Climate reality is in black and white, the psychology of it not quite.
With motherhood, my climate emotions took a new shade of real.
January 2023. The convergence of three events put the way I feel and how others might feel about climate change in perspective: Floods in Los Angeles. Cauliflowers from the farmers market. And my daughter’s first-year checkup.
But first, let me rewind to 2020.
Early days of the pandemic, when everyone was rising to panic and anxiety, I actually felt borderline joyous. Yea sure pregnancy hormones must have contributed to it. But considering the stakes I was basically chill about the whole thing. The entire Planet getting to my level of anxiety made me feel normal, no longer isolated in my worries.
Let me rewind further.
The isolation, the hopelessness stemmed from this thought: they don’t care. I used to become outraged by the lack of heightened emotion in others about climate change. My inner voice kept repeating. They don’t care. How did I get there? Five plus years of environmental campaigning, which started with much rigor and enthusiasm until depletion set in. Seeing the vicious circle of campaigning for the same issues, over and over again, wait I thought we had already saved the Arctic, wait I thought Coca-Cola…
