Are Guilty Feelings Enough?

You don't need to behave in a detrimental way. Even as a writer.

I began writing this whilst on an Antipodean adventure. It’s Earth Day here in Sydney, Australia, where autumn is very different to Europe's version. The temperature is 27°C and I'm sitting on a spotless beach, my white body surrounded by tanned flesh and cosseted by a warm breeze. But I can't help but feel guilty at what it's taken to reach my destination and later return home: 3.4 tonnes of CO2 . It would take me more than 3 years of my typical car mileage to dump this much planet-warming gas into the atmosphere (assuming I should still own a car).

The average Brit now takes more than three holidays annually. On a global scale, the number of foreign holidays taken has doubled since the turn of the millennium. Our brains have an incessant urge to seek the new, most often to experience different weather, sights, smells, tastes and language. (Although, oddly, many short-term tourists and long-term expats feel most comfortable when surrounded by what they find familiar. Go figure.)

But humans are good at offsetting guilt about long-term detrimental change with short-term emotions. The feel-good of a relaxing 'I deserve it' holiday; the elation and rewards of a successful business deal; the warmth of a family reunion. All these and more are reasons we give ourselves to step into a carbon spewing aeroplane instead of taking the necessary steps to mitigate climate change. Normalcy bias prevails.

For most people, the quality of their interpersonal relationships matter more than anything else. Through war and peace, famine and plenty, migration and settlement. Compassion fade is ever-present and has its own biases. Contrast the visibility, discussion and consequent aid offered to Sudan vs. Ukraine, for example.

One commonly cited excuse for long-distance air travel is 'the plane would still take-off without me, so what difference does it make if I’m on it?'. This is, of course, a fallacy. For an airline to compete and survive, supply of seats must elastically match passenger demand and planes have to pay their way. Otherwise we’d be dialling up a daily destination as we strap into our personal hypersonic missile.

A disjointed wing to go with my B787 dream-lined prayers.

It's also an example of strong present bias to only see what’s obviously affecting you right now (or to disregard what might happen in future as ‘somebody else’s problem’). The majority of people don't consider the CO2 emissions arising from the food they choose to eat, the goods they choose to purchase, or the places they choose to travel to. They are driven instead by cost, convenience, timeliness and an undefinable sense of satisfied desire. Cheap, fast and good is the triumvirate we crave and so that’s what businesses strive to achieve for their customers, with an end-goal of enriching themselves and their shareholders (who, lest we forget, might often be those very same customers).

There is also the never-ending spectre of status. Our highly-tuned detectors of social rank within the human hierarchy ensure a large proportion of us incur time and energy (figuratively and literally) to outdo our neighbours, colleagues and peers, often vicariously citing a child’s success or a tenuous name-drop. The clothes you wear, the phone you use, the car you drive, and where you went on holiday, all count when ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. The innate pleasure and physical rewards gifted by our archaic brain chemistry in this endeavour continue to trump any long-term survival logic. The wealthiest also enjoy the privilege of choosing how much of the truth gets thrust into their faces when striving to reach the top of a slippery pole of questionable attainment.

The geopolitical aspects are easy to dismiss, even as the metal tube I was in weaved a tight path over multiple ‘Stans, between war zones and missile paths, expending even more time and fuel. Divorced from the violence, poverty, political tensions and destruction below, I seamlessly transitioned from one Anglospherical bubble to another. All for the sake of making a transitory physical connection to another human being.

“As I see it, humanity needs to reduce its impact on the Earth urgently and there are three ways to achieve this: we can stop consuming so many resources, we can change our technology and we can reduce the growth of our population.” — Sir David Attenborough

There is a counterpoint to all this doom and gloom.

The primary form of communication about climate change – what is often presented by writers' from their personal experiences – has mostly consisted of the guilt and shame writers feel about their personal carbon footprint, often to the extent of silencing them. I’ve done it myself with this poem. They’ve felt they couldn’t authentically write about the topic without being knowingly hypocritical.

Ensconced within the respective bubbles I mentioned earlier are the multicultural metropolises of Sydney and London. Both reflect their regional surrounds, whether European or South / East Asian. You can hear it in the languages, see it in the dress, taste it in the food. Yes, aberrations and tensions exist, but in the main, humanity remains as innovative and adaptable as it is confrontational and tribal. It's a balance which has led to a million years of successful species growth. It's a balance we can't afford to lose. Stultified brains are a recipe for easier money-driven gains. Don't be robotic in your actions, don't be a mall zombie in your thinking. Don't believe the hype - be it commercial, political or media-driven.

Artwork by the talented Justin ‘Cowz’ Cowley, Australian artist, Silverton, NSW.

It is possible to write about climate change in a creative and inspiring way, to make the facts accessible whilst still applying an intentionally edgy or emotional narrative to engage your readers. Weaving substantive information into a story whilst striving to build a relationship between a fictional character and your reader is a realistic goal.

You don’t need to explicitly shout “climate character!" when such a protagonist hits the stage, even if the plot and the character's motivation are primarily driven by such a theme. Instead, you can weave in relevant emotions and experiences which connect to spiritual or mental health themes which readers might better identify with. Yet, the emotions you strive to stir can still be dark and hard to deal with; your story might not necessarily end on a hopeful note. But that’s not to say you can’t still leave a space for your reader to expand their own thoughts as to what might be possible once they reach the end of your story. Give them a psychological safety net as a means to retain some optimism despite the increasing disruption from climate change.

Such hope can be offered up in the form of a character providing solutions to problems. Describe people solving things by being innovative and resourceful no matter the odds; by doing clever things to offset all the existential risks and present dangers which threaten to overwhelm the story and everyone in it.

People should know they aren’t alone in wanting optimism and you, as the writer, can send out the appropriate signals to indicate this. A post-apocalyptic scenario doesn’t mean the death of everything. Biblical-scale flooding inspired an outrageously capacious Ark. The same can be true within a contemporary story’s setting.

So, even if you act as a harbinger of doom, hold up a torch for humanity and, in particular, for the generations to come. They’re going to need every scrap of hope to either make it through or escape beyond our latest attempt at turning a decent planet into a difficult — and ultimately diffident — home.

Until next time…