Kissing ice, journeys inside and outside of myself, joy on the precipice

Or, studying Philosophy leads to entangled thinking!

Dear friends,

We were reminded of the precipice we teeter on earlier this month with the final instalment of the IPCC’s sixth cycle of reporting. The science once again affirms how far humanity is from keeping global warming within a 1.5°C limit, a limit that is already the best case in a long list of undesirable scenarios.

The rolling out of the IPCC reporting has started to feel like a police line up of climate criminals where all are guilty: as we judge and pick out who to blame, we have these jarring moments where we see ourselves looking back at us. The most frustrating thing by far to me is that we already have many of the solutions we need to solve the problem of the climate crisis: end fossil fuel use; move to green energy sources; support communities to build their resilience against climate shocks… We’ve known all of these things for a long time. We’ve known with great clarity for at least three decades. We’ve had global consensus on what needs to be done since 2015. We just need to do it! A newsletter I follow here on Substack, Gen Dread, has posted an excellent little piece on the need to stop, pause and hold space for the feelings that naturally emerge after reading the IPCC report. They also acknowledge the alarmingly small window of media time that was given to this heart-shattering news.

Very few friends of mine outside the ‘climate space’* even noticed the release of the IPCC report. Those who did came to me with one question, a question I am becoming increasingly familiar with through my work and PhD studies: “This is all so awful, what gives you hope?”

I shall be picking up on this theme of ‘hope’ in this newsletter: explaining why I think asking about hope is the wrong question, and sometimes the worst question, to ask a youth climate justice activist; detailing some of my own journey peeling back neurotypical masks to understand my own hope paradigm; sharing some reflections on my recent trip to Antarctica.

*I hate the term ‘climate space’, we are all in a climate space after all! I can’t think of a better way of putting it though!

What is the worst question to ask a youth climate justice activist?

I will start by reminding you all that while I am happy to label myself a climate justice activist that I am most definitely not ‘youth’ anymore. I am however in a job where I regularly get to hear young climate justice activists being asked questions by the media, by world leaders, by other activists. One of the most frequently asked questions, often asked at the very end of an interview or intervention is:

“So tell me, in spite of all of this [climate breakdown, misery and frustrating inaction by world leaders and businesses alike], what is it that gives you hope as a young person?”

It is uncomfortable to me that this question is asked. Not because I do not believe in hope - the opposite is true - but because the question is always asked as if the answer is going to be a silver bullet cure for all that ails us, or worse, that hope will be served up as a palette cleanser to wash away the foul taste of climate inaction so we can all forget about it and go home happy. Furthermore, while older figures in the spotlight are asked this question, it is the way it is handed down from microphoned platforms of power as a burden on young shoulders. In 2019, Greta Thunberg famously said, “I don’t want your hope”: the problem is now that hope isn’t even an offer on the table from world leaders, they are going to young people trying to find some.

Last week I was privileged to get to spend some time in conversation with climate justice activist and movement building spokesperson Mitzi Jonelle Tan. Aside from me learning all about the incredible work she does with YACAP in the Philippines we spoke about the problem with the ‘hope question’. In her own life Mitzi has redefined the question. Instead of asking herself where she finds hope, she tries to ensure she spends time creating moments of joy. We both agreed that it is in the moments of joy, some of which will seem very irreverent or frivolous when spoken out loud, that we remember what it is to be human and what it is we are fighting for in the first place.

I was lucky to spend time with Mitzi as she was in London doing some incredible work with the Natural History Museum. Here is a video of a talk she gave on her life as a young climate justice activist. While the title of the series run by the Natural History Museum seems a little ironic based on everything I have just said, I believe that when we think of all of us being part of one generation with an opportunity to turn the tide on the climate crisis, then maybe hope really does persist!

I am not sure yet what the best answer would be to the dreaded hope question. If anyone works it out let me know. In the meantime, I am sticking with finding joy!

Glaciers as kin and the visibility of harm

In my studies I have been thinking a lot about how we define and label nature as ‘other’. I have been challenging myself to get a little uncomfortable with these concepts to shift my own thinking and have been trying to consider all that is not human from the ‘more than human' perspective. I have been asking myself repeatedly, ‘what if this flower/penguin/rock/river/iceberg' was to me as kin?’

Image: Antarctic Peninsular, Antarctica

Earlier thix month I had the utter privilege of spending a short time in Antarctica. There is much I am sure I will say when I have had time to process it, today is not that day. However, I wanted to highlight the gauntlet of paradoxes this trip has unleashed in me: awe and wonder against despair and despondency; love and loss; birthing a new world in my mind while grieving one I didn’t even know existed; and yes, I have been wrangling with personal hope versus a personal urge to quit.

I had expected Antarctica to teach me many lessons about the climate crisis. I think in hindsight I was looking at it all from a very cerebral estimation of what knowledge I might garner. What I had not expected was the damage we have done to this beautiful place to be so stark, so obvious. A place where no human is indigenous, one of the most precious habitats on our planet, Antartica felt full of life, but in the way only a hurting animal does: You are made aware of the vitality because of the thrashing and shouts of pain. My kin and yours, the glaciers, are unhealthy: they groan and sigh and they crumble before our very eyes. The warming in Antarctica is occurring with at least four times the pace it is anywhere else, providing a dreadful foreshadowing of what may be to come elsewhere. I did not realise the changes caused by humans would be so horribly tangible in the way that they were in Antarctica. Within an hour or two I was both drawing in breath at the beauty of the landscape but then breathing it out with a great sadness as that beauty is being spoilt.

A recent film released ahead of COP27 sums up this situation better than I can. I highly recommend watching this short video created by Earthrise, Reboot the Future and The Harmony Project. As much as we are the wild, and we are nature, we are all Antarctica too. The hope for Antarctica is the same hope we all need: a gritty, determined hope that will scrap and fight for the survival of not just people, but those beings that are more than human too.

The slow unpeeling of my neurodivergent self at the right time

I want to finish with a brief reflection on my journey into my PhD starting at the same time as my journey into understanding my own neurodivergent mind and womanhood. I am Dyspraxic (diagnosed), have ADHD (undiagnosed, but not a doubt in my mind), and am possibly also Autistic (assessment pending). As I begin to academically explore the climate crisis and the way intergenerational, intersectional solutions might play a role in tackling it, I have begun to question my own place in all of this. In short, I am learning to embrace the kind of thinking that always appealed to me but that I quashed for years. I was told multiple times over the years that I was being weird, or disruptive, or that I was ‘too much’ and so are the things I say and obsess over. Maybe I am, maybe they are, but I want to at least know I tried in the midst of all the messiness of the climate crisis. And I want to know I tried as myself with all my own flaws and talents, not as a carbon copy of what I think I should be.

In my intergenerational work in the climate space I find a lot more acceptance of all of the above amongst younger peers which I embrace wholeheartedly. I am learning so much from them.

So, this March, I raise a toast to glaciers; I raise a toast to joy and unmasking; and I raise a glass to hope, but only the kind born out of action.

Love to you all and thanks to anyone who made it this far in reading this somewhat themeless ramble of a post for March.

Laura