Undaunted: Living Fiercely into Climate Meltdown in an Authoritarian World

by Carolyn Baker, Dahr Jamail (Foreword)

At the conclusion of the 2021 COP 26 climate summit with its disappointing outcomes, inhabitants of planet Earth are confronted with the reality that by 2050, or sooner, large parts of the Earth could be uninhabitable. We are indisputably living in the Sixth Great Extinction. We know that countless humans are reeling with climate anxiety and experiencing fear, anger, grief, despair, dread, and understandably attempting to cope with the reality of potential human extinction with massive amounts of denial. This book offers an alternative to being consumed with either denial or despair. At its core is the existential issue of climate catastrophe and how to live into it with compassionate, clear-eyed, vibrant, awakened intention. While this perspective is harrowing, even more formidable is the prospect of doing so in a global milieu in which deeply divided nations and individuals are opting to abandon democratic institutions and procedures in favor of authoritarian models of governance. Undaunted offers neither phony fixes nor merciless melancholy in the face of our daunting predicament. It assumes that both the reader and the author will face moments of despair going forward, but it offers skills and practices for living undaunted in the face of humanity’s most unprecedented ordeals.

"This book is a blessing and a transmission from a fierce, wise, passionate female elder. No one can afford either to ignore it or to not learn from its massively encouraging lessons."
—Andrew Harvey, author of The A Guide to Sacred Activism and Radical Sacred Love and Wisdom in Action

"As we face ongoing disruption to our social and ecological systems, we need robust and nimble roadmaps highlighting routes focused on healing, connection, and cooperation. Baker's Undaunted is one such guide, providing a path for the necessary psycho-spiritual work we must do to become pillars of support for our communities."
—LaUra Schmidt, Founding Director of the Good Grief Network

"For decades, former psychotherapist, wise life coach and 'collapse chaplain' Carolyn Baker has been teaching us how to live fiercely and passionately into the wildly uncertain and truly daunting future of climate and political chaos that now faces us all. She offers no guarantee of survival but calls us to commit to deep inner work as well as brave outer actions in defense of Earth, offering an inspiring and practical 'post-doom manual' to help us embrace the subtle but powerful benefits of accepting our planetary predicament 'undaunted.'”
—Linda Buzzell, Psychotherapist, Ecotherapist, Author, College Educator and co-editor, Healing with Nature in Mind (Sierra Club Books).

"From the first impression of the arresting image on the cover to the last thoughts at the end, Undaunted is a riveting homage to life and a journey that will shake you to the core. Ensnared in the tightening grip of climate chaos, a consciousness that connects us to each other and the natural world must be restored. We are called to do so thoughtfully, purposefully and fiercely. Redolent with wisdom and almost aching sensitivity – Undaunted will take you to places you didn't know existed. You may do your best to put down roots in some of those places, because you will see they feed our hungry souls.
—Lise Van Susteren, M.D., Board General and Forensic Psychiatry, co-Author of Emotional Discover Your Triggers and Reclaim Your Equilibrium During Anxious Times

Genres: Climate Change

224 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 9, 2022

Reviews

[Randall Wallace · Rating 2 out of 5]

From Dahr Jamail’s Foreword: The white man slaughtered 50 million buffalo to deprive native Americans of a critical food source, and then bragged about it. For Native Americans a great man commits acts of “self-less generosity”. For white men, a great man commits acts of “destruction and subjugating people.” The land was the property of all. You listened to the land’s needs rather than imposing your own. You killed no more than needed as part of a “responsible relationship” with nature.

From Carolyn: “If we are not experiencing climate grief, what is not happening in our psyche?” Americans stubbornly refuse to “consider the possibility that our species has been diagnosed with extinction.” We must focus on what is important while “our social order collapses under the weight of its own consumption, pollution, and inequality.” “Disaster assistance and insurance coverage may soon become artifacts of the pre-climate change era.” Viktor Frankl reminds us in “A Man’s Search for Meaning”, that those of us who have a “why” to live can bear almost any “how”. We presently live in a “planetary hospice” and soon will have to live accordingly. Our top problems now are “selfishness, greed, apathy,” and I’d add, short sightedness. Chris Hedges wrote, “Cultures that do not recognize that human life and the world have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, cannibalize themselves until they die.”

Think of websites, apps and Facebook Pages as manipulating you to stay engaged on content there to increase their profitability. Artificial Intelligence will be used to “fortify autocracy and advance the agenda of a collapsing but ultimately coercive agenda.” In a stormy world, stand up and show your soul. “Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times (Clarissa Pinkola Estes)”. In the US we don’t see Left violence, just Right violence and hate. If you ignore your own shadow, you can’t heal yourself; if a country (like the US) ignores its own shadow, the same holds true. Joe Kelly feels suffering humans can more easily be co-opted into extremism. That is the whole book – these two paragraphs of information were all I learned from reading this book.

The most depressing part of this book wasn’t Carolyn’s bleak but necessary message of us racing toward extinction, it was realizing that Carolyn is centrist liberal, and not at all progressive. This book is braindead on the crimes of US foreign policy, Carolyn gives the US zero blame for authoritarianism (clearly supporting dictators and financing Jihad and extremism). The only mentioned recent criminal behavior by any country in this book is by Putin (page 112 - Carolyn does offer a minor nod towards Native American genocide and US slavery on page 121 but pretends only Russia has recently committed crimes). I kept thinking while reading, if only Derrick Jensen wrote this book instead. On page 136, Carolyn laughably says it is “likely” that Putin is going to invade Eastern Europe after Ukraine, a nice Cold War fantasy pulled from her own posterior. She quotes rabidly (and comically) anti-Russian Anne Applebaum on pages 133 and 137. Then, on page 136, Carolyn boldly states Venezuela’s Maduro and not poseur Guaido is one of the “bad guys that appear to be winning.” Carolyn’s views are bizarrely more in line with CIA and Pentagon hardliner talking points and fear monger Hillary Clinton than are they in any way progressive.

Carolyn also wants you to think, COVID vaccines have never hurt anyone, and that only people on the Right wonder about vaccine safety (so RFK Jr and Dr. Mercola don’t exist), and Ukraine is all good while Russia is all bad. If you have any concerns about vaccines, or wonder why vaccines clearly are not being given double-blind placebo testing (the gold standard in science) for safety, Carolyn will label you an anti-intellectual conspiracy theorist, or accuse you of a “contempt for science”. Carolyn will tell you how Anne Applebaum says Russian police “can arm, equip and train the police” in another country, but will never tell you that is exactly what the US did with the School of the Americas. Anne will fearmonger you about Russian troll farms while pretending Israel and the US don’t have any that are even better financed. On page 185, Carolyn says Putin is “obviously hellbent on… installing a puppet regime” in Ukraine. That of course never happened but I can’t imagine Carolyn apologizing for wasting our time through fear mongering. God forbid Carolyn reveal the many puppet regimes installed by the US; apparently only progressives can see the blatant hypocrisy of accusing the other side of doing what you know full well your own country did far worse.

I’d give this book one star out of five but since Carolyn takes a big risk being realistic about our planet’s future, and few liberals do, I’ll partially overlook her armchair liberal (pretending the exceptionalist US never would commit a single war crime or act of terrorism – only Putin would) ramblings and give the book two stars. Give me a progressive any day over yet another a US liberal who seems happy to live in an exceptionalist rogue state boldly defying international law. I bought a lot of Carolyn Baker books hoping to review them all because she was taking a risk discussing the planet’s real future, now I realize at heart Carolyn is strongly to the right of Democrats Bernie Sanders (who is basically a Eisenhower Republican) Elizabeth Warren, and Tulsi Gabbard. Instead of reading liberal Carolyn, read anything by progressive Derrick Jensen. Derrick takes all the same risks (and goes much further) but without any of Carolyn’s unfortunate mainstream corporate approved fear mongering.

[John Kaufmann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book on the depressing side. The author doesn't wallow in doomerism, and speaks of the importance of coping with the sorrow. However, I didn't find much in the book that looked like practical advice or wisdom that would be useful in helping one cope.