What confronting our mortality can teach us about climate activism

Trevor Lehmann considers how having a life-threatening illness at a young age has shaped his resolve to push for a just transition

Canadian environmentalist and career counselor Trevor Lehmann shares a poignant personal essay about confronting his own mortality unexpectedly early in life, and how it’s mentally preparing him to fight for climate justice. Here’s Trevor:

Image credit: Trevor Lehmann. Design by Gen Dread.

I write this at a time of uncertainty in my health. I occupy a liminal space over my own mortality – an uncomfortable reminder of the limits of modern science. Life within this space is a collision of emotions, uncertainty and fear blending with gratitude, anger, and conviction. Though I hope for a long life ahead, I continue to grapple with the possibility of a far shorter one.

The experience of chronic illness has some uncomfortable parallels to the climate crisis; both the environment and our health are things we don’t tend to notice until something goes wrong. It’s the background scenery of life, and then all at once it becomes a fixation impossible to ignore. 

What I hope to offer is just that: hope. Hope that no matter how long you have on this Earth, you can feel moments of joy, moments of connection, and moments of conviction that your actions can help make the world a little bit better, even if you do not live to see that day.

An uncertain future

The present moment provides no shortage of bad news as the climate crisis creates a cascade of problems: from rising temperatures come unstable weather patterns and food production, which can lead to explosions of conflict and migration, economic instability, illness and disease. We’re constantly reminded that the climate crisis is a human catastrophe global in nature, but whose suffering is unevenly distributed. This leaves us contemplating how the climate crisis can parallel other uncomfortable reminders of the finiteness of both our lives and way of life. 

There is a shift in perception as we become more aware of our mortality, a sharpening of reality and our place in it that I have witnessed in many others through my work with grief and loss as well as my own health journey. In my own life, I have had several close calls strewn throughout my twenties and thirties that gave me an appreciation for the fragility and arbitrary nature of life, even before encountering my present illness. Likewise, I have worked with many clients who have had many of their capabilities extinguished, or even been given a terminal diagnosis that forces a reconsideration of what a “normal” or “healthy” life is.

Much like learning of a disaster, experiencing life-limiting and life-ending afflictions allow a multitude of responses. Grief is common: as health writer Tessa Miller stated, “chronically ill people grieve two versions of ourselves: the people we were before we got sick and the future, healthy versions that don’t exist” (Miller, 2021, p.68). This grief can dim the event horizon of life planning and perspective, shifting how we plan, what we value, and how we evaluate success. What used to be a 5-year plan becomes a 5-week plan or even 5-day plan. Success becomes measured in actions that enhance your own emotional well-being and altruism that one day might make the world a brighter place, even if you will not be a celebrant at the victory party.

Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton’s sentiment in The Climate Swerve that “our actions are always and never too late” reminds us that measuring success in absolute terms leads only to disappointment. Even if we made all the recommended changes today, we would not see an immediate rebound. Even if we hit the brakes, the car will skid. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t work with every ounce of our being to push the brakes as hard as we can – only that we should not be surprised that the Earth, much like our own bodies, will not recover as fast as we wish.

I find comfort and meaning in the work of Roman Krznaric’s The Good Ancestor, which highlights that there have been many projects in this world that people pursued beyond a single human lifespan. From cathedrals in Europe to Japanese reforestation efforts during the Tokugawa period, history holds many examples of projects that people work on knowing that their children or grandchildren will be the ones to complete it. Rather than seeing climate as a problem that will not be solved in my lifetime, I see it as a source of conflict, struggle and ultimately meaning for both my generation and beyond to not only revitalize the environment, but create a more equitable world than we have ever known.

Self-care

Self-care becomes essential to sustaining environmental activism, though what self-care looks like varies. While it is a common cliché to see self-care as relaxing and making time for yourself, I’ve found this alone did not address my worries. I related much more closely to essayist Barbara Ehrenreich’s experience with cancer when she wrote: “what sustained me through the treatments was a purifying rage, a resolve, framed in the sleepless nights of chemotherapy, to see the last polluter, along with, say, the last smug health insurance operative, strangled with the last pink ribbon” (2021, p.120).

For me, self-care means taking time to pursue hobbies, taking time to process my emotions, and taking time to focus my energies. Rather than overworking myself chasing many different issues (the climate crisis is shorthand for a vast constellation of interconnected problems), I narrowed my focus. My health helped me shorten my list to a few concerns and emboldened me to become more explicit about my views around the importance of organized labour and decent work, how we make career decisions on a changing planet, and to continue educating myself on climate justice and political change. 

I wrote articles on many of these topics, began political canvassing and door-knocking, and ran workshops on having difficult conversations. I began to collaborate with other climate-informed counsellors and helped found the Climate-informed counsellors chapter of the CCPA last year. Finally, I created an open-access guide on climate and career that let me pour my love of career development into something that will hopefully guide and support others in working together to make our lives and the planet more tolerable. 

Survival is a community event

Tessa Miller’s statement that “survival is a community event” (2021) highlights that my life is tolerable not because of some inherent grit or strength of character, but because of the support systems that surround me, from friends and family to economic security, access to affordable mental and physical health supports, and a job I find meaningful. These privileges should push all of us to confront the intolerability of societies and structures that allow some human lives to be worth more than others – to allow human lives, uncertain and unpredictable as they may be, to suffer the indignities and poverties that stem from the absence of social and economic security. Much like our health, the climate crisis affects us all in unique ways, yet our individual problems inevitably require group solutions. Psychiatrist Jerome Frank sums up this sentiment when he wrote that: “No individual may have it within his or her power to overcome or expunge the malaises or misfortunes of society. But everyone has something important to contribute to the whole, and the radiating effects of that contribution are sometimes beyond calculation.” (Persuasion and Healing, 1993, P. xi)

Know that you have a place in this world, that humanity needs you as we all have a role to play in the crises afflicting our world. Life is uncertain, life is uncomfortable, life is cruel, and yet life is brilliant.

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