The
Boomerang November 2019
Becoming Response-able in Times of Climate Change by Gerard van der Ree
Climate anxiety February 2019. It is still mid-winter, but the outside temperature is 21 degrees. The campus grounds are full of people sitting in the sun. Within an hour, I have the same conversation six times: ‘this is so nice; I am enjoying this so much!’ And then, after a pause, and in a quieter voice: ‘but it is really scary, too’. That’s when I start noting. A sense of fear, of dread. Climate anxiety - anxiety of things to come. It mostly lingers in the background, but at times it becomes acute. It raises the question: ‘what can I do?’. But it also seems to come with a sense of powerlessness – what can be done against something that is so big? And I discover it has an age aspect. The younger you are, the more intense it gets. There is a whole generation growing up in climate anxiety.
"It mostly lingers in the background, but at times it becomes acute" Climate anger Over the summer, a friend of mine tells me about her anger. She says: ‘I am twenty-five. And I have grown up with a story of what adulthood looks like. It is a story about going to university, finding a career, settling down with someone you love, starting a family, building a home. It is a linear story, a story of advancing in life, a story that plays out against a stable background’. Then she looks at me, and adds: ‘You know, it was you, your generation, that told me this story. And you could have known it was a lie. You already did know it was a lie twenty-five years ago. My life is not going to work out this way. I will most likely not have that nice family, that nice house, that stable home. I will see changes that are going to be too big. It was a lie. You lied.’ Three weeks later, Greta Thunberg says the same at the UN. She is right. They are right. I feel a need to respond. I am part of this. I cannot stay aloof, or pretend this is not my puzzle. If I am partially
responsible, I want to become what Donna Haraway calls ‘response-able’. I want to become able to respond.
Illustration © Amu Endo
Climate action It’s 7 October. I am in Amsterdam, at the Rijksmuseum. Two dozen policemen separate me from the hundreds of protesters blocking the streets. I stand in awe and admiration to what XR is doing. The way they organize bottom-up, the way they take politics back to the streets, the way they use civil disobedience. Their ability to chant ‘I love you’ while being carried away by riot police. I get tears in my eyes. I am deeply moved. Part of me really wants to join, to step in line with the protesters. I feel an almost physical urge to be part of this movement. But something holds me back. I have been in radical religious groups in the past; and those did not end well for me. XR’s truth with a capital ‘T’, its moral clarity, the intense group dynamic- it all just comes too close to those experiences for me. I also struggle with their focus on the state as the main actor for dealing with climate change. I am torn. I decide: ‘For now, I will be with XR. With XR, but not in XR’. Climate calling Together with two friends, I organise a ‘School for the Apocalypse’, a series of workshops on human/nature relations in times of climate change. We explore what needs to ‘die’ in our Western way of life’, what is being ’born’, and what living together ‘beyond the human’ can look like. With around twenty people, we share conversations, experiences, and practices. As a
result, I start seeing new beginnings. Inklings of what could be pathways for transformation, for changing human/nature relations. It is a small initiative, but awakens something in me. This starts to feel like my own ground. My own contribution to the puzzles of climate anxiety, climate anger, climate action. I don’t have ‘the answer’, or ‘the solution’. But this is a path of learning that I can develop further. I can help people to find new vocabularies, develop new practices, and discover new beginnings for a cultural transformation. I know it is limited, almost negligible in light of the vastness of the problems we face. And it will not be the only thing I do. I will contribute in other ways, too. But this is mine. This is what calls me. My response to climate anxiety.
The Climate Activism Echo-Chamber
2
The Black Friday Madness
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XR blockade in Paris - Photo Collage
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Ali Smith’s Visit to UCU
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Exclusive Rebellion
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Survival on a Lost Highway
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