on the Philippines. And that wasn’t count-
ing the countless other disasters under-
way in Africa and Latin America that never
made the headlines. Even on our way in,
we couldn’t help but notice that it hardly
seemed like December outside.
I could tell that it felt good to talk like this:
open and honest about the experience of
watching the world fall apart in front of our
eyes. To say our fears out loud and have them,
and ourselves, accepted and understood.
It was almost like I could see the weight
lifting from our shoulders. But as that weight
lifted, it only rose so far. It hung in the air, just
above our heads like a heavy ominous cloud,
until someone finally popped the question
that brought the weight back down on us:
“But what can we, as individuals, do?”
↙
SOMETHING REMARKABLE HAS HAPPENED TO
the climate conversation in the past two
years. It’s finally found its way out of the
academy, oozed out of the Big Green groups
and expert circles, and landed in the streets
and on everyone’s lips. I hear it everywhere:
on the street, in the subway, in the airport,
in the changing room at my yoga studio, in
the checkout line at the grocery store. It’s
not niche anymore. It’s mainstream.
It’s beautiful.
For me, it’s also bewildering. I am what
the meteorologist and journalist Eric
Holthaus calls a “Climate Person”—some-
one whose whole life is bound up in con-
fronting the reality of the climate crisis. I
joined the environmental movement in ear-
nest in 2014, when I began working for one
of the biggest green groups in the country.
About a year ago, I also began speaking out
on my own—in essays, on panels, and in
Twitter rants. This made me not just a Cli-
mate Person but a Public Climate Person.
We Climate People are used to being a
small group. Marked by our intimacy with
one another, our knowing glances across
rooms. We’re used to being mocked and
sidelined as the killjoys, the bummers.
In public places, we intuitively gravitate
toward one another, carving out our own
little corner of the party or our own sliver
of the internet known as #ClimateTwitter,
where we can rant and rave and scream
and grieve together.
But our cover has been blown now, and
the doors of our clubhouse have been
torn off the hinges by hordes and hordes
of brand-new Climate People. If I had to
guess what did it, I’d say it was the 2018
report from the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, which spelled out in
brutal and unequivocal—but most impor-
tantly, honest—terms the consequences of
a runaway addiction to fossil fuels.
Finally, the general public got a glimpse
of what we Climate People stare in the face
every day. Once you see it, as we well know,
you can’t unsee it. And when the shock
finally passes and you find your feet again,
you’re overcome with the urge to do some-
thing—anything—to wash as much blood off
your hands as possible.
Suddenly, Climate People are popular!
Where we used to quietly lament our lack
of dinner party invitations and hold our
own parties in secret, we’re now the belles
of the ball. Before, people rolled their eyes,
smacked their teeth, and backed away when
I mentioned my work. Now they lean in close.
They ask questions and actually listen to my
full, uninterrupted answer—men included!
And no question is more fervent, more
persistent, more desperate than the one
that weighed us all down in December: “But
what can I do?”
There’s probably no question that Climate
People hear more, and fear more, than those
five words. The askers get more and more
frustrated, their newfound sense of urgency
threatening to burn a hole in their throats.
They know it’s about more than recy-
cling, “buying green,” and turning the lights
off when they leave the room. They’ve gotten
the memo that we need structural change in
addition to individual change. They’ve pro-
cessed past the shock. They’re ready to get to
work. Why, they demand to know, can’t I give
a simple answer to such a simple question?
Here’s why: Because if you want a real
answer—one that won’t leave you with tiny
solutions that will ultimately disempower you
and burn you out—you have to understand
that the question is profoundly complicated.↙
BELIEVE ME, I UNDERSTAND WHY THAT QUES-
tion seems so cut-and-dried. But that’s just
an illusion conjured by several fallacies. And
perhaps the first thing a new Climate Per-
son can do is understand them.Let’s start with the first fallacy: that cli-
mate action is an individual thing. Almost
every time I hear people struggle to find their
place in the climate movement, it’s because
they feel unable to do enough to make a dif-
ference. They know that the world needs to
essentially bring fossil fuel production to
a screeching halt, not just now but RIGHT
NOW. And they know that no one action they
take can bring that about. So then what?
Well, what if your power in this fight lies
not in what you can do as an individual
but in your ability to be part of a collec-
tive? What if you broadened your perspec-
tive beyond what you can accomplish alone
and let yourself see what you could do if
you lent your efforts to something bigger?
Yes, it’s true that you can’t solve the climate
crisis alone, but it’s even more true that we
can’t solve it without you. It’s a team sport.
Another fallacy: the expectation that a
single, neat behavior change will be enough.
I’ve done a lot of interviews, sat on a lot of
panels, and I’ve often heard the question
“What can I do?” boiled into an even more
maddeningly and damningly simplistic
form: “What’s the one thing people can do?”
There’s no such thing. I wish there were.
Especially now, at this critical stage, we
have to accept we’re all going to have to
buckle down for the long haul. Respond-
ing to this crisis is going to have to become
part of who we are. All the time. Once you
understand that, you understand that this
isn’t about climate action at all. It’s about
climate commitment. Climate action is
recycling or going vegan. Climate com-
mitment is bigger. It’s a framework. It’s
asking yourself: What can I do next? And
always next.
Then there’s that other alluring fallacy:
the idea that if we do the right thing, we can
put an end to this madness. That there’s a
stop button somewhere.
As the climate scientist and brilliant
writer Kate Marvel puts it, “Climate change
isn’t a cliff we fall off, but a slope we slide
down.” The climate has already changed,
and so what’s been done, sadly, cannot be
undone, at least not in the near future. But
there’s real good to be done by not letting
it get worse. Limiting the damage is good,
noble—valorous even.
By now, you’re probably becoming
either consciously or subconsciously
aware of the heartbreaking truth at the