I know exactly what you mean! I hear colleagues and friends saying they’re jetting off on another long-haul flight, and I bite my lip and keep quiet. In July, I even went off on a short flight myself (if you can’t beat ‘em, etc.), and then live with my own hypocrisy. Meanwhile, the Spanish floods
gnaw away at your consciousness and you harbour secret sympathies with climate protesters, which you never mention to anyone.
I started to eat vegetarian food when I turned 19. For the first 10 years I felt exactly like you described. I was such an inconvenience to everyone. I never preached to anyone but my simple diet preferences triggered people. Then it gradually got better and in the past 6 years it became mainstream to be vegan. Suddenly, people forgot I was vegetarian when they became vegan. They wanted to feel morally superior. It will be the same with the climate. We just need to be patient. But this time, I won’t be silent while I’m waiting.
So glad you brought this up. I’ve suddenly written about climate in my very early stages first novel (eek!). I didn’t mean to, but how can we not! I also agree re the human supremacy of it all. Can’t wait to see what the green book turns into.
This is one topic I've been waiting for you to write about. Now that you've put your rebellious writer hat on, please do continue for as long as you can, holding back only as much as you have to.
Many of us are grieving what we have already collectively lost, but also insult to injury is the chronicle of the loss foretold. Perhaps the shifting baseline makes it abstract to younger writers? Perhaps it's more urgent for them because they have more future left to lose? For myself, I find some days that I am paralysed. I sit sopping wet at unsheltered bus stops and catch colds because I have convinced myself I can live without a car, watch billionaires' spaceships burn more CO2 in seconds than I ever could in lifetimes, consider myself fortunate to be in a position to do both, lose myself scribbling fantasies about direct action and sabotage.
I know exactly what you mean! I hear colleagues and friends saying they’re jetting off on another long-haul flight, and I bite my lip and keep quiet. In July, I even went off on a short flight myself (if you can’t beat ‘em, etc.), and then live with my own hypocrisy. Meanwhile, the Spanish floods
gnaw away at your consciousness and you harbour secret sympathies with climate protesters, which you never mention to anyone.
Want to be optimistic, but hard to be right now.
I started to eat vegetarian food when I turned 19. For the first 10 years I felt exactly like you described. I was such an inconvenience to everyone. I never preached to anyone but my simple diet preferences triggered people. Then it gradually got better and in the past 6 years it became mainstream to be vegan. Suddenly, people forgot I was vegetarian when they became vegan. They wanted to feel morally superior. It will be the same with the climate. We just need to be patient. But this time, I won’t be silent while I’m waiting.
So glad you brought this up. I’ve suddenly written about climate in my very early stages first novel (eek!). I didn’t mean to, but how can we not! I also agree re the human supremacy of it all. Can’t wait to see what the green book turns into.
This is one topic I've been waiting for you to write about. Now that you've put your rebellious writer hat on, please do continue for as long as you can, holding back only as much as you have to.
Many of us are grieving what we have already collectively lost, but also insult to injury is the chronicle of the loss foretold. Perhaps the shifting baseline makes it abstract to younger writers? Perhaps it's more urgent for them because they have more future left to lose? For myself, I find some days that I am paralysed. I sit sopping wet at unsheltered bus stops and catch colds because I have convinced myself I can live without a car, watch billionaires' spaceships burn more CO2 in seconds than I ever could in lifetimes, consider myself fortunate to be in a position to do both, lose myself scribbling fantasies about direct action and sabotage.