Coping with the Big Lever

"Hey humanity, what did you do today? " 

"Oh, I killed the gulf of Mexico". 

"Ah...good lad. Run along and play now." 

So how do you make peace with this? 

I actually had to call my mum this morning and ask her how she coped when the Cold War was at it's height. When it felt like a button might be pressed and that'd be the end of that. 

The thing the Cold War had over our War on the Environment is that, thanks to MAD, it was a very binary thing. Either somebody presed a button and launched nukes that started a chain reaction of retaliation which wiped out the species or they didn't. If they did then you'd have so little time to think about it before you died that you might as well not worry. Although you may very well end up living in a horrible blend of medieval technology and fascist government I suppose, though I always thought Threads was a tad optimistic. 

This isn't to trivialize the Cold War or provide a launching pad for a big fat, spittle spraying We Are Doomed rant. 

I just want to point out that the War on the Environment AKA Operation: Piss in Your Own Pool AKA Russian Roulette with an Automatic Pistol...is not a big red button to be pushed or not pushed. It's like a bloody great big lever that can be pulled or pushed closer to armageddon and it is very, very difficult to pull back. I could batter you over the head with statistics and links and flowery prose but that's not what I'm writing about here. 

I'm wrestling with how to cope and if you're paying any attention at all then I imagine there are moments where you struggle as well. So how do we do? 

With the Cold War it seems the most sensible thing was to remember that all you could do was try to vote in leaders who wouldn't press the damn button and otherwise remember that you were just one person with incredibly limited influence so you may as well accept your relative powerlessness and try to fucking relax. It'll happen or it won't. Though I'm not a fan of feeling powerless, I think I would have coped with the height of the Cold War reasonably well - not because I'm Batman but just because of how my mind works. I'm good at accepting things I have no power over, when that's truly the case. 

Operation: Shit in Your Own Mouth is different. I very much have an influence on it, we all do. Clearly world leaders and corporate CEO's have much, much more influence...but nobody can abandon responsibility like you could with the Cold War. Leaving your computer on overnight for no good reason? Driving any damn vehicle for any damn distance? Having a kid? Thanks buddy, you just helped lean a little more on that lever. That's good that you're recycling and please don't stop, but you could certainly do more. 

You could always do more. It's pretty overwhelming and a great way to become so neurotic it'd make Woody Allen say "Hey, slow down buddy" followed by "Anyways, it's totally less creepy I married my adopted daughter now that she's thirty-five".

In the same short period of time I read the thing that sent my head spiralling harder then it had done since I watched a certain film, this floated up to the surface as well. It's not like it's the first time I've thought or read about the idea that we should be the last generation. It's not like I didn't think "Well maybe I should off myself...or at least get a vasectomy". 

But it reeks of giving up. 

I hate giving up. 

It's clawing for an excuse to treat this like the Cold War, of wanting the lever we're all leaning on to be that big old red button. 

You don't need me to tell you how to live or vote more environmentally and like I said, that's not what this is about. It's about how do you cope? 

Well there's always denial, but you'll know what you're doing. If you have any conscience it'll eat at you and just cause a different kind of stress. So no, denial isn't the way to go for anybody except the kind of person who wasn't bothered by all this in the first place. 

I know the best thing for someone like me, someone who hates to give up, is to try and work things through in your head - perhaps sharing via writing or video - and then seeing what more you can do. I realize I won't be singlehandedly saving the world, but I'm starting the road towards becoming a vegetarian or at least cutting down to meat only once a week because I know that that will help. 


This won't be easy as I love meat, have been crap about vegetables my whole life, don't have any dietary need to stop eating it and certainly have no moral qualms with eating animals...but I know if I don't want to go crazy then I need to do more for the environment and, unlike having the CEO of British Petroleum forced to swim in the mess his company made, vegetarianism is within my reach. 

By the by, nobody will singlehandedly save the world by doing any single thing. Accepting that is certainly a good thing to help you cope. You're not giving up, you're removing a popular obstacle people often place between themselves and doing any damn thing. 


"Recycling these cans won't magically save the world and give me a ten hour solid gold erection so why bother?". 

Naturally I'm curious to hear anybody else's suggestions for how to cope wtih this thing. Like it or not, we're all in this together...