I’ll warn you – I’m about to put a bit of a dampener on your Saturday morning (sorry about that). But I’m also sharing a call for us to radically rethink our priorities.

Humans aren’t generally good at understanding societal change on decades-long timelines, writes Tom Doig in his brilliant and challenging Friday essay on climate change and social collapse.

Yes, news headlines around the world are full of floods and bushfires, wars and melting sea ice, inflation and housing affordability problems. But for many of us, when we wake up and look out of the window, life feels much like it always has. That’s because we live in the now – in the moments when we drink our morning coffee, or weed the garden, or take our kids to Saturday sport – not in future projections.

Jem Bendell, a former professor in sustainability leadership, argues in his new book, Breaking Together, that collapse is already underway – the quality of life in most countries and regions of the world peaked, then slowly began to decline, around 2016. Societal collapse isn’t dramatic and sudden, like an apocalyptic disaster movie; it’s a process.

Many of the world’s natural and human-made systems, which combine to make up “industrial consumer society”, are under severe stress, or are already cracking.

It’s scary stuff, but accepting that major change is inevitable can allow us to radically rethink how humans interact – with each other, and with the natural world.

As Doig asks: what do we do with this “collapse awareness”?

Bendell advocates for an ideal of “ecofreedom”. This includes obvious ideas, such as reconnecting with nature, as well as supporting youth climate activism and decolonial, resource-preserving movements in the Global South – where real change just might come from. Examples might include supporting community-based microfinance schemes and small-scale farming projects.

He also calls for embracing a “positive disintegration” of self and values, to refocus one’s mind, and entire existence, on things that really matter. That includes, of course, caring for the environment, rather than engaging in behaviours that damage it – as well as small personal choices on a moment-to-moment level. Bendell says he enjoys meditating, hiking in nature, and ecstatic dance. “It is refreshing to see self-help discourses appear side-by-side with serious discussions of monetary policy and climate tipping points,” writes Doig.

Among the serious, societal-level arguments, is this simple philosophy of avoiding harm and focusing on doing good – while facing the very real challenges ahead, rather than hiding away and hoping everything will invisibly work itself out. “Dig garden beds, not bunkers.”

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