I talk about climate for a living and it’s been such a relentless month when it comes to that. And I’ve been at a distance from those living through the hurricane in Louisiana and Mississippi, the wildfires in Turkey, the unbreathable air in the northern states, or the climate induced famine in Madagascar.
When the IPCC Report was released the other week, declaring a Code Red for humanity, it was sobering- but not all that surprising to those who’ve been working on climate solutions up close for a little while. Working in a solutions-oriented space can be frustrating sometimes, when it feels like people put up so much resistance to change, when it seems like it takes moving mountains to get people to simply enact readily available solutions.
But, climate anxiety and a belief and passion for climate solutions co-exist. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen someone truly engaged in solutions who doesn’t feel both pretty strongly. But when you choose to actually engage the solutions rather than giving into fatalism, you get to be around those people. You get to weather days with hurricanes and scientific reports together, and you also get to be wowed and inspired by their brilliance and grit.
I suppose all this is a long winded way of saying the real treasure is the friends you make along the way, but… y’know.
We’re all living through this crisis, and there’s no way I’d rather face it than leaning into solutions alongside other passionate and engaged people.
