Gentle Decline 2/40: Talking & Thinking

Hello. A belated welcome to 2025, wherein all indications are that it’s going to be a rocky ride. I’ve had an issue in progress for a few weeks, but frankly, the news keeps outpacing what I was writing, and since a chunk of it was about economies and capitalism, there’s some doubt as to whether any of it was going to be relevant anymore by the time I hit the publish button. So instead here’s a sort of single answer to many questions, thinking about the role of community, and some broad reassurances.

[Gentle Decline is an occasional newsletter about climate crisis, and - more to the point - how to cope with it. All issues are free! You can support the newsletter via Patreon (where there’s sometimes further discussion about particular points), Ko-fi, or by buying some of the seriously classy merchandise, including the new Plant More Trees t-shirt.]

Generic Advice For Handling A Crisis

I’ve gotten a number of emails since January with the broad gist of “I live in the United States, where things are getting crazier every day, and I’m afraid. This is not to do with climate right now, it’s to do with whether there’s going to be a country at the end of the year. What do I do?” (That’s paraphrased from a few emails, not any one person’s question, to be clear).

So the very first thing to say here is that I’m an anarchist climate researcher and historian living in a country where our most right-wing politicians would be seen as left-wing lunatics in the US. I am probably not the expert you’re looking for, and I’d encourage you to ask these questions of someone who’s more familiar with how things work there. But that said, I’m going to give some generic advice, which comes from my own how-to-deal-with-climate-crisis background, and just has the serial numbers filed off to apply to other situations.

Item the very first, don’t panic. Panic is not going to do you or anyone else any good. Get a cup of tea, or whatever calms you down, and sit down to think about things as clearly as you can. Do this away from distractions; turn off the TV, put your phone on silent, and so on. You don’t have to do it alone, though; talking through things with someone else is often better than sitting on your own. Bring a notebook, maybe. Do this before it becomes urgent.

What are you actually afraid of? Be specific; list the things that could change (or already have changed) in your immediate environment.

How likely are those things? Be as realistic as you can - and this is a point where it’s valuable to have someone else there to bounce things off.

Are there actions you can undertake in the short term to prevent those things from happening to you? If so, make a list of those, too.

Are there other people who are going to be similarly affected? If there are, make contact with them; see if they have ideas on how to deal with problems, and if there’s strength in numbers. And there’s always strength in numbers.

It is not your job alone to deal with these changes. It is impossible for one person on their own to do anything about these changes. The best you can do is make sure that you’ve taken every precaution you can, and that you’ve made contact with a community that can support you, and which you can help support, if and when things happen.

That’s the generic advice. There’s one more specific bit, which applies to political situations and not so much to climate: you get to decide, in most cases, how visible you’re going to be. There’s a lot of good work that can be done quietly, and while there is value in being very visible, be selective in when you do so. The following video has some excellent advice:

My three core pieces of advice for climate are:

• Move Inland

• Develop Skills

• Be Generous

… and those can be adapted. “Move Inland” can become “move elsewhere”, and for some people in some states, that’s bluntly the best advice I can give. “Develop Skills” is never bad advice. And “Be Generous” is the most important one here; it applies to supporting your community, and the people who will help you, but it also applies to helping out people who caused the current situation, when that becomes necessary.

There are going to be a lot of people discovering that the administration they voted in is turning around and putting them out of work (or increasing the price of eggs, or whatever metric of rulership they’re using), as well as messing up the rest of the country beyond what’s feasible for them. These people will need help just as much as anyone else, and that support coming from the sane people on the left will have good and useful effects down the line.

(There are also going to be people who insist blindly for years that this is all 4D chess and the Republicans are the good guys really, and like all conservativism, this can be filed under “evil” or “ignorant”. Ignorance can, and frequently is, a state that people cling to, because apparently being unchanging is more important than being correct, an attitude I neither understand nor have the least bit of patience for. There is very little that can be done for these people, but you might usefully demonstrate to their kids that there are better ways.)

I advised forming groups of whatever sort before, and Anton pointed out by reply that it’s usually more useful to join an existing community. That is absolutely true, and you should certainly look for existing groups in your area. Those can be environmental, for the normal business of this newsletter, or resistance movements of whatever kind for the topic of this particular section. And in this case, “resistance” can be LGBTQ+ groups, trans support networks, National Park volunteer groups, or whatever’s being organised in your local library. Join your local library, too. Join the local SCA group. But if you’re in an area that just plain hasn’t any, go ahead and start one. Don’t call it the “MyTown Resistance Group”, though. “Mutual Aid” groups, “Organic Gardening” groups, “Tenants’ Union” groups, and so on will work just fine. Just knowing other people who are having or anticipating difficulty, and sharing the effort of thinking through it, will help.

Links & Discussion

Here’re some bits and pieces of news and discussion from across the internet, all of which have some salient points about them.

First, Storm Darragh (and then later, Storm Éowyn) hit the Isles here rather harder than any storms have for some time.

The headline above was just after Darragh, in early December. The damage to the port in Holyhead has not yet been fully repaired as I’m writing in early March, such that all the ferries going in and out are using one dock, not two. This results in the ferry times being slightly adjusted, and presumably has knock-on effects for foot passengers on the trains. Darragh was the kind of storm we can expect to have fairly frequently in the future, possibly even every couple of years, and that coupled with rising sea levels is going to make damage to ports and other infrastructure inevitable.

There’s a need for work on this - to put in short term storm defences, to make sure repairs can happen much more quickly, and to start accommodating the need for some of that infrastructure to be moved. This sounds insane with regard to a ferryport, of course, but the fact remains that a metre more of water at high tide will render both ends of the Dublin-Holyhead ferry routes unusable.

Storm Éowyn took down so many trees across Ireland that you can still hear chainsaws every day, more so in the North-west than other parts. Some people were without power for nearly three weeks, and water supplies were affected in many areas, because pumps need electricity too, and not all pumping stations have generators. Obviously, infrastructure needs to be improved so that this doesn’t happen, and equally obviously the Irish state is not even a little bit prepared to invest in it.

There’s nothing new in this, but it’s a neat summary of the current mess. One of those articles it’s worth bookmarking for when you need to link to something coherent.

Overpopulation is frequently touted as a reason for climate change. If there were fewer people, we wouldn’t have these problems. But honestly, that’s nonsense, and even a cursory look at the distribution of people, wealth, and climate issues will disprove it. There’s plenty more in the above article, and I’m certain with the rise of fascism in the US that we’re going to hear more about “overpopulation”.

Closing

I’m going to shove this issue out the door. I’d like it to be more coherent, but honestly, it’s more useful that it be published than that it be perfect, or even great. I am not even going to try to predict what the next issue will contain (although I might do a mini-issue of just links and short commentaries), but if there’s something you’d like me to cover, please let me know.

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