“I will love with all my heart this beautiful dying world”

When I started writing these columns just over six months ago, my goal was to inform people about the facts of the Climate Crisis – or the Living Crisis, as I prefer to call it – and inspire them to make small but significant changes in lifestyle. in response to this. Partly this is my way of responding to the scary reality of what is happening and partly it is about creating hope.

Hope is often misunderstood. It doesn’t mean crossing your fingers and wishing for the best. It is, as the writer Rebecca Solnit says, “the ax you use to break down the door in an emergency.” Hope, like love, is active and strong, not silent and passive.

But this month, as floodwaters submerge Brazil, as coral bleaches in Australasia and as South Asia suffers from catastrophic heat, a major study by the world’s leading climate scientists has dropped. They are chasing climate records that are being broken by huge margins. They are desperate for our political inaction. And I know how impossible it will be to reverse the damage we’re doing. Their words are devastating. Reading the report, like them, I feel hopeless and broken.

READ MORE: “Going back to living in caves? No need: mankind is smarter than that!’

I realize to what extent even I – who thought I was lucid and realistic – have been living a lie. In the past five years of climate activism, I have invested everything in the belief that the right political action would make things right. Shutting down oil, a just energy transition, restoring nature, better farming and agricultural practices would save us. I don’t think I can believe this anymore.

I have adjusted my whole life around this belief. I did everything I was told to do. I changed my diet, how I travel, how we heat my house. I started conversations, I gave speeches, I made speeches. I broke the law, I got arrested, I went to jail. And I’ve poured so much imagination and optimism and positivity into inviting people to do the same – look, it’s not that big of a sacrifice, it’s not that hard, it makes you feel better, you can have a wonderful life and to act. that this is an emergency. Very few people accepted the invitation.

I realize that most people just don’t want to give up their flights. Or their steaks. They don’t want to fight the system. They don’t want to spend the day in a jail cell, nor do they have to go to court. And most of all, people don’t want to have to face the reality of what’s happening to us. And, well, I’m tired of feeling like I’m doing everything for everyone.

Of course we will break 1.5 degrees. It has practically already happened. At least 2.5 degrees of warming in my children’s lifetime – 50% of scientists think it will be at least 3 degrees. It’s not a future threat: it’s happening now. For us.

Deep pain. Fear. Panic. Worse than the fact that we will die is the fact that we will have to live through the death of everything we know and love. It is a terminal diagnosis.

What do people do when they are given a terminal diagnosis? It focuses on life. About loving. Cherishing every moment of beauty and transcendence that is still there to experience. So I’m slowing down. I focus on loving my children. I pay attention to things and am grateful for them in the moment, whether it’s the peonies about to bloom in my garden or playing with my son and his puppy.

I’m going to stop fighting all the time. I will begin to accept that we cannot – will not – save ourselves. I will do as little harm as possible, but live my life as fully as possible. I will love this beautiful, dying world with all my heart. I’ve done everything else, so maybe this is all that’s left. And perhaps this too is a form of active hope. It’s definitely active love.