PAPER UMBRELLAS AGAINST NOTHINGNESS
PCCA Conference “The Self-Imposed Atrocity of Climate Change: The Human Factor”
As a fix for global warming some astronomers and physicists are proposing the following idea: to create a huge umbrella and send this to a certain point between the earth and the sun to block a great amount of solar radiation. There is even a foundation dedicated to promoting such kinds of solar shields. Did we try something similar in the conference on “The Self-Imposed Atrocity of Climate Change: The Human Factor”: to cut off the immensity of the climate disaster from our view so that we can pretend it is entirely manageable? Sometimes it seemed to me as if we wanted to close the blinds not to see what is unbearable.
Degradation of Air
“This we already know” is an over and over repeated line in a poem from Hans Magnus Enzensberger* where he states that we habitually tend to pretend that we know all the important things. It seems it is very difficult to be immersed in unsolved questions of life that do not find an answer now and being confronted with not knowing. Perhaps this is the background why I experienced this climate conference not very climactic, on the contrary: quite disciplined and sane. Yes, there was also disaster anxiety in the words, yet besides these words the conference life went its reasonable way. To me, there seemed to be some degradation of air. What was missing?
Jacob’s Ladder
Night dreams brought it to light: death and food, the great topics of life appeared forcefully. So many dead people imposed themselves on us. A huge cemetery, place of loss and grief, connecting with generations. The next night dreams: food, craving for nourishment, life in abundance, sharing this with others. The reality of disaster and joy of life, one besides the other, one not without the other. Ascending and descending, bridging what we find almost irreconcilable in the light of the day.
Delphi
The confrontation with the catastrophe of climate change lead me into a kind of collapse of time and place. Looking for adequate words hit a wall. I felt I need pictures from faraway, from the areas of mythology, of religion, of art to grasp at least a small fragment, a snippet of what we try to talk about. Something that can serve as a fill-in for the lack of better descriptions. The Greek Delphi with its famous oracle that once was understood as an earth spirit came to mind. In ancient times, the Delphic Oracle was consulted about significant decisions. Don’t we do something similar when trying to approach unconscious realms with our questions about the climate disaster? Besides the famous sentence: “Know yourself” there is another sentence ascribed to the prophecy of Delphi: “Act in a measured way”. Wisdom from other times and places will surely not give an easy fix to our complex questions, but they might stir up other areas of our being. Also they might make us more humble with regard to supposedly knowing it all.
Holding for the System
A recurrent intervention of the management and staff in such conferences is: “What does this hold for the system?” This time it seemed to me: the conference itself – the fact that it took place – acted as a refuge for the conference question as such: the human factor of the climate change. It was the question, not a possible answer that this conference stood for and held for a greater system. Probably it is not the time for answers now, so urgently as they are needed. It’s perhaps the time for enduring the question itself and the still-point it conveys. We are perhaps – or perhaps not? – “(a)t the still-point of the turning point… where past and future are gathered”, as T.S. Eliot says.*
Terra
Is online a place? Gives online a sense of place? Maybe this is possible. But in this particular case, when talking online about the earth we missed one crucial element of the topic: its rooting and rootedness, its native soil and its genesis.
Leap of Faith
There are thorough gaps in our understanding how to act against the environment disaster. Hope rather appears here to be a lonesome journey, so it seemed in the conference. In spite of everything, the dismal situation of the environment presses us to be active. “Enough of the observer role!” as a conference participant said. How pressing the situation is might exemplify here some randomly chosen news headlines from early September 2024, when this conference set off:
- “This year is well on track to be the hottest on record”
- “Bangladesh floods leave 71 people dead”
- “Wildfires in Brazil surged to the highest level since 2010”
- “Super Typhoon Nagi nears Southern China after killing at least 17 people in the Philippines”
We have no deep answers at this point of time, yet we are forced to act. How? When? There are many reasons to hesitate. What it needs to start moving is probably a leap of faith, a leap into an insecure situation, into the unknown – while at the same time being aware that what we do is just holding a paper umbrella against nothingness, against the unknown. Only this, yet this.
*Dag Hammarskjield, Markings, (quoted from the German translation “Zeichen am Weg”: “Papierschirme gegen das Nichts”)
*Hans Magnus Enzensberger (quoted and translated from German poem “Lied von denen, auf die alles zutrifft und die alles schon wissen”)
*T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, in: Four Quartets, No. 1
Jerusalem, 22.09.2024 Ingeborg Tiemann