Abrupt Climate Change: Only Love Remains

The following information is excerpted from the website for the workshop. The website, with considerably more details, can be viewed here.

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You’ve come to grips with near-term human extinction. It’s a lonely conclusion, one that interferes with many relationships. You want somebody with whom to discuss the most important topic in the history of our species. It seems most of your friends and family are in denial.

Now what?

In response to numerous requests, Pauline Schneider and I have developed a workshop to address this issue. The workshop follows naturally from my presentations. It’s the logical next step for those interested in pursuing healthy psyches and healthy relationships after concluding the worst.

Ms. Schneider and I began creating the workshop in January 2014. We facilitated various versions of the workshop and came up with a version we believe is quite good. Our current version distills hundreds of hours of scholastic reading, deep introspection, and facilitated practice into an eight-hour workshop.

This is not a grief-recovery workshop. Rather, it is a synthesis of our professional expertise in light of near-term human extinction. It is an active, interactive workshop focused on the topic of living fully in light of evidence pointing toward the near-term loss of habitat for humans on Earth.

If you are interested in hosting a workshop, please send an email message to NatureBatsLast2007@gmail.com. Subject line should state, without quotation marks, “workshop.” An all-volunteer team will step forward to assist with all logistical issues, and we will send a planning packet to the organizers to help streamline their work. The packet will include hosting advice, housekeeping advice, flyers, reading materials, links to reading materials and required viewing, and printable handouts.

Logistics

The workshop is titled, “Abrupt Climate Change: Only Love Remains.” It requires eight hours of time in a group of humans numbering between two and twenty (inclusive). We offer it online and in person, as described below.

A 90-minute session on a weekday evening is followed by a 6.5-hour session the following weekend. We ask that at least one full day pass between the workshop days (e.g., Wednesday and Sunday or Thursday and Saturday, but not Friday and Saturday).

We are strongly committed to offering a workshop that is valuable and valued. As such, we expect participants to be familiar with McPherson’s message. A short video clip and other germane information will be sent sufficiently far in advance for all participants to study the evidence before the workshop commences.

A local host will assume responsibility for securing and filling a venue (which may be a personal home). S/he also will be charged with local marketing and finances.

Biographical Sketches of Facilitators

Guy McPherson is professor emeritus of natural resources and the environment at the University of Arizona, where he taught and conducted research for twenty award-winning years. His scholarly work, which has for many years focused on conservation of biological diversity, has produced a dozen books and hundreds of articles.

Guy developed a comprehensive set of durable living arrangements in response to the ongoing collapse of the industrial economy and global climate change. He shares property in a rural area developed specifically to provide abundant supplies of food and water as well as maintaining comfortable body temperature in the absence of fossil fuels.

Because the topics of his presentations sometimes induce despair, Guy became a certified grief-recovery specialist in January 2014. The certification came from The Grief Recovery Institute.

Pauline Schneider, nee Panagiotou, was born in Nigeria and moved to Flushing Queens as a toddler, then back to Nigeria for only two years until her family was forced to leave due to the Biafra war. She was then raised in Greece until the age of 15, by which time she was fluent in Greek. At the age of 15 she moved to Texas with her parents and three younger siblings. She received her Associate Applied Science degree in Radio TV Production, and moved to Los Angeles where she met her future husband and father of her three children while working at Dream Quest. They raised their family in New York where she studied art and film at SUNY Purchase. She received her Bachelors degree in Sociology and Anthropology, Magna Cum Laude at Pace University and went on to receive her Master of Education in Social Studies with a focus on Special Education and Visual Arts, with honors.

Always interested in social justice and in protecting the environment as the home for human and non-human children, Pauline has been an activist for several decades. From 2011 to 2014 she was a core, organizing member of Transition Westchester Hub. In 2014 she completed her first feature documentary, Going Dark, a 30-minute film based on the work of Dr. Guy R. McPherson who lectures on abrupt climate change and near-term human extinction. In 1993 Pauline created a 10-minute documentary film at the State University of New York-Purchase, about a local fight to prevent the Department of Environmental Conservation from installing a toxic waste incinerator on the Hudson River.

An avid gardener, in 2005 she received certification from the New York Botanical Gardens in Landscape Design. Pauline is also a certified facilitator in Alternatives to Violence Project, a certified specialist in the Grief Recovery Method and holds New York state education certifications in Visual Arts, Social Studies, and Special Education.

One man’s journey through near-term human extinction is portrayed via film. David Gwilym created the two video clips embedded below and generously shared them.

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I was quoted favorably in yesterday’s edition of a newspaper in New Zealand. Catch it here.