Here at the End of the World

THE UNITED NATIONS SAYS that a million species could go extinct in the coming decades. What will that look like coming across our news feed? Imagine that the extinctions are announced one by one as they occur: how many alerts per day will that be?

We’re entering a time of unimaginable losses, including the possible end of human life on Earth. If we hope to change this, we have to reckon with the fact that whatever we’re doing now isn’t working, since we’re still headed for the cliff, and something is preventing most people from engaging with the emergency, despite all the warnings. It’s possible that an important part of that something is a fear, conscious or unconscious, of the sorrow to come. How will we bear this grief? And won’t grieving make it harder for us to act? But I’m wondering if it is not grief that weakens us, but all we do to avoid it. Perhaps we need, instead, to include it. Grieving won’t keep us from acting, but