Despairing about the climate crisis? Read this

There is so much good stuff in this piece that it’s very hard to summarise, but this interview with scientist Susanne Moser (who has been working on climate change issues since the 80s) really helped me understand that there are different forms of ‘hope’, and that there is still hope when it comes to a world undergoing climate crisis.

“We’re short-sighted human beings on many counts, and yet our species has managed to build cathedrals that took 300 years apiece. So it’s not like we can’t. The future isn’t written yet. It is still open in terms of how it’s going to be shaped.”

I really resonated with her emphasis on being comfortable with uncertainty – of not letting the desire for certainty push us towards either denialism on the one hand (“everything will be fine”) or despair on the other (“doom is unavoidable”). She sees imagining alternative, positive futures as a necessary precondition to creating them: “It is really crucial that we learn to imagine what we could gain. If we can’t imagine it, it’s more difficult to create.”

I especially love how she frames ‘function denial’ as something you need to do this work – to not allow yourself to be paralysed by fear and grief, to understand that some form of denial is necessary, not shameful. We do need to face the truth, and know that things will have to change, but we also need to know that we still have some control over what change we decide to make.