actually emerges as quite simple: Do what
you’re good at. And do your best.
If you’re good at making noise, make all
the noise you can. Go to climate strikes, call
your representatives, organize your neigh-
bors. Vote. Every chance you get. Join some-
thing bigger than yourself because this is so
much bigger than any of us alone. It’s about
all of us, together.
If you’re raising children (and they do not
have to be your children—nieces, nephews,
and play cousins all count!), teach them to
love the earth and to love each other, teach
them the resilience that shows up as empa-
thy. If you’re good at taking care of people,
take care of the legions of weary climate
warriors. If you’re a good cook, cook. Make
it as sustainable as you can within your
means, but more than anything, share it,
build a community around it.
The artists I spoke to in December
lamented the fact that they weren’t engineers
or scientists or some other type of “expert.”
But as I told them, it is not their job to design
the policy plans for rapid decarbonization, to
decide which coal plants to shut down first,
and what exactly to replace them with. We
have people on that. As the writer Toni Cade
Bambara once put it, the role of the artist is
to “make revolution irresistible.”
Severing ties with fossil fuels is nothing
short of a revolution, a rebirth. The truth is
our world was built on fossil fuels. It never
should have happened, but it did. There’s
no reversing it. That’s why we need a whole
new world, and we all, every single one of
us, has a powerful role to play as a midwife
in this rebirth.
Taken through that lens, you begin to see
that you’re not powerless at all. Far from it.
The world is not falling apart in front of our
eyes so much as it is falling into our hands.
What will happen if we’re brave enough to
catch the falling pieces?
That’s why it’s so impossible for any Cli-
mate Person to tell any other Climate Per-
son, new or old, what their own climate
commitment should look like. We don’t
know that special thing that you bring to
the movement—only you know that. And we
can’t wait to see the magic that will happen
now that you’re part of our world.MARY ANNAÏSE HEGLAR (@MaryHeglar)
writes about the intersections of cli-
mate, justice, and emotion.START
core of the climate crisis: It’s so unfair. It
is. That’s probably the simplest thing about
climate change—the injustice. It’s apparent
at the macro and micro scales. The parts
of the world that contributed the least to
the crisis will suffer first and worst. Mere
children have been thrust into positions in
which they have no choice but to fight for
their lives, for their right to see the stable
planet they were taught about in story-
books and science books but have never
seen in real life.
No, it’s not fair.
But now that you’re aware of that truth,
it’s crucial to remember one thing: It’s not
enough to be right. The facts have been on
our side for a very long time, but we’re still
losing. Why? Because this isn’t a spelling
bee or a standardized test. This is a fight
for justice.
The climate crisis is, in more ways than
I can count, the ultimate culmination of
a centuries-long run of exploitation and
extraction, including slavery and colonial-
ism and all of their offshoots. Those hor-
rors were all justified by some measure
of pseudoscience that could have been—
and was—easily disproved. But that wasn’t
enough. So it is with the climate crisis.
The scientists and experts have studied
the problem and the solutions and pre-
sented their findings ad nauseum. But it
wasn’t enough. Because this isn’t just about
science or facts. This is about power. And
it’s going to take an army. That’s where you
come in, new Climate Person.
↙
I KNOW IT MIGHT NOT SOUND LIKE IT, BUT
there’s a lot of good news in there. For one
thing, you don’t have to do this all alone.
In fact, you can’t. Because we’re talking
climate commitment and not a single cli-
mate action, that means you don’t have to
worry about nailing it. This is a practice,
which does away with the need for perfec-
tion. The fact that every fraction of a degree
of warming—Celsius or Fahrenheit—mat-
ters means that you’re never too late or too
small to help.
The right time to start your climate com-
mitment is always right now.
But the question remains. “What can I
do?” Well, now that you understand that
the question is complicated, the answer
Do what you’re good
at. And do your best.
If you’re good at
making noise, make all
the noise you can.