According to the Ecologist’s web editor, something happens every time he publishes a blog by me. He receives a number of emails from readers asking one of two things, or sometimes both. One: if this guy is so depressed about the future of the world, how does he get out of bed in the morning? Two: if this guy is so depressed about the state of the world, what is he doing about it? How can he keep on living his reasonably normal life, in the face of what’s around the corner?

So I’ve been told to come up with an answer. Here’s my attempt.

Firstly – and this is the easy bit – I am not depressed. Curious, I know, this, but true. I am always writing about the inevitability of serious climate change, for example, and of my belief that human civilisation as we currently know it is headed for the ecological rocks sometime soon. Some find this stupendously depressing. Not me. Why? Because I think that human civilisation as we currently know it is not very nice in many, many ways, and that it needs to change. I also think we are incapable of changing it, caught up as we are in a socio-economic system which depends on ecocide to perpetuate itself. Change, I’m afraid, will come out of a crash. Just as 1929 led to the civilising of capitalism for half a century, maybe what climate change is about to do to us will lead to the civilising of, well, civilisation. If not – well, we should have worried about that 100 years ago. The climate horse bolted so long ago that the stable door has fallen off its hinges.

A wider point is perhaps a psychological one. What we really don’t like about the idea of inevitable climate change is the idea that we, humans, are not in control. Even those of us who call ourselves ‘green’ fall for this hubris, talking of the need to ‘manage the environment’ as if it were ours. Well, it ain’t, and having that demonstrated to us cheers me up too. Falling off our perch: it’s all good.

Which brings us to the second question: if I think this is on the horizon, what am I doing living in a pretty ordinary house, married with a new daughter, using a computer, looking pretty ordinary? This one’s tougher. And actually I have an answer. Within a couple of years my family and I plan to leave the city, set ourselves up on a smallholding, possibly build our own house and certainly make our lives a bit more sane and a bit closer to the soil. This is not becasue I think it will save us from eco-doom (though it might make it more bearable). It’s because I want to practice what I preach and – well, because I just want to.

And you know what? the thought of that makes me happy to. Looming apocalypse: it really can be fun.