(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . In This Rapidly Impending Climate Disaster, How Do You Choose To Die? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-07-23 Climate Crisis is here. Now. It’s not going away. It will sooner or later kill us all. What I do and you do to stall it off will in the long run make no difference. OK, call me a doomer. That debate has been heard and made at length here on these pages. It won’t make a difference. It could be 10 years, it could be 50, it could be tomorrow. Give it a good long look in the eyes, folks. There are decisions to be made. How will you choose to die? First, this is not a debate on religion. Your closely held feelings/beliefs may tell you choosing death is a sin, calling it suicide, and promising hell. This is not that argument. Have that one with yourself, but understand that millions of people with those convictions have also found ways to choose how and why to die without believing they have sent themselves to hell. They found a cause to die for. A higher purpose. A different hand to strike the blow. You are still involved in this question. You may not believe you have the power to cause your own death, nor can ever find circumstances where it would be desired. You are going to go down fighting, breathing every last lungful of whatever still passes for air, until it doesn’t work any more. You may choose hooking up to machines, importing other’s organs into your body, using up every excessive resource to keep yourself going just to keep yourself going. It’s partly a choice, but mostly enabled by your own skill at collecting all those resources for your own use and maintaining them till the bitter end. It’s also a matter of chance. Some of us will die today. Maybe tomorrow. We’ll get out before the hard decisions get made, perhaps by that stray (or not so stray) bullet, that vehicle on the freeway, that broken piece of equipment or lightning strike at just the right/wrong moment. It might be that last-straw microbe we can no longer fight. Right place, wrong time, just living our lives as we want, thinking no decisions were needed, making those every day decisions which brought us there. That is how many of us choose to die, just being ordinary, responsible people. The longer this crisis goes on, the more decisions we can and will find ourselves making about our own deaths. There will be fighting over resources as they diminish, whether land, housing, food, medications… everything! Will you join a fighting group? Will it be one for your country or for your family and friends? What will you be willing to do in that fight? Kill whoever comes your way? Garner supplies for those willing to kill? Hide the children? Give them a quiet merciful death before the worst of the worst has to be witnessed/experienced? Which choice is most likely to end in your death, and now in may cases, those of others? Will you be the one to choose who gets medicine and who is left to battle it out as long as their body allows? Is that the same decision you make for yourself? For your children? Will you assist a merciful death in the case of intractable suffering with no alternatives besides more suffering? Or forgo your own life for the same reason, and by doing so, prolong resources for others? When food runs low, do you hoard it? Give it away and if so, to whom? If your family is around you, do you tell yourself you’ve had enough years and refuse to use your own portion, save it for the young and — hopefully — still healthy? If you favor allowing or assisting the young to survive, will you stick around to lead them, guide them, teach them? Will your outdated ways be of any use? Or of better use than those relying on diminished resources? Have you ways of preserving knowledge beyond your own memory and voice? For reasons other than climate, my husband and I have discussed end of life topics. We are great grandparents, lived long lives, collected multiple health and disability issues along with much joy along the way. We both agree which of us is better dying first and which will not function well without the other, and even what kind of choices we might wish or need to make as things progress. Those answers are our own, and discussions continue. Our only advice is giving these questions your own examination, and in some months do it again because life changes. It always changes. Making no choices, refusing to think about the likely future, is one of those choices about how you will die. Giving it thought, making plans, discussing those with others, is another way of choosing. How will you choose to die in this upcoming climate disaster? 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