Eco-anxiety stems from a sense of hopelessness and the realisation that there are limits to how much agency we have as individuals to affect global change. But we are not hopeless, far from it. The future is still unwritten; we cannot know what it holds, but we will make it first in our minds, in our imaginations…. In this time of multiple global crises, we need leadership with vision to help us forge a path towards a sustainable future – yet we have the lowest calibre of leaders right now
Is there any hope? Are we all doomed? I write books about the climate crisis, so I am often asked fearful questions like these. But I’m being asked them more and more often and by younger people, an alarming trend not unconnected to the number of scientific reports detailing how humans are pushing the Earth’s systems to dangerous extremes.
I write about planetary-scale ecosystem destruction but, importantly, I also focus on our species’ extraordinary capacity to adapt; this has been key to our success in the past – and it is key to surviving our future. There are radical, yet pragmatic, solutions to our crises. But fear of what will happen if we don’t act is imprisoning people in a mindset that makes alternatives seem unthinkable. I am frequently told my solutions are unrealistic and will never happen; that people would rather fight each other in wars than adapt to share food and land, for instance. We make our own future, even if it’s hard to see the process. So let me try to make the case for hope….
Honest Government Advertisement: Net Zero by 2050
Kiss the Ground Film Trailer (2020) / What’s the big deal about soil? / Living Soil Film
After the truth-shower 