If the world’s on fire, what is there left to do?

If the world is ending, what the f*ck are we doing any of this for? Let’s talk about it.

You’re probably aware the world’s on fire–both metaphorically and literally. And if you’re a human, you’ve also probably got some level of climate anxiety going on inside of you right now.

Me too, though anxiety doesn’t really feel like the right word for it anymore. Perhaps climate angst would better describe my feelings. Climate uncertainty? Climate panic? Whatever term you prefer, my levels of climate-insert-deep-dread-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach-related-word-here are pretty high at the moment. 

When big oil is raking in eye-watering profits, and the world's leading investment firm adds the CEO of an oil giant to its board, it’s pretty impossible to believe how little ol’ me–and little ol’ you–is going to change anything. 

Many questions have been swirling around my mind throughout these feelings, but the most pressing question seems to be “If the world is ending, what the fuck are we doing any of this for?” Well, let’s talk about it.  

The conversations around me over the past year seem to have shifted from climate change being a far-off issue that is going to happen 10, 20, 30 years down the line to something that is happening now. There are scientists who have said that climate change was avoidable if we acted back in the 80s, but now, in their opinion, it’s too late to avoid any of the worst-case scenarios. 

This feels like a big change in the public consciousness, and, when mainstream news is talking about how it might be about time to start reflecting the sun away from the Earth, it feels like we’re playing a whole different ball game. Climate change is no longer something we’re preventing, but something we’re ‘minimising the effects of’. 

In his book I Want A Better Catastrophe, Andrew Boyd writes about how we’re in the ‘decisive decade’ of the climate emergency, if we’re going to fail to stop climate change, how badly we fail at it over the next few crucial years will matter across the entire great cycle of history. He goes on to say: “And even if that problem (climate change) is an “unsolvable” super-wicked problem, we have to at least try to solve it. Because even in failing to solve it, we are doing something essential: blunting its worth impacts and buying us all time.”

So if the world is ending, and we should still be acting on it, what are we, as individuals, to do? 

(I’m going to skip discussing individual action today. There is so much you can do as an individual to reduce your impact on the world, but for the major change we need to see happening, community action is indispensable, and I feel I haven’t discussed it enough yet.) 

We have a mismatch of urgency and inaction in climate change, people are scared and people are angry, we can see this in the Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion protests, but, as usual, government is too slow to respond (most likely because the action we need to halt the changing climate will dismantle the system the governments are built upon, but that's a conversation for another day). But by focusing on community and local level action, we can make more meaningful change by facilitating adaptation to the changing environment. 

One of the most impactful actions you can take is to get into real relationships with real people. People who will be there when the power goes off and when the water stops flowing. As we’ve seen time and time again in emergencies, the cavalry isn’t coming, and we’re going to have to sort ourselves out. As activist adrienne maree brown once said “[D]on’t spend too much of your energy on electoral politics. Whoever gets elected president is still chief of an empire that falling.” Build your own resilience. 

What does this look like in action? I’d like to share three organisations that are facilitating the change.

Transition is a movement of communities coming together to reimagine and rebuild our world. Understanding that a top-down approach is no longer feasible, they have created transition groups across 48 countries that are working for a low-carbon, socially just future with resilient communities, more active participation in society, and caring culture focused on supporting each other. This organisation is using participatory methods to imagine the changes we need, setting up renewable energy projects, re-localising food systems, and creating community and green spaces. 

Civic Square’s Neighbourhood Trade School is another example of community resilience, creating real-world, neighbourhood-scale civic infrastructure for social, ecological, economic, and climate transition. They describe themselves as a “school for transition at the neighbourhood scale to exchange the wisdom of our places and democratise access to the skills we need to design, own and govern the climate transition and retrofit of our homes, streets and neighbourhoods.” 

The Incredible Edible network creates powerful connections through food, in order to lead people to understand that when we act together, each of us is stronger for it. Community is at the very heart of Incredible Edible’s action, they work to show how ordinary people can transform their own landscapes and turn disused plots into abundant sources of healthy food.

The strand of hope that always pulls me back from the depths of my climate doom is the opportunity for us to build a just society, a kind of utopia for all. It’s an opportunity for mass reflection, mass imaginings for a better world. 

I feel we owe it to future generations to make the shitty effects of climate change as least shitty as possible. I think back to all of the activists who have come before me, who have made a better life for me and my loved ones. I want to be able to look back at my life on my deathbed and know that I’ve made life at least slightly better for a group of people, however small or large that group may be. 

I want to be able to look into the eyes of the children born in 2050, 2075, or 2100, and tell them we worked hard, that we imagined a better future, and did everything we could to make it happen. 

“[U]tiopia is not a blueprint, it’s not a step-by-step plan, it’s not even a strategy; it’s an act of imagination and an act of will. So let’s give our imagination some breathing room. What do you really want? What is your utopia?” Andrew Boyd, I Want A Better Catastrophe.

P.S. If you enjoy my writing, you can buy me a coffee to fuel my work.

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How do you stay hopeful in the face of the climate crisis?

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