大象传媒

For the past nine days, I tried to just sit and be still and  and watch , . I tried to think about anything but the pain of adult tonsillectomy. As a result, my thoughts are a little more snippety this week.

Sleep with the wishes

But this post-surgical sleep was one I鈥檇 not experienced in a long time. I felt like the protagonist in Ottessa Moshfegh鈥檚 amazing . She knows she will find peace if she can just sleep through a long expanse of time. It鈥檚 hilariously insane, and yet it works (spoiler! sorry!). The ouroboros of anxiety is that it鈥檚 hard to sleep well when you鈥檙e experiencing it, and when you don鈥檛 sleep well, you鈥檙e even more prone to anxiety about the climate and everything else. 

When I came to after general anaesthesia last week, the relaxation I felt as I woke from the deepest of sleeps was all-encompassing. (The morphine helped, too.) After a few years of anxious, fretful sleeps (my friend once cursed me by saying: It鈥檚 very common for women in their mid-thirties to wake up around 3 in the morning. It鈥檚 a thing). Luckily, I鈥檝e been sleeping deeper for the past few years, largely due to a very strict regimen of not reading dire climate modeling tweets right before bed. 

And yet sleep eventually materializes, settling over us all like a weighted blanket.  Of course for those at the frontlines, the battle against anxiety and for sleep is ever real, and not solved by simply tuning out the apocalyptic frequency. I鈥檓 in awe of young activists like Xiye Bastida. 

Yesterday I spent the day at the hospital because I鈥檝e been getting consistent chest pain. Thankfully, nothing serious was detected.

The doctor said that what I have is caused by extreme stress. Very likely, it鈥檚 my consistent climate activism that triggered this.

— Xiye Bastida (@xiyebastida)

Global warning

I find Shankar Vedantam鈥檚 speech very lulling, and yet his Hidden Brain podcast never puts me to sleep. , he delves into the psychology of warnings. For years the cause of my climate anxiety was the fact that no one was heeding the warnings (How does James Hansen sleep at night? He鈥檚 been shouting at a world wearing noise-canceling headphones since 1988). But the growing number of climate Cassandras inversely correlates to my level of climate anxiety. People will listen now, right? Yes and no. Says Vedantam:

Warnings are likely to be heard when they鈥檙e made by someone who鈥檚 part of our in group, when the warning is so imminent that nearly everyone can see the danger,  and when the solution doesn鈥檛 require radical shift in existing strategy. Unsurprisingly this means that many warnings will go unheeded and many Cassandras will be dismissed.

With climate, we can see why a lot of this is so difficult to achieve. It鈥檚 easy to heed the warning if you鈥檙e already part of the group. But we鈥檙e trying to convince totally different groups. And the danger is difficult to see, and the solutions required, are, well, radical. But the good kind of radical!

Yet another time I was wrong about climate art

I can鈥檛 wait to read Jenny Offill鈥檚 new novel, Weather. Her last book, Dept. of Speculation, was so so good, and this new novel is about reconciling climate crisis with the compelling banality of everyday human experience, a subject I muse about a little too often (see: every pie chart I鈥檝e ever drawn). Writes  in the NYT book review:

Preoccupied by the apocalyptic horizon of climate change, the dark pulsing terror at the center of the novel, and by the 鈥渇eeling of daily life,鈥� Lizzie understands鈥攐r at least, enacts鈥攖he truth that we inhabit multiple scales of experience at the same time: from the minutiae of school drop-offs and P.T.A. activism to the frictions of our personal relationships all the way to the geological immensity of our (not so slowly) corroding planet. Offill takes subjects that could easily become pedantic鈥攖he tensions between self-involvement and social engagement鈥攁nd makes them thrilling and hilarious and terrifying and alive by letting her characters live on these multiple scales at once, as we all do.

Let me know if/when you鈥檝e read it and we can convene an online MVP book club.

This week:

Does climate keep you up at night? Are there things you could change that would help you sleep? Let me know in the comments below. 

My goal this weekend is to write a million letters to our Canadian powers that be about pipelines and mines, and the fact that . Let me know what you鈥檙e working on, too.

Last week:

Lovely words from new reader Gisela: 

I just noticed your call to hear from on-the-ground activists. I work as a volunteer with a bunch of grassroots nonprofits (mostly Fair Vote Canada, Transition Kamloops, and the BC Sustainable Energy Association). I find that action with others is the best way to combat despair and helplessness, although I鈥檝e had to learn after years of disappointment to get away from 鈥渁ttachment to outcome鈥� as the primary criterion when deciding where to put my energy. I鈥檝e found peace by having confidence that I鈥檓 doing the right thing, even if it doesn鈥檛 have stellar chances of success at this moment in time. I draw on Joanna Macy鈥檚 concept of the spiral (discussed at length in her excellent book Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We鈥檙e in Without Going Crazy. She points out that change isn鈥檛 linear, or even incremental, and that the abolitionists and the suffragettes kept fighting for decades on what appeared to be hopeless causes. In the end, the power of their conviction ensured victory.

I very much agree that action is the antidote to hopelessness, and that change isn鈥檛 linear. 

Thank you so much, Gisela!

As always, send thoughts, links, and hedgehogs to help me make this newsletter better.

Have a wonderful, sleepful week,

Sarah

P.S. I鈥檓 always curious to know what you think. This is my newsletter for the week of February 13, 2020, published in partnership with 大象传媒 Media You can sign up to get Minimum Viable Planet newsletter emailed directly to you at .