What would Carl Jung have said about climate change? Jung’s fascination with UFOs may point us in the direction of what his perspective might have been on the topic.

The Swiss father of analytical psychology was preoccupied with the phenomena of mass sightings of UFOs in the late 1940s. Unconcerned with whether or not the UFOs themselves were real, Jung was interested in the psychology behind such collective scenarios.

To Jung, the UFOs represented the Self, God, or the Tao. Jung recalled, “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere,” and wondered why these circular, “primordial” images were being projected outwards instead of being embraced within. “The conclusion is something is seen, but one doesn’t know what,” said Jung. He proposed that surrounding such a collective phenomena was “emotional tension having its cause in a situation of collective distress or danger.”

From an analytical perspective, it would seem that the large-scale warming climate is indicative of the psychology of modern humans. The many players in the sociopolitical sphere of the climate scene include passionate protesters, duty-bound scientists, corporate-funded scientists, agenda-driven politicians, apathetic masses, the uninformed, background workers, and passive business-as-usual types.

We can see the changing environment in melting ice, rising sea levels, higher temperatures, and changing ecologies. The movements of these symbols in the current play of modernity is a marriage of comedy and tragedy. Jung said, “The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.” Does our debt begin with an acceptance of the “truth” about climate change? Is there just one objective truth? Even NASA shows hesitation when formally acknowledging climate change in its statement, “Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.”

Very likely?

Despite NASA’s withheld verdict, climate change is undoubtedly growing in our collective consciousness. This is confirmed by the event of the COP21, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change scheduled later in the year in Paris. Coincidentally, on Friday, November 20 a slew of academics, liaisons, and environmentalists will speak in a panel on Loyola’s campus about where Louisiana fits into
climate change.

My interest in climate change grew this semester in the fertile soil of an intro English class themed “Apocalyptic Nature.” I’ve spent hours researching and “getting my panties in a bundle” about climate change. Louisiana is in imminent danger.

In October, Time published a piece “New Orleans and Miami Are Doomed To Be Swallowed by the Sea, Says New Study,” disclosing the findings of Vice President for Sea Level and Climate Impacts at Climate Central, Dr. Benjamin Strauss and two colleagues. Strauss frankly states, “New Orleans is a really sad story [that] is a lot worse looking than Miami.”

Earlier in November, I attended a panel “Dreams and Delusions: What Role Does Imagination Play In Fixing New Orleans’ Problems?” Architects David Waggonner and Ursula McClure, Gulf Future Coalition Coordinator Jayeesha Dutta, and novelist Moira Crone shared their ideas about climate change and New Orleans. Opinions swung from warmly agreeing to politely clashing as the audience’s collective awareness matured and deepened.

Suppose these events do have significance, and these changes will be sweeping Earth’s coastal cities by the end of the century. Could New Orleans be Atlantis in the not too distant future?

In parting, if he was still alive, Carl Jung might have dropped some wisdom nugget to help us make sense of this moment, something like, “It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves,” or “We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses,” or maybe most apropos, “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”