How to Live in an Endangered World

Kate Schapira, author of "Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth," on making space for collective grief and choosing what to let go of.

Dear friends,

I picked up Kate Schapira’s book, Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth: How to Live with Care and Purpose in an Endangered World expecting something accessible, introductory, and possibly even a little light. The idea it emerged from—an actual amateur climate anxiety counseling booth à la Lucy from the “Peanuts” comic—seemed whimsical and probably designed to be a point of entry for people who were engaging with their feelings about the climate crisis for the first time.

So I was surprised and heartened to see Schapira—who has published a handful of poetry collections and teaches nonfiction writing at Brown University—use her decade of experience in the booth, and the other community work it inspired, to take her reader on a journey into raw and challenging emotional territory in a gentle yet unflinching way.

“I asked myself every day the questions I want you to feel strong enough to ask yourself,” she writes in the book’s introduction. “Is this what I should be doing with my time, my labor, my love? How can I change and how should I change?”

The tone Schapira takes throughout the book is inclusive and no-nonsense. She assumes that everybody has a role by nature of experiencing this crisis. So many climate books say some version of, "We're living in a new era and we’re going to have to do things differently,” and then fail to really get at what that means emotionally. Schapira gets into what this new era requires of us and guides her readers to ask themselves questions like: “Where will you start after the next disaster?” And “What’s a dream of the future you’re ready to let go of, now” and to then to medidate on—and come back to—the answers as they shift over time.

She unpacks the myth of isolation and the personal urge to flee ahead of the crowd, stockpile food and build fences, and asks pointed and helpful questions about fear, hoarding and safety. And she spends time listening to people who have organized for climate justice and worked to build mutual aid projects in their communities to illuminate what it means to shift to what she calls “a more resilient and welcoming way of being.” The ultimate aim, Schapira explains, is to help more of us make ourselves at home, “even in altered, interrupted, and continually changing circumstances.”

Portrait of Kate Schapira by Cat Laine.

Here’s an excerpt of our recent conversation:

Why did you want to create this booth, and what you were considering when you put together a book based on what you had learned?

I was not finding myself able to connect with others in the climate grief and fear that I was feeling. And I thought maybe making a vehicle, method or frame for it would make that possible. And so I created this little booth format, based on the Psychiatric Help 5 Cents booth that Lucy has in Charles Shultz's “Peanuts” comics. And what I quickly found is that, yes, people did have emotional reactions to both what they were already experiencing and what they were imagining they would experience in the future. They also felt very isolated and often unable to communicate about it with the people who were closest to them.

They were ready to be heard. But they also felt very disconnected from any possibility of collective action. They'd say things like, "Well, I recycle. But it's all really what the oil companies are doing." And they were struggling to find connections among the different causes and effects of the climate crisis and to string those together in order to embark on a course of action that both felt and was purposeful. That was the challenge. And so that's where the book came from. I wanted to illuminate some of the connections that are there but are sometimes hard to see in the physical and mental world that we currently inhabit, especially in the U.S., I think. I wanted the book to offer to people who felt affected by but not able to affect the systems that we're all part of; I wanted to illuminate some ways that it might be possible for them to both connect with one another and to affect those systems.

I think the book goes a long way toward doing that. It felt almost like you were taking a needle and thread and trying to stitch the reader’s inner experiences to something larger.

I wanted to help them find out where they fit in the quilt. You know, I love that you used a sewing comparison, because my whole family sews and quilts and mends. And a little piece of fabric has its own qualities and things that it can do. But how do you stitch it to other pieces? How do you create this quilt of relationships and possibilities and complementary characteristics?

What I was really struck by was when you ask people to explore the question: “What’s one of your plans or dreams—for your career, family, finances, travel or pleasures—that may not be right or realistic to pursue because of climate change?” How do you think your readers will respond to that prompt?

That one came up for me partly because of conversations that I had at the booth, but also partly because I teach college. I'm often talking with people who are preparing for or are about to enter a personal transition, which is also often a professional transition and a transition of location. They are about to make some new external commitments. And they will say, “I want to do X, but climate change.” So I started asking them in these conversations, “What happens if you don't do that? Not like, ‘I'm telling you what you should or shouldn't do,’ but let's say you don't do the thing that you've been thinking about doing? What happens, then? What happens instead? Have you imagined it? What's it going to be like, who else is going to be talking to you about it?”

That made me reflect on my own plans and my own priorities. And on how precarious our current economic systems in particular keep us feeling. That precarity leads security and certainty to be these cravings that people have. They say [as if willing something to happen], “If I do X, I'm going to be able to do Y.” And you see it in people who come from money and from those who don’t….that sense that your wellbeing can be ripped from you for somebody else's convenience, or even just as collateral damage of somebody wanting to make money somewhere. And so then you feel like, "I'm the only one who's looking out for me, so I have to really drive toward safety and security and certainty.” And I think that may be a losing battle.

It definitely seems that way with home ownership right now, which seems to be a symbol of security, and yet it’s getting more and more difficult to secure—and keep—insurance across the country.

Totally. Full disclosure, I own about half of my home and the bank owns the other half. But if I was housing insecure, I could not have written this book. There's no way. I know myself. There are people out there who can do all kinds of incredible shit while their circumstances are in jeopardy. But if your day-to-day life is absorbing in a frightening way, then what you can do to support the collective is going to be much smaller.

What we call “climate anxiety” is actually a community condition. And it requires a community response. And that means building more peer mental health support and networks of community care. But it also means things like rent stabilization. It means things like fighting for worker protections in climate change conditions, or for universal basic income. Anything that increases survival, increase survival, right? And so if people are thinking they can’t [have an impact in relation to climate because] they can't plug into federal climate policy, they can ask themselves, “What is my city or town council talking about in terms of rent stabilization? Who in my town is working to unionize? What kind of support do they need?”

That’s another sort of place where people might be able to find their power, even if it doesn't seem like it's directly related to climate change or ecological survival.

If more people are going to moving inland, for instance [due to sea level rise], I would rather limit the potential for climate gentrification. And I would rather have some places in the city that are available for people who are coming here without a ton of money. I'd like people who are here to be able to stay in their homes. And I'd like people who need to come here to be able to live also.

That kind of big picture thinking does seem important right now.

Yes, and yet we’re discouraged from it. And it's cognitively somewhat difficult to do.

I don't think the benefits of thinking that way are made clear enough to us as a society, as opposed to thinking about how to protect ourselves as individuals.

Yes, the rewards of acting in those ways can seem very clear. And so I’ve been focused on exploring the genuine short-, medium- and long-term rewards of thinking mutualistically. What can that offer people that's comparable to self-survival? People are used to asking themselves, “How do I keep myself immune from all the consequences of the systems that mostly benefited me even though they were also tearing at my heart all the time?”

You talked about some of this and how it played out in your decision not to become a parent. You wrote: “Because climate change puts all the systems in our lives into uncertainly, it can tempt us to just try and secure the safety and comfort of the people we love. I could imagine myself falling into that temptation. I decided to steer clear.” Can you say a little more about that?

In the book I talk about the relationship I have with my friends’ kids, and these two kids in particular, who I got to see just yesterday and we had a terrific time. There are other ways to make and be family, besides growing your own. And I think that's important for a lot of reasons…for one thing the climate impacts that we're already seeing are causing a lot of people to have to think about who's going to be in their household anyway. And how do we tend to that elasticity of being responsible for people? How do you make your sense of care and who you look out for more flexible? I think it's good to practice that.

Because of the striving that we do in the lives that we're in, so many of our systems for getting through are more brittle than they have to be. I could see myself kind of falling into the trap of becoming very brittle if I was responsible for a child all the time. And I didn't want that.

That's not everybody. I know some very courageous, very dedicated activists, organizers and agitators of all kinds who are parents and who have said out loud that being a parent makes them better at what they do and gives them a reason to do it. It's about knowing what you're made of, and where you are in the quilt.

I’ve been considering letting go of most airplane travel and it’s tricky, especially as I see so many people around me traveling often. There’s a way that getting on a plane can symbolize freedom or a way to be outside of your life.

Traveling for pleasure is seen as something that is “just for you.” You know, if you have kids, you can kind of tell a story about how it's also good for them too. And my question is why doesn't your regular life have stuff in it that's just for you? Why do you have to go outside your life to get something that's just for you? So looking at [what you’re willing to let go of] may also be a moment to look at what you have going on, and ask, “what if my regular life had more in it that was just for me?”

All this requires very deep shifts. And it's very hard to talk about this, as you have probably realized, without sounding like you are demonizing people for wanting pleasure. And that applies to people who are doing relatively well financially, but it applies even more to people who are finding those opportunities for the first time. People who are like, “Wow, I’ve finally reached a point where I can afford to install a pool. Or I'm finally in a position to take this trip for pleasure. People who are working toward that moment because it has been systematically denied to them. And it's not fair to say "Other people got this thing, partly by being more favored by social and economic hierarchies than you, and partly by having fewer scruples than you, possibly. And you shouldn't have it.” So I would phrase it as a question. “Is there anything else that would make you satisfied with your life besides this thing that outsources this terrible cost?”

You connected with and learned from several different Indigenous thinkers, organizers and writers—journalist Deb Krol, fire expert Don Hankins and water organizer Dezaraye “Dez” Bagalayos, among others—in writing this book. Do you think the ways of seeing and responding to the natural world and to one another that they shared with you are starting to resonate with more people, especially when it comes to thinking about resiliency and our climate future?

There has been this environmentalist separatist approach to the way that the bigger environmental groups, “the Big Greens,” have worked in the past. They’ve had a Theodore Roosevelt-esque approach to preserving white spaces and exploiting everything else. But, yeah, certainly in the past five years, I have seen more attention paid to Indigenous voices and ways of living and working by non-Indigenous people.

And I've also seen some concrete, yet small, steps toward land return, which is delightful, yet complicated. But there's definitely a gap between those two things. Some people who are not Indigenous or have no connection to their own indigeneity are raising up the voices of people who are, but that is not necessarily translating itself 100 percent to support for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. And that's yet another place where there's an opportunity to handle things differently.

Aside from reading this book and walking through its meditations and prompts, is there anything else that you think readers should consider when it comes to facing and working with their climate grief and anxiety?

One thing I've been thinking about a lot is the value of the pause. It’s helpful to asking yourself, "How am I feeling? Why do I think what I think? What is possible for me right now?” and to put those kinds of pauses in place in your thinking and feeling about what you know, or new things that you learn about climate change and the forces that cause it. That’s the best way to ensure that your actions come from a steady place.

Climate news you might have missed

Summer enters the stage

Last week, temperatures reached 115 degrees in Key West just as Florida governor Ron Desantis was signing a bill that deprioritized emissions reductions and removed the term “climate change” from much of the state’s energy policy. Steve MacLaughlin, a meteorologist for NBC Miami used his segment to pointedly tease out the connection between the two—and to encourage Floridians to voice their concerns at the ballot.

“The most powerful climate change solution is the one you already have in the palm of your hands: the right to vote,” he told his audience. “....We implore you to please do your research and know there are candidates who believe in climate change and that there are solutions—and there are candidates who don’t.”

This week, according to UC Davis student and “weather influencer” Colin McCarthy, the water in some part of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico was as high as 5–7°F above normal—temperatures that typically take place later in the summer and early fall and are known to make hurricanes much more common and destructive. Some experts are predicting that the number of storms that get named would more than double this year.

Add to that the fact that temperatures in Texas and Louisiana surpassed 100 degrees a month earlier than usual, the drought in Mexico is deepening and wildfire season has already started up again in Canada, and it makes sense that experts are expressing concern about what lies ahead this summer.

On growth

Kate Raworth, the English economist and cofounder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab, wrote a useful and cogent essay in The Guardian titled, “What does progress look like on a planet at its limit?” I liked it so much I’m going to put my two favorite paragraphs right here:

If we look to nature, it’s clear that nothing succeeds by growing forever: anything that seeks to do so will, in the process, destroy itself or the system on which it depends. Things that succeed grow until they are grown up, at which point they mature, enabling them to thrive, sometimes for hundreds of years. As the biomimicry pioneer Janine Benyus reminds us, a tree keeps growing only up to the point that it is still capable of sending nutrients to the leaves at the outermost tips of its branches, at which point it stops. Its pursuit of growth is bounded by a greater goal of distributing and circulating the resources that nurture and sustain the health of its whole being.

Although we can easily appreciate the limits of growth in the living world, when it comes to our economies, we have a harder time. Thanks to the availability of cheap fossil-fuel–based energy in the 20th century, rapid economic growth came to be seen as normal and natural, indeed as essential. Its continuation over many decades led to the creation of institutional designs and policies—from credit creation to shareholder dividends to pension funds—that are structurally dependent on growth without end. In other words, we have inherited economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive.

The pushback

A new section about activism and resistance to oil and gas.

1.  A major liquid natural gas (LNG) project that includes a massive pipeline and a processing plant in the Alaska Kenai Peninsula has been in the works for over a decade. Now, a group of youth ages 11–12, some of whom are Native Alaskans, are suing the state to stop the effort.

2. California lawmakers have proposed the Polluters Pay Climate Cost Recovery Act, a bill that would create a Superfund-style program to collect money from Chevron, ExxonMobil and other oil and gas companies to help cover the multibillion-dollar price tag associated with wildfires, sea level rise and other impacts of climate change. The LA Times editorial board came out for the bill in a strongly worded op-ed: “It’s time for them to sacrifice some of their huge profits to clean up the environmental mess they helped create,” they wrote. “It’s not fair for taxpayers to shoulder such a staggering burden.”

3. Lauren MacDonald, an activist working on the campaign against the development of the Rosebank oil field, northwest of the Shetland Islands in the North Sea, made a compelling speech at the annual general meeting for Equinor, the company behind the Rosebank. Here’s a snippet:

I no longer feel it is the right approach to plead with you….It’s clear to me that in your inconceivable greed you cannot see your humanity, so we cannot plead to your humanity. Instead, I am here to tell you that we will stand in your way. I am here on behalf of thousands of people across the U.K. who are committed to opposing you and your oil field. Scientists, faith leaders, politicians, doctors, parents, grandparents, young people. Thousands of us, and none of us are going away, I promise you that.

On the brighter side

1.     California’s “beaver bill,” AB 2196—which would fund ongoing restoration programs to help more beavers in the state build climate resilience—passed through the state assembly with unanimous approval last week. Now it moves on to the senate.

2. Colorado is reintroducing native wolverines, a species that has been absent from the state and most of the lower 48 for decades. The weasels have bear-like qualities and live in places with deep, long-lasting winter snow and their habitat options have grown limited due to climate change.

3. On a related note, Romania is reintroducing a European species of bison and researchers have found that their grazing patterns in the Tarcu mountains may capture as much as 54,000 tons of carbon a year.

4. Oakland Unified School District, in California, is the first in the nation to switch to an all-electric fleet of school buses.

5. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the world’s top court dealing with oceans, has ruled that greenhouse gases constitute ocean pollution. The decision, though not legally binding, could influence other cases in which island nations and other communities most impacted by climate change have been working to hold governments and corporations accountable for failing to act to reduce emissions.

6. Researchers from the University of Cambridge are scaling up a method for recycling cement, using the electric-powered furnaces that are already used to recycle steel. Concrete is a significant part of the greenhouse gas emissions puzzle, and cement is the ingredient that emits the most carbon. Researchers are calling the advance, “an absolute miracle.”

Take care,

Twilight