Our Climate Conversation

Hope for the Future

The world as we knew it is coming to an end, and it’s up to us how it ends and what comes next. It’s the end of the age of fossil fuel, but if the fossil-fuel corporations have their way the ending will be delayed as long as possible, with as much carbon burned as possible. If the rest of us have our way, we will radically reduce our use of those fuels. We will meet climate change with real change, and defeat the fossil-fuel industry.

As citizens of the Earth, we have a responsibility to participate. As citizens massed together, we have the power to effect change, and it is only on that scale that enough change can happen. Individual choices can slowly scale up, but we’ve run out of time for the slow. It is not the things we refrain from doing, but those things we do passionately, and together, that will count the most. Great movements often begin with people fighting for things that seem all but impossible at the outset

There is a sad failure of imagination at the root of this crisis. An inability to perceive both the terrible and the wonderful. An inability to imagine how all these things are connected, how what we burn in our power plants and car engines pumps out carbon dioxide that goes up into the atmosphere and heats our planet. Some cannot see that the world, which has been so stable for 10,000 years, is now destabilised, and full of new perils and dangerous feedback loops. Others cannot imagine that we can actually do what is necessary – which is nothing less than building a new and better world. This is one of the remarkable things about this crisis: a lot of what we need to give up is poison, destruction, injustice and devastation. The world could be far richer by any measure if we do what this catastrophe demands of us.

To remember that things were different, and how they were changed, is to be equipped to make change – and to be hopeful, because hope lies in the possibility of things being different. Sometimes it helps to understand that this very moment is astonishing. Early in this century, we had no adequate alternative to fossil fuel. Wind and solar were relatively expensive and inefficient, and battery technology was still in its infancy. The most unnoticed revolution of our era is an energy revolution: solar and wind costs have plummeted as new, more efficient designs have been invented, and they are now widely considered to be more than adequate to power our future.

In 50 years, the moon will rise, and be beautiful, and shine its silvery light across the sea, even if the coastline isn’t where it used to be. The light on the mountains, and the way every raindrop on a blade of grass sparkles with light will still be beautiful.