I feel a powerful tension when I consider the globally critical issue of climate change right now, in 2019. I can think of few issues where human beings hold the fate of so many other human beings in our hands. The only one more immediate, catastrophic, and precarious could be nuclear proliferation, where the actions of so few could so drastically affect the suffering of so many, so quickly. In the case of environmental activism, the changes are longer, slower, of a more epic scale - until, of course, they too become immediate, catastrophic, and impossible to ignore.
We are in this very moment - and perhaps in the moment that has just passed us by - saying goodbye to our chances at keeping something resembling our current way of life. We have missed opportunities to make gradual adjustments and less painful transitions. We have opted out of global agreements and made our collective action problems worse. There is a deep tension at letting go of the familiar and the comfortable, and a wrenching sadness at the suffering we have caused, are causing, and will cause. We are seeing crises of food, water, disasters and conflicts, refugee and migrant movement around the globe, worsened by human-influenced climate change.
Yet at the same time, this painful point comes with an inevitable, creative force behind it. We must say goodbye to our current way of life: we must start a new one. We have missed opportunities for gradual change: we will change anyway. We have struggled with collective action: yet we can never really opt out of being here, on this planet, together, and sharing one other's fate. In letting go of the familiar and comfortable, becoming unmoored, we must trust that we can reach something new. There is no more gentle coaxing, unfortunately; we are facing crises now. Yet as long as there is a "we" to have a perspective, hope is the only one to choose: there is no future for us without it. There is no possible way out of this mess that includes us giving up as step one.
The bad news is, this is the end of civilization as we know it. The good news is, this is the end of civilization as we know it, and I expect the failed selfishness, isolationism, short-term thinking, and callousness that got it to this painful point must go with it.