Hi,
November 30th will be my last day at The Correspondent. I am so thankful for my year as your Climate correspondent.
My mission during my time here has been to “humanise the climate problem, so we all feel like we’re part of the solution”. I’ll be leaving to continue that work, and to allow more time for my family during the pandemic, and to focus on projects related to my book, THE FUTURE EARTH, which aims to advance a radically hopeful vision about the future and what we can achieve together.
It’s been an incredible honour to be a part of an organisation that explicitly aims to create transformational change in storytelling, and I hope I’ve done a little bit of that while I’ve been here. I’ve learned a lot from my colleagues, from our members, and from the fascinating people I’ve been able to interview from around the world.
Here’s what I think are the most important things I’ve learned as a result of those conversations:
- The climate emergency isn’t the main story, it’s a symptom of the main story. The main story is the struggle for justice in all its forms. Climate change, put simply, is injustice at a planetary scale. This seemingly subtle reframing of the problem changes everything about how people who care about the climate should approach how they look for solutions.
- Climate dystopia is a choice. It’s not inevitable.
- Telling different stories about humanity is probably the best thing we can do to bring about transformational change. That requires listening to voices that have been systematically excluded in the past and being willing to be shaped in unexpected and transformational ways. Each of us is capable of doing that.
If we do all this, the future could be more amazing than our wildest dreams.
The Green New Deal is a political slogan for what Indigenous scholars have known for centuries and what climate scientists have known for at least my entire lifetime: we are all part of a living planet, an ecosystem that sustains us and that we belong to. The Earth can give each of us enough not only to survive, but to thrive.
It’s that kind of radical hope that should form the centrepiece of discussion about what recovery from this year of constant crisis could look like.
For the next three months, I’ll be working on three pieces for The Correspondent that will aim to tackle the origins of the climate emergency, what it will take to change the story of the future, and what awaits us if we choose a different path.
Thank you so much for supporting me and the stories we’re telling together. I am so honoured to be on this journey with you.