Has climate change finally freaked you out?

This was the week I realised that climate change is real. While you roll your eyes at my unbelievable stupidity up until now, obviously I understood that it was real before. I knew the world was heating up, I remembered colder winters and cooler summers. I hid inside when we had those 40 degree days back in 2022. I darkly wondered if my nephew would ever see snow in real life. But it all felt like the really bad stuff would happen down the line. This week I really understood it was now. 

I break here to say that when people read about climate change, this is normally where they stop reading. Second paragraph, move on. Too depressing or too boring. When I worked at a newspaper, the climate coverage consistently got the lowest views. Journalists and activists have constantly tried to figure out ways to engage people with the facts - you’ll see books with flames on the front or news articles showing lone polar bears on melting ice caps, but it still doesn’t get mass attention. 

Partly that’s because it’s not in the best interests of any large corporation or rich mogul to freak out the public with constant news about our dying planet. The right wing tabloids spent most of last week writing pieces which presented the oven-like heat we were experiencing as some sort of lucky bonus. “Summer scorcher,” “fun in the sun,” “it ain’t half hot, mum” a kind of cheery, normalising tone. Understandable. What if you didn’t want to buy the many unethical products they advertise or sell? What if you decided that capitalism couldn’t continue if we want to live in a healthy world? But it’s clearly also because reading about what’s happening is fucking terrifying and what can you, as one person, do? It’s so much easier not to look. I’ve spent the last decade hoping it’s all just going to go away, that the people in charge are sorting it out (despite knowing this is obviously nonsense). This week made it impossible to keep burying my head in the sand. 

I am responsible for climate change with my years of thoughtless consumption and carefree travel. I’ve lived how I’ve wanted and told myself that being a vegetarian, recycling & driving an electric car mean I’m better than most. I try not to buy stuff covered in plastic and then blithely drink Diet Coke from a plastic bottle. Amazing what we can ignore when we have privilege. I’ve felt guilty almost daily in recent years, but also a degree of nihilism. Why bother reining my behaviour in if nobody else is? Keep on with my own life, judge those with the least power. How mad to frown upon those ordering weekly Shein landfill hauls when the world’s wealthiest 10% caused ⅔ of climate change since 1990. 

What would we need to reverse or contain climate change? Stop all fossil fuel extraction and use, ban private jets and deforestation, prevent endless crap from ending up in landfill. Is any of this going to happen without some hideous mass tragedy happening? No. And even more grimly, it’ll have to be a mass tragedy in a western country for the powers that be to care. The most effective thing I can think of - apart from my own personal responsibility - is to write to my MP and join a climate change protest. Sounds kind of pathetic right? Those in charge could’ve taken drastic action a hundred times over by now and haven’t. What’s my letter going to change? That’s where the helplessness comes from. But that feeling can’t be my excuse to do nothing. 

How many people in the UK are fully aware of how climate change is going to impact them? Fifteen years ago, global warming (these terms are always so woefully benign) was bandied about a fair amount, but a mixture of complacency and a stellar effort by the deniers seemed to force it to fade away. You don’t hear much about deniers these days, but you also don’t hear much true concern. Groups like Extinction Rebellion are seen as a nuisance in the main (and their members jailed by governments who profess to be doing something about the catastrophe unfolding) despite a pretty common acceptance that there’s something happening with the weather. “Oh it’s climate change isn’t it?” You might get a nod and a grimace in response, but the most common refrain I heard this week was still one which made the raging temperatures sound like a normal heatwave. And yet at the same time, I saw a lot of posts about how anxious people were feeling in the heat, the connection not quite made. As with most bad things, climate change will disproportionately affect the vulnerable in society. How do we ring the alarm so that everyone hears it? 

There’s a very real grief about it all, one I can’t shake this week. And that’s complicated for me because I’m all too aware that OCD types seek a catastrophic thought and run with it. I’ve been assailed with mental images of dead animals and roaring fires and panicked people all week, which is probably a totally sane response to the facts about climate change but is clearly OCD at the same time. There are things being done, and amazing people banging the drum. That shouldn’t be ignored in favour of mass gloom or an unfettered obsessional spiral like the one I am currently riding.