How a medieval poet leads the way from climate hell to paradise on Earth
These days, I often think of Dante. Like him, in the beginning of his Divina Commedia, I feel lost.
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita /mi ritrovai per una selva oscura/ ché la diritta via era smarrita.
In the middle of the journey of our lives/ I found myself in a dark wood/ for the right way was lost.
Dante Alighieri wrote these lines, but they haven’t lost their impact. The poem about Dante’s descent to hell and his way up to Paradise addresses our modern struggles with poignancy, as if we didn’t live in a different era, historically and even geologically. But human nature doesn’t change. We are still stuck in a dark wood although Dante told us exactly how to get to Paradise.
The dark wood, of course, is an allegory: it’s hopelessness. In Dante’s case, it was exile. Dispossessed and sentenced to death, he was hopeless to ever return to his native Florence. He died a refugee.
In my case, it’s hopelessness regarding the destruction of our ecosystem. I don’t suffer from climate anxiety. I read the News. And they are News from hell.
For example: I just learned on Euronews that Europe settled a new record of wildfires this year. The wildfires, resulting from the multiple heatwaves and draughts this summer, burned down more than 700,000 hectares and robbed tens of thousands of their homes.
“The pain was bursting from their eyes;
their hands went scurrying up and down to give protection
here from the flames, there from the burning sands
(Inferno XVII)
Summer is over now, but the heatwaves continue in the Eastern Mediterranean, in case I should want to leave for a quick late summer holiday, as an English news outlet reminded me. They omitted the news of the Algeria wildfires, though, that killed 38.
“There are souls concealed within these moving fires.” Inferno xvi
For the rest of Europe, the draught has long given way to torrential rains and flash floods. Eleven drowned as towns and villages were washed away in Northern Italy last month.
… heavy
Rain which goes on forever, coldly cursed,
Whose nature and whose volume never vary.
Huge hail, with water of a filthy texture
And snow comes pouring down through murky air-
The earth stinking that receives this mixture. (Inferno VI)
You surely heard of the flood in Pakistan that drowned 1678, injured an additional 12,860, and turned 546,288 into refugees. But did you hear of the one that killed 435 in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, this year, let alone the flash flood of Gambia, which killed only eleven, but half of them children?
beneath the slimy top are sighing souls
who make these waters bubble at the surface. (Inferno VII)
In Dante’s inferno, the apocalyptic scenery is not peopled with innocent bystanders or children, but with unrepentant sinners. The rains and fires, the floods and draughts are punishment, specific torments that reflect the sins committed on Earth. Dante was meticulous and creative in assigning fitting punishment for each evildoer. The gluttonous, for example, got to eternally drown in mud – eat dirt, in other words – while those who had committed violence against God and nature (inseparable in the medieval view of the world) were eternally consumed by fires. Others drowned, got stung by insects, bitten by worms, tossed around by storms, or slowly devoured by wild dogs. Dante’s Inferno was nature turned against humanity. But he hadn’t dreamed up these images. He had lived through them.
DANTEAN ANOMALIES
Raising a whirling storm that turns itself
forever through that air of endless black,
like grains of sand swirling when a whirlwind blows. (Inferno III)
In Dante’s lifetime (1256-1321) Europe knew a period of extreme weather events. The so-called Medieval Climate Optimum – a prolonged stretch of remarkably high temperatures that were far from optimal – culminated in a multi-seasonal drought in Italy that lasted almost 2 years, (from 1302 to 1304). The heat was abruptly replaced in 1315 by a period of unexpected cold and bad weather. The sun, scorching until then, now remained hidden behind dark clouds, and the lack of light made the wheat feeble and the bread unnourishing. Long awaited rains came gushing down in violent torrents that flooded Europe and washed away the soil. Fields were guttered and uncultivatable, and the resulting famines and malnutrition led to lethal intestinal diseases. Domestic animals came down with anthrax and foot-and-mouth disease. As food prices soared, so did violence and crime. Riots erupted on every corner. The Dantean Anomalies, a term coined by the late weather Historian Neville Brown, led straight into the Little Ice Age, a period of extremely cold and long winters. It lasted from the 14th to the 18th century. From a meteorological point of view, it was but a little climate change. Unlike the one we’re facing now.
While climate historians still discuss what caused the Dantean Anomalies, there is certainty about what caused our present climate to derail: The heating of our atmosphere through a sudden (in geological terms) increase in greenhouse gases, most notably CO2. The causality between CO2 levels and temperature was first scientifically proven in 1856 by the American scientist Eunice Foote. Alas, her findings remained neglected and for more than a century greenhouse gases were unabashedly pumped into the air: by burning of fossil fuels, largescale farming and livestock. In 2007 scientific consensus was reached that global heating was in fact manmade and the term Anthropocene was coined. Greenhouse gases are still pumped unabashedly into the atmosphere. Why I like to call our era the Misanthropocene.
INFERNO REVISITED
In his book Hothouse Earth emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards Bill McGuire chronicles the current climate collapse in Dantean detail: Backed by hard facts he elucidates the rains and droughts, the storms, the earthquakes and tsunamis (caused be the thawing of permafrost); the desertification of entire regions and ensuing mass exodus; the famines and the new and returning diseases (due to heightened virus and bacteria activity); and last but not least the climate wars and refugees. The book is not in rhyme, but it reads like Dante’s Inferno.
On 29 June 2021, the unassuming Canadian village of Lytton, in southern British Columbia, registered an astonishing temperature of 49.6C, beating the previous record for highest temperature ever recorded in the country by the huge margin of almost 5C. It was also the highest temperature ever recorded north of the 50th parallel, and hotter than anything ever experienced in Europe or South America. Then following day, the village was gone, wiped from the face of the Earth by one of the many wildfires triggered by the searing temperatures. (Hothouse Earth, Bill McGuire, p33)
Climate Justice
I learned from McGuire’s book that we are all going to hell, some screaming in panic, some unaware, some denying, and some of us are already there. It is indeed outrageous that we earthlings are all punished and tormented, but, unlike Dante’s unrepentant sinners, not in kind and degree. I, unassuming as I am, can’t get over the fact that most of my first world friends keep jetting around the world, eating red meat and shopping fast fashion while I do my utmost to reduce my carbon footprint. I don’t own a car, I take the train not the plane, I live in an apartment building, I limited my pension funds to green energy and haven’t even seen a bloody steak in years. Nevertheless I am enmeshed in energy-dense Western lifestyle and there are millions on this planet who out of sheer economic impotence have sinned to a much lesser degree than I have: the global South, the economically underprivileged. Those living shantytowns that lack electricity and unpaved streets are the ones receiving the direst torment already. Maybe that’s what makes reading Dante so soothing in times of climate collapse. That there will be justice in the afterlife.
The Root of All Evil
In medieval times there was little discussion about what caused the horrific weather events and the crop failures. (God’s punishment for immoral behaviour). For Dante, the reasons why people went astray from the right path was simple: the accumulation of wealth. Greed, (he wrote in his Convivio) creates a vicious circle whereby it can never end but only continually grow.
O Greed, so quick to plunge the human race
Into your depths that no man has the strength
To keep his head above your raging waters. (Paradiso XVII)
In the late 13th century, a profound change happened in the societies of the many city states in Italy. Early (pre)democratic constitutions had strengthened a new middle class – the merchants and guilds – at the expense of the aristocracy. As feudalism was abolished and as humanism spread, enforcing science and education, living conditions improved for the entire population. Indeed, the climate crisis was better handled by the Italian city states, who erected granaries and infrastructure for food imports, than by the Northern European feudal lords who tolerated outrageous death tolls. However, this development came at a price: capitalism.
The first bankers – moneylenders who invested in textile industry and international trade – soon attained uncontrollable wealth and power. But usury, the financial income not through work but through interest, was regarded a sin and Dante threw usurers into hell.
From Art and Nature man was meant to take
his daily bread to live—if you recall
the book of Genesis near the beginning;
but the usurer, adopting other means,
scorns Nature in herself and in her pupil,
Art—he invests his hope in something else. (Inferno XI)
Around the same time, the world’s first factory was set up in Venice. In the arsenale 16,000 workers manufactured through division of labour one-hundred ships per month. Dante, who had visited Venice, gave a detailed description of the arsenale in his Inferno: it was the dark and vaporous setting where the grafters and barristers – the corrupt politicians and lawyers – came to suffer.
And rightly so. Industrialisation is the root of climate collapse. Bill McGuire pinpoints the year 1771 as a starting point, when in England the Cromford mill introduced the mass manufacturing of textiles. Today the mill is a UNESCO world heritage site, but its true legacy was the first use of carbon-steam-powered engines. From 1771 on, CO2 levels in our atmosphere have been rising continually.
As the last pre-industrial year, 1771 serves as a reference point for present CO2 measurements. 250 years ago, CO2 was at 270 ppm (particles per million), the same as in Dante’s time, and the same it had been for the previous 10,000 years. For millions of years, CO2 levels had never exceeded 300 ppm. We are currently at 420ppm.
Sweet Revenge
If fossil fuels are the root of all evil, then those cashing in on it should pay the prize. Dante would send Gazprom, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Qatar Energy, Saudi Aramco, TotalEnergies, Petrobras, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and CNOOC, their executives, their shareholders and clients, to hell. He would assign them bespoke tortures according to their prevailing sin. The greedy will get to eternally fight each other by rolling great weights towards each other, like bellicose Sisyphuses. The lazy (car drivers) will be left gurgling underneath the surface of the river Styx, the vain (SUV-drivers) forced to lie in a vile slush of never-ending icy rain. Those found guilty of corruption (lobbyists) or destruction (contractors) will find themselves sunken into a river of boiling blood and fire. Worst off are the traitors (politicians), who betrayed their fellow earthlings (violence against kindred and country) by jeopardizing their lives and futures. They will be frozen to their necks in an icy lake. Only us morally superior vegan pedestrians will go straight to paradise. Only we won’t, at least not according to Dante.
Do the Right Thing
For Dante it doesn’t suffice to only disapprove of something. To get to paradise, it takes commitment and sacrifice. Those who live without a stain, but without commitment either, those who remain neutral; those who don’t take up every opportunity to fight for the good for all, those who won neither praise nor blame he relegates to the antechamber of hell, the vestibule. There, they are forced to run after an empty banner while being stung by angry wasps and hornets.
Dante didn’t believe in fate or divine intervention, but in personal choice and ultimate responsibility. Those in charge are responsible to act as moral role models, for if they don’t live up to high moral standards, the population would inevitably adopt their corrupt ways. Accordingly, he condemned three Popes to the lowest ranks of hell (frozen in the icy lake) and various contemporary and historical political leaders, who should have guaranteed peace and stability.
However, their short coming is not an excuse, neither for personal wrongdoing nor for lack of action. Maybe the world’s first existentialist, Dante focused on choice as the defining element of human existence. Everything we do in life we do by choice, he believed, as well as everything we don’t. No one can simply wait for the world, or the system, to change.
“I had not thought death had undone so many.” Dante famously said upon entering the vestibule. It is the most crowded place of all in hell. Back in Florence, he had noticed that the increasing prosperity and wealth of the citizens had led to a general loss of interest in politics and the issues of their time. He described it as a lethargy that lulled to sleep the divine element in every person.
In the 21st century, I liken those lethargic Florentines to the majority among us who spend their lives transfixed before the screens of their TVs or cell phones, stealing away into a world that includes but does not concern them. A comfortable passivity has taken hold, a consumer’s attitude to every aspect of life: Politics are delivered at the doorstep, like shiny new sneakers, or double cheese pizza, quenching but a personal desire. Consumerism, the love child of capitalism and mass production, has turned humanity into bystanders, passengers on the journey of their life, destined to go to the vestibule. However, the vestibule is the worst place of all as it means to be stuck in agony forever with no way out. Even hell offers an exit route. It’s called Purgatory.
In the Divina Commedia, Purgatory is a steep mountain that leads to Paradise. This too is an allegory. It stands for repentance and purging. It’s painful, but hopeful. Dante named the overcoming of this mountain transumare, a word he created, meaning to overcome oneself, one’s fears and anxieties, and most importantly one’s egoism: the endeavour to contain oneself for the benefit of all. The way to heaven was to do good by overcoming oneself.
In the year 2022 and in the words of Bill McGuire, this good means good for the climate. Only a radical and imminent change in our economic system and the implementation of climate policies can prevent climate collapse and therefor guarantee the livelihood of all. In this case, overcoming oneself means to examine all our actions regarding their impact on our climate: from the perspective of a consumer, the purchase decision from groceries to holiday destinations, from transportation to pension funds. But most importantly, from a responsible citizen’s: to invest in civil action and demand that climate saving economic policies are implemented. In general, it means that both as individuals and a society we must waver our right to “be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground,” as the bible had ordered us. We have to overcome the consumer in us. If this sounds harsh, or impossible, Dante says, rejoice.
The Commedia teaches us that only from rock bottom we will bounce up. Only hell can shake us from lethargy. In hell we meet our essential selves, we find courage out of fear, and hope out of hopelessness, and strength out of desperation.
The Dante Code
Despite all, the way to Paradise turns out to be simple. When Dante was nine years old, in 1264, he saw a girl, Beatrice, and fell in love with her. His love was unrequited. She not once talked to him and died young. But he remained devoted to her all his life. His was true love, he thought, a love that couldn’t possess or be possessed, that could not consume or be consumed. When later in life Dante underwent an existential crisis, love came to his rescue. Beatrice sent him the poet Vergil to lead him through hell and reach paradise.
Dante’s Paradise is a colourful place, of a colour which paints clouds at break of day and in the evening when they face the sun, where birds flock in celebration of their food and a breeze purifies the air, and a hillside rich in grass and flowers looks down into a lake as if it were admiring the reflection of its blooming wealth.
In other words, it is a place where nature embraces humanity. It resembles the place Bill McGuire thinks we can still reach, in a joint effort and in solidarity: a place where trees are planted, and public transport is powered by wind and solar, and with traffic-free avenues for people to get together and rejoice.
Of course, Beatrice and Vergil were allegories, what else? Beatrice stood for love and Vergil for rationality. We can safely sum up the divine Comedy in one catchy slogan: “Be rational and let love be your guide”. Or as Bill McGuire put it more soberly: the measure of society must be how well it cares for the planet and all life thereon.
Dante called Paradise eternal spring, but it’s surprisingly hot there. It’s the heat that emanates from the souls in heaven as they burn with love for each other. This isn’t only a sublime image of all-embracing love. The heat that scorched the sinners in hell, gently envelopes those who have overcome their greed and lethargy, and most importantly the disastrous divide between nature and culture which has governed our thinking and had us treat nature as a commodity.
If paradise is an allegory for humanity inseparable from nature, and nature is love, then we know exactly what to do. We must do whatever it takes to get back the ecosystem that bore us, the Holocene, which ended just a few decades ago. Nothing, compared to 700 years since Dante’s death, let alone the beginning of our planet.
On his way through the Paradiso, Dante stops to watch a hive of bees as they descend on a flower with precious petals. He sees they are angels.
Their Faces showed the glow of living flame
Their wings of gold, and all the rest of them
Whiter than any snow that falls on earth
As they entered the flower, tier to tier,
Each spread the peace and ardour of their love (Paradiso XXXI)