The Eve of Destruction

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Climate change illustration

In a protest song from his era, P.F. Sloan crooned to an imagined skeptic, “You don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.” At that point, 1965, we’d lost JFK to assassination, the Vietnam War was ramping up, civil unrest was escalating, and the Cold War, with its persistent threat of nuclear Armageddon, was actually very hot. Yet, even then, I didn’t believe we were headed toward dystopia. Now, increasingly, I do.

Growing scientific data suggest we are indeed on the eve of destruction. What’s more, while anecdotal, many of the people I see in therapy also sense it. Increasingly, this dread amplifies their distress about whatever brought them to psychotherapy. Many therapists will tell you their clientele appear more anxious, fearful and agitated than they’ve observed in some time, if not over the course of their careers. Why? Not only are they troubled about their personal concerns but also the precipitous decline in our overall well-being which, increasingly, threatens their children, grandchildren and loved ones.

Sure, we’ve witnessed upticks in collective dread before. Most recently, there was 9/11 and the Great Recession. But now, the intensity of people’s distress far exceeds that from those earlier crises. Obviously, a lot more toxicity has been tossed into the global pot. Political divisiveness, racial enmity, the pandemic, mass shootings, truly whacko conspiracy theories and theorists, the war in Ukraine and, most ominously, the climate crisis. If there are still climate change deniers out there, they belong in the Flat Earth Society if not the Darwin Awards. The growing recognition of this imminent threat has seeped into the psyches of all but the most indifferent or bone-headed people. 

Path of Extinction

The climate catastrophe is a clear and present existential danger. We have too many narcissistic, greedy, emotional juveniles in positions of political and economic power, not to mention media. These arrogant asses believe we are not subject to the laws of nature, that we carry a get-out-of-jail free card when it comes to Earth’s rules. Consequently, they have led us down the path of extinction, and so long as we tolerate their avarice and willful blindness, our species will be in grave peril and may very well be snuffed out altogether.

Ask the biologists. Over 99 percent of all the species that have lived on this wondrous planet are now extinct. That’s lousy odds, and many of these also-rans were playing by the rules of the natural world, which we are not. Most often, they were taken out by naturally induced climate change (ours is not), or some sort of cataclysm, such as widespread volcanism or asteroid/comet impacts. Homo sapiens, on the other hand, seems intent on manufacturing its own apocalypse, so we’re cooking up, quite literally, our climate-induced extinction event. Why? Greed, hubris and ignorance. Money truly is the root of all evil, with a little help from ego mania and abject stupidity.

More than a few of my clients talk openly about their angst in this regard. A few see me specifically to address this collective dread, their personal concerns having taken a back seat. Existential threats can do that to the psyche. When you begin occupying the bottom rung of Maslow’s classic Hierarchy of Needs (survival), then personal growth and self-actualization seem less pressing. But don’t bother telling that to politicians who look the other way, business leaders drunk with profits, or Supreme Court justices who gut the government’s power to fight climate change, as if we live in the pre-industrial era. They are playing with the fire that Charles Darwin warned us about when he said, “It is not the strongest species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”

We often hear that humans are a highly adaptable species, and we are. But we are also biological creatures, and, as the current global heat waves, droughts, wildfires and mega-storms show, there are limits to what we can endure. We’re about to hit them.

For more, visit philipchard.com.