The 'S' Word
Suicide. Does the recognition that climate change and environmental degradation is a terminal end state for human civilization need to lead one to despair and self-harm?
“The penguins seem to experience some sort of depression-like state, and as far as anyone can tell, they are aware of what they are doing: they are committing suicide.”
I first thought about suicide in my teenage years, as many do. I had just started attending a college I hated and had no idea what to do with my life, a frightening aimlessness and fear of failure set against the backdrop of a post-9/11 turn toward bellicose extremism in the US and imminent invasion of two countries, exacerbated by social anxiety and the weight of high expectations. I was lucky to be comfortably middle class (scholarships paid for most of my tuition), and I eventually concluded that my problems were not severe enough to take such a drastic measure. Why not see it through, and have some good times whenever possible? Eventually, I would commit to a sort of slow suicide through alcoholism, though on this I eventually relented as well and have been sober since January.
During the subsequent two decades, these thoughts of suicide became a recurring consideration whose impetus transformed from personal issues such as ennui and depression to moral considerations about my place in the world. As I grew up and transitioned into adulthood, the (mostly unserious) thoughts no longer centered on the self, as I learned about the inextricably predatory nature of life under late stage capitalism. If I was ever to commit the act, it would not have been over loneliness or failure, but rather in some possibly misguided attempt atone for the destruction wrought by my personal overconsumption, the many unnecessary wars fought for what I was told was my benefit, the countless lives incepted and ended in slavery so that I could buy another television or cheap chocolate bar, or any other consequence of first world privilege. However, I did not consent to this life and I do not embrace it, so I have not yet killed myself. I persist in living, consoling myself with the knowledge that I never had a real chance to instate the kind of change that would be needed to avert the coming disasters, and in the mean time I drastically reduced my consumption, stopped eating meat, drive a hybrid only when necessary, and support bona fide environmentalist political movements. These are token efforts to be sure, but short of living in a cabin in the woods—an unrealistic lifestyle to ask of all 330 million Americans—there is no individual action on any scale that will stop climate breakdown. Only systemic change is equal to the task, and it is not forthcoming.
Do these conscious efforts, such as not eating meat or minimizing consumption in general, sufficiently reduce my strain on the planet? Is my life justifiable to myself if I consider it less harmful than some proportion of others’ lives? What proportion would that have to be, and is that number universal or best left up to the individual’s own calculus? Does the average quality of those other lives matter when assessing my worthiness? If I am surrounded by inveterate polluters and overconsumers, what good is it to be marginally less avaricious and wasteful? If civilizational collapse is locked in already, why bother doing anything to lessen its severity? And finally (I have heard this one many times during climate change discussions): “If you think things are so hopeless, why don’t you kill yourself?”
There may not be good answers to these questions.
In “It’s Time to Stop Procreating” I espoused an anti-natalist position from two arguments: 1) it is the single easiest and most impactful way for the average first world individual to reduce their carbon footprint (insofar as this is capable of making a meaningful impact on climate change); 2) it avoids the overwhelmingly likely future suffering of one’s offspring, who, if given the choice, would surely rather not be born than to exist in a hellish, dying world. It logically follows that if we are in the midst of a human-authored great extinction (all the hallmarks are there, from abrupt ecological changes to rapid habitat destruction), our own existence is also one we’d sooner avoid if given the chance. As noted in the previous article, there is an important difference between taking a life already established and preventing a future one—we did not consent to have this existence thrust upon us and as such cannot be held accountable for failing to take such a drastic, harmful positive action to remedy the consequences of that existence. Our parents who failed to make the correct choice could be held accountable, the agents of the system which renders out lives inherently predatory could be held accountable, and we are absolutely on the hook for not doing more to staunch the bleeding (living an environmentally conscious lifestyle or supporting a green communist government for example), but the punishment for that relative failure to act does not need to be our deaths, but rather something like a wealth-proportionate tax or forced community service (not imprisonment or other harm). The difference in degree of complicity can be illustrated in another way: the soldier who voluntarily fights a war of conquest and is enriched by their participation is more morally culpable for its outcome than a passive taxpayer: neither one is without blame, but in the former case, both the ability to alter the outcome and the share of guilt for participation is significantly greater.
Fewer people is an undeniable good though, so why not practice what I preach? We may or may not argue that a Nazi in the middle of carrying out the Holocaust who suddenly has a change of heart or moral awakening should kill themselves if no other options for absolution are available (there might not be a sufficiently redeeming act other than suicide in this situation), but we would certainly not find the act immoral. Late stage capitalism holds us all hostage and ensures that only the most extreme Luddite is without sin: if none of us can honestly and non-hypocritically cast the first stone, it discourages us from holding the real architects of our prison accountable. We are born into a poisonous and inherently destructive environment, a planetary hospice whose fate was determined before most of our parents were born, and even acts of public suicide and sabotage almost uniformly lack systemic impact and are ignored and downplayed by the media. In April, a climate activist named Wynn Bruce set himself on fire on the steps of the Supreme Court and later died of his injuries, an act a friend described as “a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to climate crisis.” By any reasonable metric, his messaging failed and will be dismissed by most as either the actions of a disturbed individual with more going on inside his head than climate angst or as a misguided if honest attempt to bring publicity to a lost cause. The planet continues to heat up, now set to rapidly surpass a catastrophic 2C rise in the coming decades, despite his highly visible suicide and the carbon he will no longer emit as a result.
The question is not whether one’s death will single-handedly save the planet, but rather if it is morally necessary given the nature of our lives. To take myself as an example, I am no Luddite. I am not living in the woods somewhere off the grid—the act of posting on Substack alone shows that I am not doing everything I can to reduce my carbon footprint and ecological harm. I run my air conditioning and PC frequently, and I own a smartphone. My life is not a morally clean one, despite the fact that I am avoiding actively making the situation worse. However, by not having children, I am doing the most important thing to ameliorate my part of the catastrophe, and therein lies at least one answer to a previous question: while we do what we can to create systemic change, there is nothing stopping most of us from living a more carbon-neutral lifestyle. There are several carbon footprint calculators available online, such as this one. Here are my results, having completed the survey to the best of my knowledge:
Much more needs to be done, especially for Americans (we have no excuse to emit that much over the world average), but the above shows that with a few lifestyle changes, the average individual need not kill themselves to feel that their existence is morally justified.
The option remains, however, and here the discussion becomes difficult. For some, the decision to commit suicide is unquestionably irrational, the product of a mental health issue that could be solved by therapy or medication. The need for more comprehensive and freely available mental health services is already massive, and is only going to become more pressing as food becomes scarce, temperatures increase (higher temperatures correlate to higher stress and psychological problems), and animal life vanishes. It is already possible to rationally decide that one no longer wishes to live given the extant degradation of the world and its certain worsening in the near future—as this degradation becomes intolerable, the need for a comfortable and freely available method of exit will also be massive. When the time comes, for the sake of the suffering we must admit that if they wish to move on, no one should stand in their way. The decision must be made free of coercion and judgment and with the understanding that no reasonable alternatives exist.
When all else is taken from us, we have only ourselves, and this community will need to be strong and open—this includes a frank and honest accounting of suicidality. The truth of things exists independently of the possible ramifications of recognizing that truth, and this has attempted to be an honest, unflinching and somewhat personal discussion of a fraught topic, not an endorsement of any particular outcome for the reader—anyone having genuine thoughts is encouraged to call the suicide hotline at 800-273-8255. Stigmatizing and treating these thoughts with hushed whispers does no one any good, however, and the choice to live or die needs to be the domain of the individual and to a much lesser degree their loved ones, not the government or church.
Why is suicide widely considered immoral and illegal? The law is mutable and arbitrary, especially as society begins to break down in the future, but moral pronouncements should be consistent and rational. Why is one’s decision to cease living considered harmful to anyone else? Prohibitions against suicide are only partially motivated by the worry that an individual so inclined must be mentally ill and in need of commitment to an institution—social and political interests, such as keeping the population numerically sound, are also contributing factors. These interests are cynical and are insufficient justifications for discouraging the act, just as the need for population growth is not a good reason to compel us to reproduce against our will. The Supreme Court, in its likely imminent rejection of Roe v. Wade, cites a source which uses the phrase “domestic supply of infants,” indicating that maintaining the population is at least a peripheral concern for the powers that be:
Tucked into a footnote for that statement was a telling citation from a 2008 CDC report that found "nearly 1 million women were seeking to adopt children in 2002 (i.e., they were in demand for a child), whereas the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted had become virtually nonexistent."
As Politico noted, that passage strongly resembled the argument Justice Amy Coney Barrett made last December, when the case in question, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, concerning Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban, came before the court. During oral arguments, Barrett, who is herself an adoptive mother, suggested that the existence of safe-haven laws and adoption in general rendered moot the pro-choice argument that abortion access protects women from "forced motherhood." Rather, she continued, "the choice, more focused, would be between, say, the ability to get an abortion at 23 weeks, or the state requiring the woman to go 15, 16 weeks more and then terminate parental rights at the conclusion."
Critics quickly pointed out that safe-haven laws are so rarely used that in many states the number of infants relinquished through them each year can be counted in single digits. But the larger problem is more basic: the suggestion that adoption entails nothing more than several months of inconvenience before women can wash their hands of the entire ordeal profoundly fails to understand how relinquishment affects parents. After reporting on adoption issues for more than a decade, it's clear to me that anyone who argues that adoption is a tidy solution to the abortion debate has never spoken with — or actually listened to — the people most affected by that decision.
If you want to understand what using adoption as the solution to unplanned pregnancies looks like, you don't need to look far. But you do need to look. There's a long and ugly history in the U.S. of coercive and even forced adoption. From roughly 1945 to 1972 — the year before the Supreme Court's original Roe v. Wade decision — somewhere between 1.5 million and 6 million women relinquished infants for adoption, often after being "sent away" to homes for unwed mothers, where many women faced brutal coercion, were prohibited from contact with outsiders, went through labor and gave birth in segregated sections of hospitals, and were urged to relinquish their newborns while recovering from anesthesia. Close to 80 percent of residents ended up being separated from the babies they delivered. But the fact that estimates of how many women were affected vary so widely testifies to how secretive these places were: liminal spaces where women were often forbidden from using their real names, in order to facilitate their return to society as though nothing had ever happened.
Many of the women were told they would forget about the babies and go on to live fuller lives, says Ann Fessler, author of the groundbreaking oral history, "The Girls Who Went Away." Instead, many experienced lifelong guilt, worry, trauma and the sort of unresolved grief that family members of missing persons endure. One 1999 medical review found that women who had relinquished children for adoption had "more grief symptoms than women who have lost a child to death."
The popular animus against suicide is at least partially motivated by this desire to maintain the population, as much as it is a hesitation to admit that things have gone incurably wrong in the world. Society has instead chosen to answer the question “Is it possible to come to the decision to self-terminate via a rational process of self-deliberation?” with a resounding “no,” with some exceptions for the terminally ill—or, in one infuriating recent case, a disabled woman who was granted the right to a medically assisted death for the sole reason that she was unable to secure medically necessary living accommodations:
She was diagnosed with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS), which triggers rashes, difficulty breathing, and blinding headaches called hemiplegic migraines that cause her temporary paralysis.
The chemicals that make her sick, said Denise, are cigarette smoke, laundry chemicals, and air fresheners. She is at risk of anaphylactic shock and so has EpiPens at all times in case she has a life-threatening allergic attack.
Denise is also a wheelchair user after a spinal cord injury six years ago and has other chronic illnesses.
She desperately wants to move to an apartment that’s wheelchair accessible and has cleaner air. But her only income is from Ontario’s Disability Support Program (ODSP). She receives a total of $1,169 a month plus $50 for a special diet. "I've applied for MAiD essentially...because of abject poverty," she said.
One of her physicians, Dr. Riina Bray, medical director of the Environmental Health Clinic at Women's College Hospital in Toronto, has been looking for better housing saying Denise requires “immediate relocation for her safety.”
But Denise said she and supporters have called 10 different agencies in Toronto over the past six months to locate housing with reduced chemical and smoke exposure that she can afford on ODSP.
"None of them were able to do anything meaningful in terms of getting me relocated, getting the discretionary emergency, or temporary housing and emergency funds," said Denise.
Applying for medically assisted death has been surprisingly easier. …
Among those trying to help her, is David Fancy, a professor of drama arts at Brock University and disability rights advocate. He heard about her plight last fall and attests to how hard Denise has tried to get a healthier home. But he’s seen her lose hope.
“Door after closed-door after closed-door...the gauntlet tends to push people in the direction of the legislation that is there, which is medical assistance and dying, " said Fancy, who has started a GoFundMe to try to help Denise find better accommodations. "I've got a very significant concern that this is the tip of the iceberg," he added.
"Devastating," said Devorah Kobluk, a senior policy analyst with the Income Security Advocacy Centre in Toronto, part of Legal Aid Ontario. She says many people with disabilities are living far below the poverty line, giving them few options.
"There is an extraordinary cost of living with a disability that is unique to them and their disability. Wheelchairs are expensive, therapy...all these things cost extra," said Kobluk.
The larger issue of the purpose of medically assisted death in Canada also comes into play, say disability rights advocates. Initially approved by the Senate as a way of alleviating the suffering of those near death, it was expanded in March 2021 to those with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
"We've now gone on to basically solving the deficiencies in our social safety net through this horrific backdoor, not that anybody meant it that way, but that's what it's turned into," said David Lepofsky, disability advocate and Visiting Professor of Disability Rights at the Osgoode Hall Law School.
"With the right support, I have no doubt people with disabilities can live well in society. We all want people with disabilities to know that their lives have value," said Kobluk.
Here we see a symptom of a coming social breakdown, the moral and legal codification of the cheapness of human life under late stage capitalism. Rather than spend a infinitesimal fraction of Canada’s sizeable wealth in order to maintain consistency with the widely held prohibition against assisted suicide, the province has chosen to relent and allow her to follow through on the one option she feels she has left. That it is compellingly cheaper to allow patients to die rather than provide them with the resources necessary to live a reasonably comfortable life is the predictable outcome of a highly degraded and incongruous society, but moral deliberations concerning the worth of human life take place all the time. Decisions regarding life and death are made every day in the medical world; if we were truly universally supportive of the prevention of unnecessary death in all cases, then every effort, no matter how expensive or unappealing to the patient, would be made to keep them alive regardless of their wishes. In the end, the patient’s plug is pulled, despite the possibility that more days of questionable quality could have lied ahead for them otherwise. At some point, it is generally agreed that life is no longer worth living, but where is that point? Worryingly, in a post-Covid United States that line seems to exist where saving a life entails even a minor loss in profit for the rich. The American government abandoned its moral right to prevent self-termination when it abandoned its population to Covid, allowing more than a million Americans to die needlessly, many millions more to suffer long term complications, and over 10 million children to lose their caregivers.
I no longer have any serious intent to end my life before its natural course is complete, but the thought is an oddly comforting one: “if things get bad enough, I can always kill myself.” An aversion to self-harm might otherwise leave one feeling trapped and especially distressed about our dark future, and it is our one inalienable right when all others have been stripped. The above exercise was as much for the author as it was for the reader, and it is my genuine hope that an honest discussion lends a sympathetic and clarifying perspective.