Climate Dreams 3/24
In the dream, I am suddenly aware of a very loud sound, like an alarm, coming from invisible loudspeakers in the sky. No one else around me seems to notice. I look up into the sky and see a vivid scene playing out. I figure out quickly that the scene is meant to show people what is happening at an unseen level, in this case, what is happening in the ocean. With the sky as a kind of movie screen, whales are shown thrashing around, contorting as if they are in great pain. Some are dying. It’s not just a film, it’s real, it’s a reflection of what is happening in the oceans. I point to the sky to try to get people around me to notice, but they don’t seem to care. Some of the people are my friends. I don’t understand why they aren’t upset. In the next moment a large group of birds appear and they are wheeling wildly in the sky. In seconds they all slam into the ground. I’m horrified because I can hear the impact of their bodies on the concrete, and can see their bodies on the ground. I know this has something to do with the hundreds of millions of birds who die every year in the US when they hit buildings and windows. This dream was more of a nightmare for me, and I feel like I am supposed to do something to stop the suffering and death of animals, I just don’t know what to do anymore.
~ Anonymous
R.W.W. Greene (He/him) @rwwgreene.bsky.social
Had a dream last night that I — and either @glenngiven.bsky.social or @danielbrian.bsky.social — were defending a ferryboat full of climate refugees by using Harry Potter spells. Apparently, I was saying them in my sleep.
Emily Stepp @emilyart.bsky.social
I had a dream the other night that alligators’ native range expanded into the midwest region because of climate change. Probably not that unrealistic.
remotecore @remotecore.bsky.social
Had a weird dream. Was at a meeting with world leaders. And I insisted they showed a particularly powerful episode of The Simpsons, that dealt with climate change. People were in tears by the end of the screening and the whole tone of the meeting after was transformational.
Matthew R Francis @bowlerhatscience.org
I have that kind of dream often (I’m usually late by like six hours or two days or something ridiculous like that). Last night’s was … I had inherited the family farmhouse, but there was a league of supervillains working on “solving” climate change by making other things worse, etc.
@amcglashen.bsky.social
Climate change is bad but last night I had a dream that a colony of Wood Storks was nesting near me here in Michigan, and it was awesome.
One night in December 2021, I had a series of disturbing dreams in which the world as we know it came to end. In the course of a single day, everything broke down — the climate, the industrial order, the rules of civil society — and the results were not pleasant at all. It won’t happen quite so dramatically in real life, of course, but the message of these dreams for me was that the end of modern civilization is coming, and it will come much sooner than most people expect or will be prepared for. – Anonymous
I’ve had at least three climate dreams recently: (I keep a journal, which is why I know the dates)
July 7, 2023 Cycling down a long, steep, straight road, with views of piedmont and flatlands spreading away to the left. Flying! Like a kid. On my right, a wall of oak trees, all uniformly red, an incredible color—like coals that have the faintest sheen of ash over them. What kind of trees are those? Someone asks and I say Oak, but then, looking closer, every kind of tree in the forest is this same gorgeous, unearthly color. Then, scene change, and I am losing my friend M in a train station where the signs (bafflingly) refer to both London and Ohio. Scanning the crowds for her shining cap of red hair. But everyone in the platform has red hair: a seething mass of shades of red. I wake up and think of this quote from Tolkien: It’s a red day–ride, ride to ruin and the world’s ending. (and the temperature outside is apocalyptic for here: 90 degrees)
Sept. 3, 2023 On a sailboat in Caribbean-blue waters, but there are big chunks of ice floating everywhere. Someone says, Oh, that’s the Antarctic ice shelf. And a feeling of deep sadness. (This was the day Jimmy Buffet died, which I think has something to do with the dream)
Sept. 20 I’m floating down a canal, or a flooded street, in a giant inner tube, among others doing the same. Bumping into various people, one of whom is a plump, sweet-faced girl who I realize is my grand-niece. I say, what do you think now? And she looks puzzled. There’s no way to stop though so I just float on away from her. The water is murky. I am concerned because she is standing waist-deep in it. (Her politics have veered to the right in recent years. We used to be very close)
– Anonymous
I dreamed that climate change was deliberately caused by billionaires who needed better conditions to grow their brain-enhancing meteor spores. - Anonymous
