Letter from Costa Rica on Climate Change
“Getting away” might be getting into your life
Today, like every day here, we awaken at 5 AM, the howler monkeys a reliable alarm. They fill the forest with their big, eerie sound—too big for their small bodies, really, but fascinating to unfamiliar ears. It’s like a grounding for the soul every morning. Here, there is no doubt of one’s “connection to nature.” You are in it. It makes you. It heats you up. It drives your diet, your schedule, where you go, and what you do. This is easy to say as a visitor, but it is equally true for the locals. One realizes the natural roots of a siesta culture.
Somehow, this stay is a port on the journey to understand climate change. Costa Rica claims to be a “net zero” country, and it probably is—though I think that has more to do with the lush, undeveloped rainforest than with real policies. Where we are, the country is relatively poor so people ride bikes and scooters on the one road shared with cars and trucks. The smell of exhaust never leaves the road as it hangs in the air. One would hope that net zero might mean massive adoption of non-emitting transportation—bikes or EVs of different kinds. But there are few if any electric scooters or vehicles. Here, as everywhere, everything runs on fossil fuels.
And yet, there is the connection to nature. I feel the groundedness in the place, yet it is foreign enough that I want to avoid the ground. What's there? Long lines of ants, I’ve seen. Cute little frogs. Sharp things. Spiders. The spiders are nuts here. They are all over the place and huge. Their webs are not the soft delicate things at home. They can be like strings that will not break. I looked them up. Some strands are stronger than steel of the same size. There are over 20,000 species of spiders in Costa Rica, some of them quite dangerous. And those webs? They can capture bats and small birds.
The simplicity we experience here is partly because we are not at home. We packed a simple life. A few pairs of washable underwear, sandals, lightweight shirts, and a swimsuit. We have our computers but not our cares or concerns. It is tempting to think this is life, but it really is a vacation, a mini-retirement, a short time away from life as we usually live it.
Or is it a vacation? To vacate is to empty, but this experience fulfills. It is educational. And creative. The carefreeness offers a bubble I can engage or not. We can be in it creatively, or we can fall into it on the beach. Ultimately, we are tourists, even if we want to think of ourselves differently. But the place doesn’t feel like that. There isn’t a single branded business here. No Starbucks. No Holiday Inn. No KFC. It is a small corner of the world where none of that has reached yet. That’s part of what gives the place a sense of connected soul.
I am aware, of course, of the privilege of being here. It is socio-economic for sure, but also a climate-related privilege. As we enjoy the mild warmth away from a very snowy home in Wisconsin, I read that Argentina to our south is sweltering in temperatures 15-18 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, and has been for months. Agricultural production is plummeting in most crops by 20-30%, and that has resulted in a doubling of their inflation rate—from a previously obscene 50% to over 100%. I can’t even imagine living in such an environment. Privilege indeed.
Nonetheless, I think about surviving climate change. Perhaps Central America is insulated from intense heat waves by the proximity of the oceans on both sides—and perhaps not. The UK, after all, had its own serious heatwaves in 2022, and they are an island nation surrounded by the much colder North Atlantic Ocean. Maybe here in Central America, it is the equator in combination with the oceans that protects it. Or, and maybe this is most likely, it is just good luck up to this point in time.
Despite the decent climate here, every afternoon gets hot. At the beach, it is a comfortable mid-80s F. But just across the road, it heats up. In town, it is probably ten degrees hotter. We notice that doing anything after noon gets exhausting from the heat. Sure, we are not acclimated as the locals are, but one starts to think about climate-driven heat waves and how you would handle it. That ten degrees up into the low 90s F makes it nearly impossible to think or work. All you want to do is cool off. But almost no buildings have air conditioning. The sea is the most appealing place to be. It is refreshing, but barely so. The water is probably 80 F.
So the thought experiment goes like this: What would everyone do here if this place had a heat wave like the one that hit Europe in 2022—where temps rose to 120 F? And what if nighttime temps went down to only 100 F? It is hard to imagine, and very sobering to consider.
These are heady, intellectual concerns of our time. They tend to close down the immediacy of the soul experience, and so I experience it here. But isn't this dichotomy, in fact, the predicament of our times? The soul is here in the jungle and the sea. The mind gets caught in those webs of overarching concern, like the spider webs that cross high above the road we walk down every day. In the mix, we try to calm our anxiety, as all people do all around the world. The 1960s picture of the earth as one wasn't enough, as Joseph Campbell had hoped, to unite humanity. Yet without feeling united as such, we share this experience of climate-induced anxiety. Perhaps it binds us together in our humanity. Nature is telling us she is in control, and every day is but a momentary reprieve she provides. Nonetheless, our job is to find that soul and live in it.
Anthony Signorelli
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The Great Mechanism: The Power Behind the Relentless Juggernaut of Western Capitalism
Consent Is Not Enough: What Men Need to Know in a #Metoo World
Call to Liberty: Bridging the Divide Between Liberals and Conservatives
Rooster Crows at Light from the Bombing: Echoes from the Gulf War