Intro

Written Originally 10/30/22 and 12/4/22, updated 11/23

Humanity has lived on the razor’s edge.

Now, in modern capitalism, many Americans think we live on the razor’s edge but we don’t. It’s paycheck-to-paycheck, not hand-to-mouth. (I am not discounting the many Americans who do live hand-to-mouth, however our scarcity is a false one: only our behavior and culture stand in the way of abundance). I look at these things that I consider my necessities—strong walls, air conditioning, heat, running water, a bathroom in my home, a shower a day, three meals a day—three! And I understand that these would be absolute luxuries to my pre-Industrial-Revolution ancestors.

And that’s the problem. As parts of our lives become better, easier, more comfortable, humans’ extreme ability to adapt gets in the way of us enjoying these as luxuries. Instead, they become norms. Necessities, even. When you’re used to sleeping on a $10,000 mattress, it becomes very difficult to downgrade to a $1,000 mattress, disquieting to downgrade to a $100 mattress, and absurd to sleep on the floor.

But we’re always striving for more. More comfort, more warmth, more food, more excess. Much, much more excess.

See a processing system like the human brain desires a life where it lacks for absolutely nothing. Food, water, warmth, comfort, and variety. What mammal wouldn’t want that? A life of ease—where you’re never hungry, never hurting, never cold, never sad, never lacking. What we cannot simultaneously comprehend is that to never lack for anything requires you to waste a lot.

And to waste a lot requires you to destroy the planet.

The way that we live, even the way that lower- and middle-class Americans live is unsustainable. The fact that I can go to the grocery store in Kansas in December and buy a fresh pineapple indicates that we are living outside of the laws of nature. We are not meant to ignore thousands of varieties of locally available food in favor of the scant and damaging 300 species that we actually consume. The average American household has 1.88 vehicles, 1.7 pets, and does not produce food of its own.

The only way to turn this ship around would be to radically rethink our society. To rethink what level of productivity is normal; to rethink how we eat, what we eat; how we travel, how we work, how we learn; what we produce, what we purchase, and how we function. To redefine what is necessary for ourselves and our descendants. To draw a line in our appetite for comforts that says, “I have enough.”

I do not believe that humans are capable of doing that willingly and at a scale that would affect the simple truth of what climate change will do to the viability of our species and all other species on this planet. Which is why I refuse this consistent, grating call to go into politics and change the world in order to rescue humans from the natural consequences of our own actions. I’m not jaded. I can still see the good in people. I still care about politics, I despise injustice, I experience deep compassion and empathy. But hear me out:

I know enough about climate change to know that I am going to be priced out of buying food before I'm 35. People with kids are going to be even worse off than me. Global warming will eat us alive if we don't do anything about it on a global scale: and since no corporation profits from that, it won't happen. We're already pressing against the boundaries of what is habitable for us and driving other species to extinction. All water in the world has unsafe levels of microplastics in it. The Amazon rainforest will be completely deforested by 2030. Billions of snow crabs vanished in 2022. We are vacillating from droughts to floods— once it finally rains, the parched Earth cannot accept an influx of water. I live in Kansas, and parts of the interstates in Western Kansas have been shut down over visibility issues due to dust storms. In February, a dust storm in Amarillo, TX; July 2023 in Phoenix, AZ; May 2023 in Springfield, IL, only their fourth dust storm on record.

We did this in the 1930’s and we apparently learned nothing. We are draining our groundwater and stuffing it into plastics- turning a renewable resource into a nonrenewable resource. Western and Midwestern states like Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, California, and Kansas are already running out of water. In 2021 alone, the water level of the Ogallala Aquifer— which provides irrigation water to the nation’s breadbasket from South Dakota all the way South to Texas— dropped by an average of one foot. The Ogallala can only replenish itself as water seeps back into the ground at a maximum of an inch per year. That’s more than twelve years of water used in a single year. This is only scratching the surface of the irreparable harm— and natural consequences— that will come.

Climate change is a runaway train: we have chased our hubris into forces beyond our control. Our only hope is that we don't take all life down with us.

              Or that we change everything.

              And change doesn’t come from outside us. It comes from inside us.

              So, I’m not here to change your mind or urge you to reduce your carbon footprint. I’m not here to convince you of the ills of patriarchy and the military-industrial complex. I’m not going to steer you away from theocracy or oligarchy dressed up as democracy. I’m documenting my own journey away from capitalism—and all that comes with it… into the forest.

Perhaps it will heal me.

Perhaps it will help you.

I look forward to finding out.