Watching the video “Deep Adaptation” by Jem Bendall this Monday was rough. The combination of depressing content, black and white footage, sorrowful piano music, and the fact that it was 11 pm led me to abandon the remainder of my homework, curl up under my blanket, and pass out. I couldn’t bear to be awake with my thoughts any longer. The next two days, all of my quiet moments were filled with tiny tendrils of dread and grief nagging at my subconscious.
Watching Deep Adaptation was rough because it left me with no room for hope. Though it is only one perspective, it comes across as fact: “We are not in control anymore.” That it is time we consider the implications of it being too late to avert a global environmental catastrophe in the lifetime of the people alive today. That any attempt to offer a bright vision of the future is an exercise in delusion. That we will be extinct in the century and should give up, start arranging our species’ affairs, and die while cherishing our remaining life. This video strikes me as a suicide note for humanity.
After further reflection and additional reading, I feel reassured about humanity’s journey and our potential extinction.
It would have happened anyway. One day I will die, and that is a guarantee regardless of if it is by car crash, natural causes, or a global environmental catastrophe. One day we would all still die and eventually go extinct, as Erik Assadourian says in his article We’re All Gonna Die! I could die any day from numerous causes, yet I don’t live my life paralyzed by constant fear. Whether by climate change or an asteroid, the human species has an expiration date.
We still have a say in when that expiration date is. As Rehs van Munster and Casper Sylvest write in their article Nuclear Weapons, Extinction, and the Anthropocene “the future can no longer be taken for granted, it must be earned.” I appreciate this because it establishes the severity of the issue while centering control in humanity and our individual and collective decisions. It reminds me of the quote “hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.”
Perhaps Jem Bendall will be correct. Maybe we will go extinct this century and nothing we do right now can change that outcome. But we don’t know that. And I can’t live in a world where I prematurely give up and lose hope. I recognize the significance of pointing out the severity of humanity’s path and the extinction it could lead to, yet I believe we need to approach it by harnessing the power of hope. We can still give climate change our best fight, and if we don’t succeed, at least we go out knowing we tried. It’s time to roll up our sleeves.