Wawa Gatheru

People always ask me that.

And I'll first affirm, I think it would be insane for folks not to feel the kaleidoscope of the emotional responses that climate change and our world, the things that it presents us.

I feel hopeless and angry and frustrated a lot of the time, maybe not online.

Sure.

But I do have moments like this.

And I think what's been really helpful is reframing the climate crisis in a lot of ways.

reframing what it is that we're inheriting.

So we are inheriting the biggest crisis of all time, and it's a crisis that we didn't create, but we have to solve, and that's frustrating, and it's important to hold that truth.

But we're also inheriting wisdom from movements of our past, movements that also had to deal with what felt like insurmountable odds, like abolition, civil rights, labor movements, women's suffrage.

None of those movements ever had any guarantee of success, yet people continue to persevere.

And there's so much that we can learn from the organizing tactics that have been left behind for us.

Solidarity being a big one, coalition building being a big one.

And we really need that in the climate space because the climate crisis is not just an ecological crisis.

Yes, ecological breakdown is clearly happening, but it's also a crisis of

of care and a crisis of connection, we really have a problem with seeing the value in nature and non-human species and other humans.

We see this with the existence of Sacrifice Zones and Cancer Alley.

We see that with the ongoing genocides happening around the world with the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.

We have to have the moral

courage and clarity to refuse to bring that type of dangerous business as usual into the future that we're building.

And so I always try to ask the question back to folks who ask me, are we doomed or are we going to solve this crisis?