I wrote this about two months before the date of publishing and before the devastating fires across the West Coast of the US, finding out a new coal mine in the UK has been approved and a whole other string of environmental concerns, that recently worsened my eco-anxiety and level of grief. Re-reading it made me realise its value and why it needs to be shared.
This is your reminder that hope takes courage.
I’m writing this from outside my parents’ house in Italy. I’m in the shade, tucked away from the blazing August heat, an army of crickets echoing across the surrounding fields. Just up from my laptop screen, I can see grapes growing from a spiralling vine, flowers neatly lined up in terracotta pots and a sky scattered with feathery clouds.
I’m describing this in detail because I’ve just finished The Future Earth, written by one of my favourite climate writers, Eric Holthaus, and towards the end, it encourages you to dig deeper and tune into your surroundings and how you experience Earth.
It feels as if this book entered my life with perfect timing.
For a while now, through a global pandemic; spending several months in a small studio flat on my own (albeit in a very privileged position of being able to work from home, pandemic or not); not having a hug for over 12 weeks and spending many days of the first couple of weeks curled up in bed emotionally exhausted – I’ve been thinking about the future.
My lived experiences and privileges up until now have given me the opportunity to avoid thinking about the future in great detail. I’ve also never purposefully planned to go to university, work my way up the career ladder or strive towards achieving a certain job title by a certain age like some people may have by the time they’ve entered their twenties.
I’ve grown up in a household that works for themselves and has the ability and flexibility to just see how things go – sure, there may be goals and targets to aim for but I’ve never been pressured into planning out my future in great detail.
The Climate Emergency has given me even more reason to avoid doing so, starting with me letting go of my dream of becoming a fashion designer (you can read my Archive post about this year). I suppose that is the only ever future I’ve clearly envisioned. It’s the only future I’ve scribbled in notebooks for, the only future I’ve mocked-up visuals for and the only future that I’ve previously felt like giving my energy and hopes to.
The uncertainty of such a fragile world which could quite easily feature more pandemics, an increasing number of severe weather events and natural disasters, gives me more reason to let go of planning and being able to answer the questions of, “So, what are your plans? Where do you see yourself in five years?” because the world isn’t making it easy for me to know what the next five years will look like.
Now I’m a self-proclaimed activist, I spend a lot of time thinking about the current state and trajectory that our planet and our lives are heading on. So, ironically, although I don’t spend an awful lot of time thinking about my own personal future – Will I have children? Will I get married? Do I ever want to own a house? Should I be saving for a mortgage just in case? – I do spend a lot of time thinking about the worst-case scenario of our shared, global future.
Except, that time thinking hasn’t been spent scribbling in notebooks or envisioning what it actually might look like. It’s been spent grappling with an increasing amount of anxiety, grief, loss and fear because, for the most part, the future I see and the future I’m preparing for is one that doesn’t have a very happy ending.
I don’t see anything wrong with that. In fact, I believe there is a lot of strength in coming to terms with the negative emotions relating to the Climate Crisis and its causes (because the Climate Crisis is the symptom of many different injustices whether its colonialism, capitalism, racism or sexism) as it helps to make them more real and a justifiable cause for concern for more people.
Joyful photos that were taken on a random beach in Italy, wearing a mixture of second-hand and old clothes.
When you express that seeing an ancient woodland being destroyed causes you great pain and distress, it could trigger a thought pattern in somebody else to question why that might be. When I tell you that driving past the remnants of wildfires in Southern Italy frightens me, I hope that it sets off alarm bells because ultimately, we should be scared.
It is completely natural and very much expected to be experiencing negative, difficult emotions in processing an emergency – just like many of us have over the months of 2020, seeing the death toll from a pandemic increase every day.
As Holthaus says, “For at least the next few decades we will endure a planet that’s growing dangerously hotter every year. Embracing that cruel truth – and not running from it – will allow us to best ensure not only survival but a good life for as many people as possible during this era of fundamental transition.”
(I’ve written on this topic before and you can read it in my Archive)
But equally, I believe there needs to be balance. If all we can see is a possible apocalypse when we close our eyes and imagine the future, then what are we standing up and fighting for? The answer to that question is nuanced, of course. I won’t deny that I am still in a state of preparing for the worst but wanting to do all I can in the meantime.
When people ask me, “Do you think it’s possible?” – the ‘it’ being climate justice or a revolution in how we live – I often say I don’t know because I truly don’t. I believe in the power of people, but I’ve also become increasingly pessimistic in response to seeing a lack of drastic action when we so desperately need it. It wears you down, but I’d hate for it to wear me down so much that I struggle to even imagine a world where it is possible.
Because what’s a better use of energy? Imagining further demise or imagining something better, something that doesn’t even exist yet?
In The Future Earth, Eric Holthaus quotes NASA climate scientist Kate Marvel who said, “Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending.”
Maybe that’s what climate action and imagining a better world is all about. Many of us have concluded that we are headed to – or in many cases, are already experiencing – disaster. So, maybe there won’t ever be a happy ending but gosh, isn’t it brave of us to imagine that there could be? That in the face of all this pain and suffering, we might just pause and think of what things could be?
It’s so much easier to see all the bad stuff and only focus on that, to only be angry, only be sad, only fight against rather than for because then you don’t lose anything else. Then you don’t lose that possibility of what could have been and maybe that’s just too much loss on top of everything else.
“Our future is all about the narrative that you tell yourself. It’s literally how we are unconsciously able to move throughout our day, by trusting that actions we take will lead to specific outcomes. Working for a good future makes that future possible. And working for a good future can’t happen if we don’t believe it’s possible.”
The Future Earth, page 194
I want to start changing the narrative that thinking of a better future isn’t just a form of hopeful naivety. That it is essential – that it is bravery and a sign of your willingness to accept it doesn’t matter if you lose, so long as you tried.
We are in a time where it is no longer acceptable to sit back and do nothing, even if doing something is just talking about it.
Of course, this form of imagining is already essential to the people who are experiencing some of the worsts effects of the Climate Emergency the world has yet to see.
When we talk about the future it’s important to recognise that this isn’t a future problem, whether it’s the 36,000 deaths caused by air pollution in the UK per year, the people fighting to save the Marshall Islands that Eric Holthaus spoke of in his book or whether it’s the Black lives being lost to racism and police brutality (some of the police of which are being funded by the fossil fuel industry), this is all very much happening now and in the present.
For the relatively close future, if we exclude unexpected tragedies and life’s general uncertainties, my future is looking relatively safe but for many it is not. When we move forward in imagining (in whatever way that may be for you), we must keep that at the heart of everything.
Looking back up from my laptop screen and reminding myself of my surroundings, the future I would envision in this precise moment would be a bit like this –
There is no car on the drive and the plot of vegetables my dad’s started growing has taken over the majority of the garden and the plants that grow aren’t just for my parents, they’re for the neighbours, too. The neighbours aren’t just holidaymakers that typically fill the mostly empty surrounding houses during the summer periods – they’re filled with people who need them, no matter where they’ve come from.
I no longer hear any cars on the road in a distance or planes flying up above. I didn’t travel by one either because a slower, more sustainable option is now more accessible. The soundtrack to life is exactly how it should be – animals and nature and people living in harmony and happiness. Instead of planes, we hear only birds.
That’s just a slither of a much bigger picture that I want to make a commitment to start digging into. And just by writing that, I’ve realised that maybe the better world I hope to be possible is a lot simpler and closer in reach than I’d ever thought before.
