How do we really “fight” climate change? The answer is: We don’t. According to Jack Adam Weber, the notion of “fighting” climate change is part of why it is so insistently in our faces at this moment in human history. Viewing our climate catastrophe as something we must fight is yet another manifestation of our woeful disconnection from Earth, from each other, and from ourselves—what Weber calls our “triangle of resilience relationships.” This estrangement from what matters most to us is actually the root cause of why the potential extinction of all life on Earth is upon us.
Rather than view climate change as something we must fight, Weber invites us to consider that climate change is a self-created wound that is begging to be healed. It is not so much a menace descending from the ethers as it is a shadow arising from within us. It is therefore a wound that, if consciously worked with, can make us whole and benefit the world. This is what Climate Cure is about: our personal and collective wholeness directly translates to global integrity. If we focus only on the external healing of our planet, we miss the transformative psychological and spiritual rite of passage being offered by way of nature’s desecration and destruction. But if we include all of ourselves into a holistic climate model of “interbeing,” as described in the pages ahead, we are likely to make more sufficient and enduring change.
Specifically, Weber writes, “The lack of critical thinking and emotional wisdom that has hastened climate crisis are as unobvious to the naked eye as the cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse gas molecules in the atmosphere and the palpable and visible effects of storms, wildfires, droughts, and lethal heat waves. This book is dedicated to the unseen causes of climate crisis deep inside us and largely forgotten by our linear, outward-obsessed, and emotionally immature Western culture.”
Humans tend to assume that healing our planet is as simple as instituting a number of climate agreements between nations which will deliver a series of global climate fixes. Therefore, we may be perplexed when the author shares: “If we are afraid of our grief and despair, we can’t pay much attention to climate crisis. The capacity to bear unhappiness is crucial to climate cure.” In other words, fear (and anxiety) can prevent us from facing our more vulnerable emotions like grief, which is why Weber includes two comprehensive chapters early on to help us masterfully navigate fear and anxiety so we can harvest their inherent wisdom and let go of the ways they cause us to unnecessarily suffer.
Who knew that healing our planet is so inextricably connected with healing ourselves? Serendipitously, because this book addresses how to navigate crisis generally, it is a treasure trove of wisdom for how to heal through many of the challenges surfacing in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Drawing from his training in Chinese medicine and experience with depth psychology, Weber deeply understands the necessity of tolerating paradox and experiencing that darkness and light are not opposites but different sides of the same coin. “Paradox,” he says, “is another way of describing transformation, the cycle of death and rebirth.”
The doorway to our transformation is through the emotions that arise most naturally in us as we view the devastating losses produced by climate catastrophe. In this vein, the author shares that grief is not an experience to be fixed or cured. It is not something we should try to “get over” or “get beyond,” or even merely tolerate. In fact, grief, allowed by ourselves and supported by trusted others, heals the pain in our hearts and has the capacity to facilitate a bone-marrow connection with nature and the more-than-human world. For example, we abuse, neglect, and commodify animals because we are completely disconnected from our own animal being. We commodify nature so much because we ourselves have been commodified in a capitalist society. As the great naturalist and philosopher Thomas Berry notes, we have come to believe that nature is a collection of objects rather than a web of precious relationships.
As Weber makes unmistakably clear, our planetary predicament is a life-and-death proposition. He invites you to the sacred inner work and rebirth this crisis demands of us in order to experience the miracle of descending into our deepest humanity. Our work is not to fight climate change but to surrender to the transformation we have brought upon ourselves, and for our own good. “So, if you want a spiritual path,” says Weber, “consider choosing the climate crisis, especially if you consider a broken-open heart a legitimate spiritual path. After all, without a habitable planet no other spiritual path is viable.”
Climate Cure is a comprehensive emotional and spiritual support guide for all manner of troubling times. I urge you to not only read it, but to keep it handy as you would a favorite book of poems, so you may dip into it often and glean insight from its uncommon wisdom. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, please make use of the many tools and practices Jack Adam Weber has carefully crafted so you can take full advantage of the myriad manifestations of global crisis as a spiritual teacher.
Carolyn Baker, PhD
Boulder, Colorado
April 10, 2020
About Carolyn
Carolyn Baker, PhD, is a writer, speaker, and life coach whose teachings prepare audiences to navigate turbulent times associated with climate change and its effects.