Out out, damned spot we’re in. Of freaking, burning and compassion…

I get it and I don’t get it.  I get that parents of young children are reading the science (at last) and freaking the fuck out  (pardon my French). I would be too.  Except, in 2004 I went under the knife – no taddies in my baby batter thank you very much. And, as I said at the time and have said since

a) it wasn’t me being afraid of what my children would do to the planet (standard ginormous carbon footprint of your average Westerner), but of what the planet would do to my child

b) the second half of the 21st century is going to make the first half of the 20th look like a golden age of peace, love and understanding.  You really don’t need to be a McPhersonite to grok that.  It’s been obvious since the get go (1988-1992) that “we” as a species would not respond with the necessary smarts and hard work.  Too much (enacted) inertia, especially from the fossil fuel interests, their mates and enablers.

So I don’t get it. In my darker moods I imagine the world ten years from now when, as the rationing and the chaos properly kicks in, parents of kids are demanding that their (the parents) needs be put first as they’re having to cope with all sorts of horror, and oh, the pathos of having to tell Theo or Ophelia about the Awful Things That Are Happening and how The Government Should Have Done Something.

But of course, I do get it. I get the anger, the sense of doom, the self-loathing for not having just been more effective when something could have been done.

And then when I don’t get it again,  I think about how I still won’t be able to say “What did you expect, you stupid breeders?  Did someone force you to spawn? No, you did it despite what any sensible person knew was coming.  Why on this dying earth do you think that you deserve sympathy?”

Right now you can’t say that (and you can only write it on blogs nobody reads).  Right now, friends I massively respect, who have young kids, are burning themselves out because the alternative, of taking a few days/weeks out, which they “need,” would expose them again to the full existential dread, horror, guilt and self-reproach which they’ve been blotting out with activity (and activism).  So they don’t do what they need (in my opinion, and also their own, I think)  to do stay effective for the long haul.

As with everything to do with climate change, you can’t blame them, except when you can.  And all that is left, before the collapse, is compassion, I guess.