about polar ice caps and carbon parts per million. It's about the exhaustion of loving people who cannot see clearly. It's about feeling environmental collapse in your own body while others debate whether it's even real. It's about the particular loneliness of carrying knowledge that others would rather not have.

My stories matter because they make the abstract personal, and the personal is where change begins—even when that change feels impossibly slow in coming.

I am convincing myself of this, one line at a time.

The Future

I want to acknowledge that this is a particularly dark take. I wrote this originally on a day that I was laid up by a massive pressure shift.

I do believe that things are going to get better. It will take several generations to see free and universal green power however socialist comrades worldwide are getting there. We will reverse this perverted moment of fascist environmental destruction. We will eat the rich.

I promise that I will also write about the ways this fight is being won. How we can push for a better world for all of us. How we can have more days of clean air, clear water, and notorious food.

Better is possible, we all deserve it, and I look forward to it.