No words: On Trump’s triumph

This article first appeared on Brave New Europe here.

President Trump, again. And this time probably with a more Republican-leaning Congress.

What are the words?…What are the words that can possibly capture the sheer unreal awfulness of what has happened? What are the words that convey our honest feelings in response to it?:

Anguish and despair are right in there. Disbelief, even. But the word that is closest for me, so far, is: desolation. Sheer desolation.

Yes, I know: a Harris Presidency would have been little better on a number of fronts. She forfeited the right to expect wide support by backing the Gaza genocide (though note: on Palestine, Trump will be even worse).

But: We need to understand with clarity the sheer grimness now of the situation. The Biden-Harris administration’s greatest achievement was the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’, a huge (flawed, but nevertheless hopeful) package of green/climate investment measures, Now that Trump has won, and with Republican control of Congress to boot, he will instead likely seek deliberately to destroy virtually all green/climate policy in the United States (by way of ‘Project 2025’). 

No words…

How do we handle this? Where we do go from here?

I have two principal suggestions:

1. Inner resilience. We need to feed our shared inner resilience. This does NOT mean ‘staying positive’. On the contrary: It means trusting (maybe with the active support of others, friends or lovers, therapists or mentors; maybe among a group of peers – others are likely to need help here as much as you are!) that you can handle, feel, process, express your emotions however difficult and painful they be. …For the very truth is this: Only if we actually allow ourselves to feel what we truly feel about this dire moment do we have the chance of summoning – being – the energy and the love that is needed, going forward. And: the beauty of the practicing of inner resilience is that at the heart of it is finding some peace, some centre, some heart, which requires no words. Our care for each other goes beyond words.

2) Outer resilience. As I noted above, Trump’s team have a published plan to hand, to eviscerate climate and nature legislation in the USA, and, to the (limited but non-negligible) extent that they can, worldwide. The world just took another huge step over the edge of the cliff. (Harris would have allowed us to continue careening off a cliff. Trump is actively shoving us all off. There is a difference.). But as Russian dissident Alexei Navalny said, in the message he recorded to be released in the awful event of his death: You don’t get to give up. That just never happens. 

…However, what you/we may have to do is shift focus. It is increasingly obvious that humanity is breaching planetary boundaries, and that the climate situation in particular is going to get way worse. Our task is morphing: from a now-forlorn effort to stay in the safe zone…to a new effort to cope with the terrible climate impacts that are coming, impacts which will make this autumn’s truly scary worldwide unprecedented flooding events look routine or even small. To cope with them psychologically – and practically. Together.

In other words: it is time for inner climate resilience (1) AND crucially too for building our outer climate resilience (2).

The Climate Majority Project is co-creating an endeavour we call

Strategic

Adaptation

For

Emergency

Resilience.

Even as the situation deteriorates, we can adapt transformatively and strategically to it. Think calm and effective (inner resilience), rather than headless chicken. The long emergency that is getting underway can lead us, remarkably, to a place of greater safety. As things get worse, we can get bigger, and yes, #SAFER.

Go to https://climatemajorityproject.com/safer/ to find out more.

Trump won. You want to wake up from this bad dream. But: It is not possible.

But what is possible is that this becomes the prompt for a literally-vital effort that has barely yet begun… The building of resilience against climate impacts. The reconstruction of community. A great coming together: the start of our finding each other, finding our life’s purpose.

…Finding a way through.

So, friends, comrades, readers, LET YOUR HEART BREAK 💔 

…

…Only if we let this terrible result break us open will we then start to become ready for what the future will require from us…

#TransformativeAdaptation

#StrategicAdaptation

#DeepAdaptation.

And: The exciting thing about this strategy that I am suggesting here is that a pivot from decarbonisation-centric to adaption-centric approaches is the one thing now that might execute a visceral wake-up call that could even yet make transformation rather than uncontrolled collapse our destiny: for adaptation is far better than ‘mitigation’/decarbonisation at demonstrating to people the reality and present-ness of our predicament. (This is why my friends the Francophone collapsologists say, paradoxically, in our book on Deep Adaptation, that the one thing that might now prevent collapse is enough people switching actively into assuming that collapse is coming and getting serious about preparedness.)

There is a small and rapidly closing window… to prevent uncontrolled civilisational collapse. That window just got a good bit smaller. The one conceivable way through the window is what we have (for some years now) called ‘Transformative Adaptation’.  This will inevitably be mostly bottom-up. 

Transformative Adaptation: another world is still just possible. It will not come primarily through the ballot box. 

It will come, if it does, through us.