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at his talk as part of the climate action capacity (cap) climate speaker series on jan. 17, sitting in front of a group of forty or so middlebury students, faculty, and community members,<\/span> bill mckibben<\/span><\/a> dutifully reminded us that the next five years will determine the course of our lives and human history and the history of the planet. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

naturally.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

i sat in the back row and stared bill mckibben down, as if by holding him in my gaze as he said this i could somehow take the weight of his words into my body and bear the load of my particular human history. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

for a long time, i have been interested in the kind of climate anxiety belonging to the segment of young americans who\u2019ve heard and talked about the end of the world for years but who still see their lives relatively unchanged. i was this high school activist who made signs and instagram graphics and organized my class to go to boston for the<\/span> sunrise march<\/span><\/a> in sept. 2019. then, in the spring of my senior year, covid restrictions more or less lifted, and i was more or less happy to just drive around with my friends, drink dunkin’ donuts iced coffee, listen to doja cat, and throw my blue compostable straw in the trash.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

the fundamental experience of my teenage years was feeling myself in a last holdout sheltered from the strongest blows of climate change, and knowing too that this shelter came at the highest cost. removed, ambient anxiety hung thick. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

but the corner of the northeast that i\u2019ve grown up in, between western massachusetts and the southern half of vermont, is pitching over the edge. in winter, overgrowth runs rampant. december lies belly-up and damp, its decay on full display. summer is the soaking season. rain washes the sweetness from the watermelon and the cantaloupe. the deerfield and connecticut rivers become rushing mammoths of brown and take the crops with them.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

when storms tore through vermont this summer, montpellier and white river junction got washed out. bridges gave way, houses collapsed into sinkholes, crops failed. people would \u201ccome into the food hub crying, actively grieving the loss of all of these things that they had sewn into the ground,\u201d said marlow saucier (\u201824), an environmental justice major with a concentration in food studies, who was working at acorn this summer, a non-profit in middlebury.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

saucier<\/span>, with their short, curly mullet and silver jewelry running up their ears, sat on the white, paint chipped porch of 28 weybridge street in mid-july. they watched water run down the hill from campus and pool in the intersection between the red, brick twilight hall and the big, brown house home to the center for careers and internships, as cars maneuvered to try and avoid flooding their engines. public safety kept telling students not to leave their houses on account of the thunderstorms.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

numi moreno calderon (\u201826), an international and global studies major from the south pacific of costa rica, was here for language schools. she remembers the dorm chateau flooding and the ground floor of the library soaked. \u201ceveryone was like, <\/span>well, this is unusual.<\/span><\/i>\u201d in the basements of dorms, bikes and tents and bed frames were ruined. videos circulated of a displaced bear running across battell beach, a campus quad. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

then, there are the second hand effects of endless rain: mosquitoes. megan brakeley, who manages <\/span>the knoll<\/span><\/a>, the campus\u2019 organic farm, told me about them. i talked to her in her warm, sunny office in the franklin environmental center at hillcrest in january. she closed her eyes, tilted her head to the ceiling, furrowed her brow, and spoke about the mosquitos in july. they were so bad that people who \u201clive for the summers here\u201d and garden all season didn\u2019t want to go outside. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cit was feeling like a pretty apocalyptic time to be in such an idyllic space,\u201d saucier<\/span> said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

the hyper-presence of climate change on the middlebury campus is a relatively new phenomenon, and not one that many students may have been made to reckon with.<\/span> research<\/span><\/a> shows us that life away from the front lines of the climate crisis is a privilege afforded by how much money you have and where you live, factors influenced by race and nationality. the <\/span>2017 new york times report<\/span><\/a> put 76% of middlebury students coming from the top 20% of wealth in the country. in 2022, 56% of middlebury students were white, 31% were an \u201cunderrepresented minority,\u201d and 11% were international. those numbers are starting to even out, but it\u2019s<\/span> slow.<\/span><\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

calderon talked to me about how she notices that wealthier students often recognize climate change as a threat to the planet but not their foreseeable future. theo mcdermott-hughes (\u201823.5), feels like just by virtue of their economic and geographical position as a middle class american from new jersey, they\u2019re going to be okay. for them, climate change exists more as \u201ca moral imperative towards the rest of humanity.\u201d nora brown (\u201824), from eastern massachusetts, felt insulated from the really bad natural disaster stuff for a long time. she said this year was the first time she felt that a lot less. kamryn you mak (\u201823.5), an environmental justice major, and the founder of<\/span> fire<\/span><\/a>, critiqued the way the college environment allows climate change to exist as \u201ca future thing to worry about. once we get our education, we can get started.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

this is not to say that you have to have witnessed catastrophe in order to know what climate anxiety is. anyone can google<\/span> climateclock<\/span><\/a> and find the countdown to the day u.n. scientists gave as the last chance to keep the ocean temperature below 1.5 degrees celsius. \u201ci lived in a perpetual state of climate anxiety and grief for two years,\u201d saucier<\/span> said. \u201cand it really almost killed me, to be honest. that was the cornerstone of my mental health issues, like, ‘what is the point of living in this world? it’s horrible, it’s really, really horrible, and really not hopeful.’\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

some of the distress comes from guilt. calderon notices a particular anxiety in her friends whose homes have already been hit hard by disaster. there\u2019s an inner conflict between the responsibility to provide for their families, especially in a future more impacted by climate change, while also knowing that the higher paying jobs are often in some ways responsible for the environmental crisis in the first place. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

statistics<\/span><\/a> on those with higher paying jobs abound. the lifestyles of most middle and upper class americans hold huge carbon footprints. there is, i think, a particular brand of climate anxiety reserved for this segment of the u.s.: those who read the u.n. reports in their air conditioned offices, drive their suvs back to their single family homes, and worry their hands when it doesn\u2019t snow until february; those who just<\/span> buy a tomato<\/span><\/a> in the industrialized world and know they\u2019re part of the problem, but it\u2019s the only produce available.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

there\u2019s a difference in degrees, but the quality of the anxiety is the same. the slow-burn apocalypse hisses and stirs on the edges. not everyone is forced to look at the threads between the things they depend on and the things that kill them, but \u201c<\/span>a deadly system doesn\u2019t have to seem like it\u2019s targeting you directly to kill you consistently<\/span><\/a>.\u201d the spiral of consumption tightens, threads strain.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

here on campus, the trees are changing. as elm and ash succumb to their respective invasive species and diseases, brought over here on lumber from europe, tim parsons, the college\u2019s horticulturist, replaces them with the oaks and shagbark hickories native to connecticut, where he grew up. they might be more suitable for vermont\u2019s warming climate. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201ci’m gonna plan 10, 50 years out,\u201d parsons told me, sitting behind his desk in his windowless office in the service building (\u201ccruel and unusual punishment for a landscaper,\u201d he said. \u201cbut it\u2019s warm, so i\u2019m not complaining<\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/i>). we talked about how we can make our physical world more resilient. in addition to planting trees suited to warmer climates, this also means making the school landscape as diverse as possible. \u201cless lawns, more trees, more shade.\u201d he suggested storm water beds as a concept around the entire campus. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

megan brakeley is thinking about adaptability at the knoll, too. she told me about how they\u2019re relying more on cover crops, also called green mold or living mulch, to protect the soil from wind, rain, and intense sun. she thinks they\u2019ll really pull back on tomatoes this summer too, which are sun-loving and no good in the rain. \u201cthat\u2019s hard to think about,\u201d she said. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

parsons and brakeley both know that there\u2019s also a certain <\/span>emotional resiliency<\/span><\/a> that comes with having a landscape prepped for change and centered around community. parsons is trying to get the board of trustees to fund more landscaping initiatives across the institution. \u201cthere is no feeling of connectivity between all the spaces. there’s no experience as you walk from here (the side of campus we were on) to bi-hall (the science building), it’s just a frozen hellscape.\u201d he\u2019s thinking about ways to create outdoor gathering spaces that we can use even when the weather is bad \u2014 pavilions, awnings, tree canopies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

brakeley understands the knoll as a place to stay in community and in conversation. \u201cin these times where so much adaptation and flexibility is required, we need all the help we can get. hearing about how other people are adapting is critical. we can’t be an island.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

of course, like everything these days, it\u2019s difficult to say how the land will change as it bears the brunt of the warming climate. parsons works closely with the grounds crew. \u201cwhen you manage a facility this size,\u201d he says, \u201cyou like predictability.\u201d when it\u2019s going to snow, they call in the snow crew, when it\u2019s going to be icy, they put rock salt down. \u201cnow, it\u2019s a crapshoot. we just don’t know what the storms bring.\u201d all that snow could turn to rain and wash the rock salt down to otter creek.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

on farms, even failsafe crops like garlic and leeks are dying. \u201ccrop failure is a part of life,\u201d brakeley said. but as the season becomes more uncertain, she\u2019s trying to have fewer variables with the things she can control, leaving the knoll open \u201cto the variability that’s coming that we can’t predict.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

even parsons\u2019 experiment with the oaks and shagbark hickories is a bit of a shot in the dark. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cit’s new,\u201d he levels with me. there hasn\u2019t been enough time to do research on it yet. \u201ci just throw spaghetti at the wall and hope something sticks.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

may we all barrel into uncertainty with so much gusto. i asked saucier<\/span> how they imagine their life ten years from now. after sharing a laugh over the absurdity that our grandparents had bought \u201cstarter homes,\u201d saucier<\/span> said, \u201ci think this knowing of the nonlinearity of our lives is really liberating in some ways. i don\u2019t have to conceptualize my five year plan, \u2018cause who the fuck knows. it really feels ridiculous to me to be like, oh in ten years, i\u2019m gonna be living here, doing this thing. cause probably not, so like, what\u2019s the point in thinking about that. i would much rather be like, ‘what nourishes me as a human being and how am i moving in pursuit of that?’<\/span> <\/span><\/i>and doing whatever that takes and having that take me wherever it does.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

brakeley wants work at the knoll to remind people that they do have agency, \u201cyou see that written in the soil. and we just have to stay present in that\u2026 am i gonna<\/span> spend my days<\/span><\/a> dreading the future and seeing it as a hopeless place that we\u2019ve already destroyed? or trying to stay in relationship to things that i can see and have active responses with? the land is our greatest teacher in those ways.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

this january, brakeley\u2019s been watching the leaf buds on the forsythia and lilacs at her house swell. the crocus greens are starting to poke up. she\u2019s like \u201cit\u2019s the wrong time, friends! get out of here!\u201d at the knoll, though, they aren\u2019t farming for a profit and there\u2019s some flexibility. brakeley said they get the privilege to follow through on things and see how they end up. \u201cthings will grow. we can select for and make choices to foster the things that are growing. there\u2019s hope there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

in <\/span>\u201c<\/span><\/i>uses of the erotic<\/span><\/a>,<\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/i> audre lorde frames the<\/span> erotic<\/span><\/i> as meaning inhabiting the world and our lives with a fullness of feeling. this truth of the erotic, she argues, has been suppressed within us, because it can \u201cgive us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world (59).\u201d the erotic is so powerful because when we embrace it, when we inhabit feelings deeply, when we let the world affect us, when we let ourselves be touched and let the feeling of that touch grow inside of us, we find that we can settle for nothing less. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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