The State of the Planet, Part I

We desperately need collective healing

In writing this newsletter, I face a conundrum. I’m a climate scientist, and I want and need to write about planetary health: How our world is overheating irreversibly, and why that is happening; how our soils and waters and bodies are filling with plastic particles, and why that is happening; how life on Earth is collapsing, and why that is happening.

But fascism just keeps getting worse. And it’s all connected.

I have another piece, ready to go up for over a week now, a straightforward report about rising global temperatures, rising carbon dioxide, ongoing fossil fuel industry deceit, and related matters. I titled it “The State of the Planet, Part 1.” But somehow I haven’t been able to post it, with courageous people out in the streets, marines unconstitutionally deployed against US citizens to squash peaceful protest, and with Trump’s unhinged and dictatorially narcissistic military parade looming and now finally happening today. (The parade feels so incredibly un-American, so aligned with Nazi Germany and North Korea actually, that I marvel that any American-flag-waving conservative continues to support this regime. It’s a remarkable testament to the power of propaganda.)

The people pushing fascism on us are deeply, deeply traumatized human beings. People like Trump and Musk, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and the cowardly masked ICE agents and wannabes kidnapping people from courtrooms and street corners. They are so traumatized that they do not realize they are traumatized. They are deluded into thinking that if they can only have more and more, more money, more power, more attention, then the gaping hole in their core - the hole that makes everything feel bad and confusing and they don’t know why; the hole that they are too ignorant and afraid to explore with the curiosity, compassion, humility, and vulnerability that would be required to begin the healing process - will be filled. They are deluded into thinking that they are separate, and unable to see that they are just as connected to other people, other animals, trees, fungi, bacteria, the air and the water and the sun, living systems, the unimaginably complex biosphere, and the tiny and fragile planet that carries it all through the cosmos. They are deluded into thinking that they are superior, and that if they destroy their perceived enemies through oppression and violence - those who look different from them; those who think different from them; those who, despite being downtrodden, despite having less money and power, are nonetheless happier because they are not living in such a separated way - that then, only then, they will finally feel better.

This collective trauma and how it’s playing out today is also an important part of the state of the planet, and I realized I had to make even more space for it, first. The climate metrics and causes will be “Part II” of this series. As I’ve said many times, climate breakdown is nothing more (or less) than the most planetary-scale symptom of the underlying collective trauma from five hundred unhealed, accumulated years of extractive colonial capitalism. This form of capitalism, just one possible way of structuring a society out of myriad possible ways of structuring a society, is part and parcel with genocide, warfare, chattel and wage slavery, racism, sexism, wealth disparity, for-profit enclosure of basic needs like healthcare, and hierarchical oppression.

This makes being an activist today pretty challenging. We need to address all of this at once, because it’s all connected. We can’t stop planetary breakdown without also addressing this collective trauma, and we can’t address this collective trauma without also working on our own healing. And we can’t work on our own healing alone. We can only do it with each other, in community - with friends, family, lovers, therapists, colleagues, and every person we meet as we move through each day. While this is what makes being an activist a challenge, it’s also what makes it joyful! The joy is in knowing that no one of us can do this alone, and what that truly means. The joy is in dissolving the traumatic delusion of separation.

We certainly do need to focus on climate breakdown. All this fascism and genocide is a horror, but it’s also a grand distraction as we all slowly cook to death on an overheating planet. There is no shortcut to coming out of Earth breakdown. Yes, we can and will and should put up more solar panels. But in the end, the only way to come out of all the ways we humans are hurting each other and life on Earth is to collectively heal. The trauma has accumulated over generations, and so this is a lifelong process for each of us. When that LA cop looked over at the Australian journalist and shot her, knowingly, in cold blood as it were, I wondered: What would it take so that he doesn’t make that choice? What would it take so that Trump and the people who voted for him and the Project 2025 folks don’t make the choices they make?

I don’t just imagine a world without billionaires. I imagine a world where no one would want to be a billionaire in the first place. I imagine a world where everyone knows how great it feels to help others, and where that sort of connectedness is deeply woven into the culture of the society.

It can feel overwhelming. Over the last two years, I’ve gone through my own process of burnout that I’m just now coming out of. But all we can do is our best, we put goodness out in the world, we try each day to make everything around us better and not worse. We fight, but we do so in joy. We fight, but we also enjoy and support each other.

So please, get out there today and protest. Be fierce, but have fun. Protest for yourself, protest for the people you love, protest for your community. Protest for the Earth. Protest for the better world that you know is possible. Protest for healing.

I’ll be protesting in Augusta, Maine, with old, dear friends and also with wonderful people I haven’t met yet: My beloved community.

Yours in fierceness, vulnerability, and love,

Peter

About this newsletter

I’m a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (for now, but probably not for much longer), speaking on my own behalf. I’ve been arrested multiple times for climate civil disobedience, because I care, because I want to stop the destruction, because some things are more important than my career.

Like many climate scientists in the US, my job is hanging by a thread as funding is slashed and missions are canceled. I’m pivoting towards more writing and activism. For 19 years I’ve done this critical work on the side, in my free time, but now it’s time to make it front and center. If you want my voice out in the world, please support my work with a paid subscription. And spread the word!