What should we do about it? What should I do about it? What should you do? What should we do? What can we do? What will we do? What are we most likely to do, given our shameful past, our shameless present?
What can we do in our day-to-day lives? In our long-term lives? Our lives as consumers and boycotters? How many protests should we attend? How many petitions should we sign? How much money should we donate to worthy causes?
And how do we determine which causes are worthy? How do we separate the PR stunts and pipe dreams from the pragmatic proposals? Or are pipe dreams now the only realistic solutions? Utopian visions the only visions with any sight?
How many arguments are required with friends? With family? With strangers? How many people should we try to convert? Is that even our responsibility? What does “responsibility” mean in the context of catastrophe?
How should we spend our time? In worry or in wonder? In the terror of the moment or the horror of the future? Should I be writing stories or tracts? Should I be writing at all? If so, why? And how much? And what about?
Why write if no one will be around to read? When hardly anyone reads now? When what we read contributes to the problem? What’s the point in another think-piece? Another dystopian novel?
Or am I being too pessimistic? Are we not “in the endgame now”? Has “winter” not yet come? Or is it lurking outside the door? Are we not already living On the Beach, waiting for the fallout to hit us?
At what point do we pass the threshold? And how is that point determined? By consensus? Fear? Resignation? At what point do we accept our fate? And what will that fate resemble? A quick flash of light? A long cloud of dark?
When do we become disposable, like our products? When does the planet grow weary of recycling and simply let itself go? How long before we join the polar bears? Before the polar bears join the buffalo? Before the bees join the bison?
What is one obliged to do when obligation itself seems quaint? Naïve? Pointless? Share another groundbreaking article? Craft an eloquent rant? Join Greenpeace? Reduce, reuse, recycle? Go green? Go nuts? Go camping? Is now the time to try LSD?
Should we, in other words, rage against the dying of the light? Or double up on Prozac? And what happens when the Prozac runs out? Should we give up on dreams, like having kids? Should we give up on kids having dreams?
How does one get comfortable in the Sixth Extinction? Have a good time in the End Times? Go on vacation knowing it might be the last? How does one see the horizon without smelling the smog?
Or a cloud without fearing its contents? Or a building without imagining it empty? A tree without picturing it dead? How does one live as though it were morning if the sun has already set?
Or does thinking such unthinkable thoughts only hasten our defeat? Fuel our apathy? Drive our resignation? Aren’t all prophecies, in the end, self-fulfilling? And aren’t all prophets—even the “right” ones—always wrong?
What should our goal for the next century be? Ensure we see it? What about the next year? The next decade? Shouldn’t we start small with a problem so large? Or is macro the only way to manage the micro?
And what happens if we fail? Do the clocks all stop if no one is there to hear them tick? If the hours can’t be counted, in what meaningful sense do they pass? Is it sad or funny that plastic will outlive us?
How should we adapt to this new reality? Or is adaptation just a euphemism for resignation? When is it wise to embrace despair? To accept the inevitable? At what point should we call climate change “climate chaos”? Climate chaos “climate death”?
How sad should we be for our children? How mad should we be at our parents, at ourselves? How guilty should we feel every time we order take-out? Every time we use a straw?
Is climate grief contagious? Am I spreading it just by leaving the house? Writing this sentence? This paragraph? This page? Is it possible to inoculate yourself against it? Or is any defense just a kind of denial?
Or is denial the way to go? Isn’t one’s head best kept (sane) in the sand? Isn’t denial, in this case, just the flip-side of acceptance? What’s the difference, in the end, between apocalyptic stoicism and hedonistic humanism?
Should one even bother with the other stages of climate grief? With anger? With depression? With bargaining? With whom is there to bargain, anyway? Wasn’t the bargain struck years ago, when there was still a chance of revival?
At whom should we be angry, besides ourselves? Besides our parents and our parents’ parents? If we’re all equally guilty, aren’t we are all equally innocent? Are we really so guilty though? Are some—such as the bargain-strikers—really so innocent?
Wouldn’t it be better, under the circumstances, to discard anger and depression and embrace disavowal, an acceptance-denial combo? A way of living the lie while knowing the truth? Or should we demand the impossible?
How does one grieve, in any case, for the world? For a species? A fate? How do you grieve for the children you’ll never have? The places you’ll never see? The things you’ll never do? The ages you’ll never reach? How does one regret a possible future?
How does one wake up with a sense of purpose—or even a smile—when every purpose ends the same way? Or is that the wrong kind of question, since it could still be posed if the Earth were okay?
Would it really matter, for instance, if the world ended in a hundred years instead of a billion? If it contained a hundred lives instead of a hundred million? Isn’t climate grief just regular grief, only broadened? Guaranteed? Isn’t it about legacy, as well as death?
When the end comes, will there be panic? Collapse? A cultic form of calm? Will we put aside our petty squabbles or double down on nonsense? Will we walk hand-in-hand into the abyss? Or kick and scream all the way down?
Will our fate be universal? Or will the rich find a way to survive, as always, with the rats and the roaches? Will they be happy in their spaceships, their moon colonies, their high-tech bunkers? Or will karma deliver an equalized blow?
Will we finally achieve equality? Rich and poor, men and women, young and old? Will it end with a bang? A whimper? A power outage? Will the plague return? Will birds and locusts fall from the sky?
And when is the right time to panic? What does “productive panic” look like? Is there such a thing as “hysterical pragmatism”? And what about the sci-fi writer’s favorite oxymoron, “post-apocalyptic civilization”?
When is the right time to invest in a gun? A bow? A bunker? When is the right time to stock up on beans? Should I bother to move up north? Or will the north be overrun? Should I even bother to bother? Or just cut my losses and find a tall bridge?
At what point is life worth losing? When does it stop being life? When the flowers melt and the water is poison? When Venice sinks and there’s no more McDonald’s? Who would want to live in a world without root beer?
Who would want to be a “survivor,” if surviving means living in a tent? In a cave? In an alley? How long would you last—be honest—in a lawless, toxic wasteland, populated by the toughest of the tough and the richest of the rich?
Wouldn’t you start to envy the dearly departed, after you’ve showered your last shower and skinned your last rat? How long could you keep on keeping on? Until it becomes (un)bearable? Second-nature? Until you’re no different from the things you eat?
What happens when you get sick? Or pregnant? What happens when you break your leg? Get an infection? A rash? What happens when your teeth start to rot? When your bones start to ache?
What happens when you can no longer tolerate your fellow survivors? When they get greedy? Impatient? Vindictive? What happens when there are no cops to call? No hospitals to visit? No grocery stores to plunder?
What happens when you can no longer tolerate the heat waves? The cold snaps? The storms? Do you search for something better? Or stay where you are? Do you risk being killed? Raped? Eaten?
Can you sleep more than a couple hours at a time? Or are you jolted awake by the slightest hint of noise? Is sleep ever restful? Or just another source of stress? Do you prefer the fake nightmares or the real one?
At what point do you forget what it was like to be comfortable? To be clean? To be touched? At what point do you forget what it was like to be blissfully bored? To be mildly entertained? To be hopeful?
Or would you prefer to forget, since you’re living solely for the purpose of staying alive? Does the very idea of goals seem archaic? Absurd? Do all your pre-apocalyptic worries seem silly in retrospect?
Or do you miss them, like you miss your family and friends? Do you even start to miss your enemies? Your exes? Do you wonder where they are? What they’re doing? If they’re alive? Do you secretly wish they were dead—not out of malice, but mercy?
Are you grateful, at least, that you never had children? Never got married? Never made any major commitments? Any major mistakes? Never settled down with something worth keeping? Or is that your only major regret?
Are all these questions regarding the end of the world even valid? In what sense of the term, for instance, do I mean “end”? Or “world”? Or “regarding”? Are questions without answers really questions? Or are they the only questions worth asking?