It's unseasonably warm in Toronto, and I can't enjoy it at all. I've never been a fan of cold weather – put more succinctly, I hate it – but in recent years I find myself craving a fat blanket of snow as soon as November hits. It's one of the few things that can temporarily silence the noisy fearmongers in my mind, the ones who whisper and hiss and shout about climate change, about how the planet we live on is doomed for good.
Sometimes the climate chorus is drowned out by another fearful voice, one that's gotten louder in the wake of the attacks in Paris. I started off worrying that the terror that's descended over Europe could take root here; as a wave of anti-Muslim hate crimes washed over the world, including in this city, I realized that for some people it already has. Humanity seems determined to present its worst side right now, and it manifests in my stomach as a thick lump of dread.
For whatever reason, my petrified psyche deals with these two existential threats in opposite ways. When it comes to the many wars that might be slowly merging into one, I lean toward complete information immersion. I frantically attempt to absorb everything, by everyone, on every platform, from the incoherent Twitter feeds of supposed Islamic State sympathizers to multi-thousand-word foreign policy explainers tracing the roots of this crisis back a hundred years or more. I wouldn't say this makes me smarter, and it definitely doesn't soothe my trepidation. It's more of an instinct than a plan, and one I can't seem to shut off.
My instinct with climate change, on the other hand, is to close my eyes, bury my head, and look away. I've had a copy of Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything since the week it was released: I read the introduction, felt nauseous, and never opened it again. I won't look at photos of glaciers (a decade ago, I visited Perito Moreno in Argentina and cried) and this week I speed-read one brief article about Alberta's new carbon-emissions policy only so that I didn't seem uninformed at work (it seems promising, but please don't ask me specific questions). I don't have a car and I don't eat much meat. Beyond that, my climate-change strategy is to avoid the mental corners around which that fear lurks – a task that proves difficult when it's 13 degrees in November.
When faced with a problem, it's a natural human response to try and wrest some control over it. As the possibility of winning a fight fades, we turn to flight, real or symbolic. Seen this way, my divergent responses sort of make sense. Over the last decade, Canadians have been encouraged to succumb to learned helplessness about the carbon suffocating our atmosphere, as the Conservatives both showed and told us that immediate energy profits would always override concerns about the environment. It seems I've absorbed that message. Yet somehow, I'm still hopeful that the next news story or podcast will bring me better understanding of the current refugee and terror crisis. It might even suggest a solution, or a way I can help.
My twin fears will dovetail next week as Justin Trudeau takes a passel of premiers to Paris for the UN Climate Change Conference. There's a lot to worry about. Short-term, I'll be afraid that security measures during the 10-day conference will fail altogether, target the wrong people, or both. Long-term, I'll be anxious that politicking will take precedence over real steps towards a stable climate.
I know that pessimism isn't necessarily more realistic than optimism. I try to give equal consideration to hopeful developments, like how quickly many Canadians rallied around the victims of Islamophobia. I am genuinely grateful that the leader we're sending to France not only believes that climate change is, like, a thing, but has chosen it as a signature issue for his government. But there are so many ways to stumble between here and there, so many promises that could be made then immediately broken, so many good intentions that could lead us all down the wrong path.
The fears lurk, and my coping methods vacillate. By this time week I might know the blood type, birthplace and shoe size of every scientist in Paris. That, or I won't have the slightest clue what's going on.