Grieving our Dying Planet Earth
The End of Ice; Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, Dahr Jamail,2019
Dahr Jamail 
We are already facing mass extinction. There is no removing the heat we have introduced into the oceans, nor the 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere every single year. There may be no changing what is happening, and far worse things are coming. How, then, shall we meet this?
“The question is not are we going to fail. The question is how,” author and storyteller Stephen Jenkinson, who has worked in palliative care for decades, states, “The question is, What shall be the manner of our inability to care for what was entrusted to us? The Question is our manner of failing.” Jenkinson, who now makes his living by teaching about grief and the acceptance of death as an integral part of living, spoke eloquently about grief and climate disruption during a lecture he gave at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. When he talks about our failure to care for what is entrusted to us, he is also saying that the time to change our ways is long past. Grief requires us to know the time we’re in,” Jenkinson continues, “The great enemy of grief is hope. Hope is the four-letter word for people who are willing to know things for what they are. Our time requires us to be hope-free. To burn through the false choice of being hopeful and hopeless. They are two side of the same con job. Grief is required to proceed.”
Accelerated Melting of Greenland Ice Cap 
This short work is a world wide tour of glaciers, Bering Straight fishing villages, mountain tops, coral reefs, rain and other forests, while interviewing leading experts in the areas he visits.
Miami Beach 
In his chapter “The Coming Atlantis” he visits Miami and the Everglades. He meets an engineer who is raising roads in Miami Beach 2 feet while leaving all buildings and infrastructure alone. James Hansen points out that Sea level rise is absolutely non-linear. Hansen has a plausible 15 foot rise by 2100 and 10 foot rise by 2050. The entire of South Florida and its aquifer would be totally lost at 10 feet, as would Mumbai and many other large coastal cities and areas. One scientist living in south Florida is planning to retire to Washington D.C. He fully expects his South Florida home to be worthless by the time he retires. It is estimated that by 2100 75% of Florida homes will be underwater. Jamail thinks that only when homeowners fail to find mortgages or insurance for their homes will denial stop. Miami and Miami Beach continue to build high rise condominiums. Current estimates have 2 billion refugees from sea level rise by 2100.
Global Coral Bleaching 
In his chapter “Farewell Coral” Jamail points out that if the amount of human generated heat we added to the oceans between 1955 and 2010 were placed in the atmosphere instead, global temperatures would have risen by 97 degrees F. This added heat melts the polar ice and bleaches the coral. Because we know so little about the oceans we can only imagine the impact on sea species and their extinction.
His trips to the forests finds even the redwoods succumbing to the changes as beetles attack them. As forests die they burn releasing their CO2. The Amazon rainforest will soon transit to net positive contribution to CO2 emissions. We can only imagine the mass extinction of species not yet discovered as the rainforests change.
Changing patterns of rain, flooding, and droughts worldwide will severely reduce our ability to grow our food. The inability to grow food locally is estimated to contribute another 2 billion food refugees by 2100.
A willingness to live without hope allows me to accept the heartbreaking truth of our situation, however calamitous it is. Grieving for what is happening to the planet also now brings me gratitude for the smallest, most mundane things. Grief is also a way to honor what we are losing.