At times, settled science can feel like anything but. Some of the loudest opposition is often heard as society reaches a tipping point. Nowhere is this more true than the pernicious denial of human-driven climate change. Many have offered reasons as to why some folks choose to dismiss or flat out ignore the scientific consensus on climate change. Whether poor messaging, scientific illiteracy, or even just “trolling the libs,” conventional attempts to understand the opposition offer little common ground for discourse. Which is why I would like to consider our place within the ecological crisis from a slightly different angle. An angle I think many of us can all relate to on some level. That is, an innate discomfort with absolute certainty.

As much as we crave certainty, its value is intrinsically related to uncertainty. And when uncertainty wanes, futility rises. When so much of the discussion surrounding climate change is one of world’s end, the game can start to feel pretty rigged and the future fucked. So it’s understandable why some might find any action futile. No one wants to play a rigged game. If the future is hopeless, why wouldn't we ride this thing till the wheels come off? But what if we changed the parameters of the game? What if we told a new story? One that compelled us as a species to widen our aperture of uncertainty. A new story that views the ecological crisis not as the threat to a way or life, but as an invitation for humanity to join the species and systems engaged in a timeline well beyond our own. What I like to call, deep time.

The human lifespan of roughly 80 years is paltry compared to much of the natural world. Which means, for many of us, it is incredibly difficult to extrapolate the downstream impacts of our individual actions on entire systems—let alone the impact of those same actions magnified by the millions, if not billions more. Processes like the gradual coming and going of species, ecosystems shifting northward/southward, or the undulating of sea levels over time, tend to play out in deep time, nearly imperceptible to a single human life. And yet, we’re starting to witness these trends within a single generation. Take sea level rise. According to NOAA, data available since 1880 shows “about a third of that [sea level rise] coming in just the last two and a half decades.” And the trend is worsening.

Perhaps the crowning expression of evolution, humanity finds itself at a crossroads. To some, it seems we have lost our sense of place, as if we’ve outgrown our home planet. Our potential for impact has far exceeded what most of us can conceive.

Many indigenous peoples have built elaborate cultures on a sincere reverence for the rhythms of the natural world. While indigenous cultures offer perspective on how to live with an intrinsic concept of deep time, more importantly they highlight the challenges of balancing the needs of the now with considerations for future generations—let alone six or seven down the line. Large as many of these cultures were and some still are, integrating similar values as a part of the global community is a daunting task.

During an appearance on the For The Wild podcast, Detroit-based climate fiction author, Adrienne Maree Brown, offered an avenue I like. Appealing to another characteristic innate to the human experience, Brown places her faith in humanity’s capacity for self-awareness. If we choose to integrate evolving climate science with the conceptual self-awareness of deep time offers, we can redefine the timeline humanity will live on for generations to come.