John Halstead

What “Don’t Look Up” Gets Right and Wrong

The climate catastrophe is really nothing at all like a comet.

The 12 Steps for Climate Grief: Steps 10-12

10. Show up.
11. Reinvest in meaningful work.
12. Do all this in community with others.

The 12 Steps for Climate Grief: Steps 7-9

7. Move beyond thinking.
8. Take breaks and rest.
9. Practice gratitude.

The 12 Steps for Climate Grief: Steps 4-6

Step 4. Honor your mortality and the mortality of all.
Step 5. Let yourself feel all your feelings.
Step 6. Withdraw your projections from others.

The 12 Steps for Climate Grief: Steps 1-3

Step 1. Accept the severity of our predicament.
Step 2. Acknowledge that we are all part of the problem.
Step 3. Practice sitting with uncertainty.

What Comes After?

What comes after the realization that the world is ending?

Prayer for the End of the World

Asking is an act of humility. It is an acknowledgement that we don’t have all the answers or all the power, and that sometimes human reason and human will is not sufficient.

What Shade of Green Are You? (Alex Steffan)

Dark greens believe that environmental problems are an inherent part of industrialized, capitalist civilization, and seek radical political change. Dark greens believe that currently and historically dominant modes of societal organization inevitably lead to consumerism, overconsumption, waste, alienation from nature and resource depletion. Dark greens claim this is caused by the emphasis on economic growth that exists within all existing ideologies, a tendency sometimes referred to as growth mania.

The Dictionary Is Not a Holy Book

Pulling out a dictionary might seem like an innocuous act, but frequently it isn’t. Often the motivation behind the turn to the dictionary is not a desire for greater understanding, but a desire for control. Dictionary worshipers do not want to understand how others use words; rather, they want to control how others use words.

We’re all monsters.

All of us are monsters. This system makes us monsters. We are complicit in an unimaginably vast and complex system which consumes people and places and excretes carbon gas and plastic junk. I do want a different world, a better world. But even if that world comes to happen, I know I’m not going to live there. There is no place for me in that world.