On January 8th devastating wildfires ripped through Los Angeles. The fires plowed through neighborhoods, leaving nothing more than rubble in its tracks. As images from LA poured out through Instagram stories, and breaking news notifications, I found myself captivated. I spent the day numbly scrolling through grainy iPhone footage of the disaster with a pit of dread in my stomach. It was also my 18th birthday.
It’s undeniable that climate change is responsible for this disaster. Excessive heat caused LA to have an abnormally dry season, which, combined with intense Santa Ana winds, created a gruesome scene. 2024 was also recently declared the hottest year in post-industrial history. This is alarming, but unsurprising. The writing has been on the wall for decades: human environmental impact is vast, and the consequences of climate change are going to be devastating to humans and ecosystems. Even though we have known about the impacts of climate change for some time now, globally we have made little progress towards effective, long-term solutions. Thus, climate change is no longer a vision of the future; the changes we have forecasted for decades are happening here and now.
So now, on my 18th birthday, the first day of my adulthood, I am holding a burning world in my hands. How bleak. I feel powerless, like I have zero control over the future of the planet. I can’t help but succumb to a moment of cynicism. At 18 I should be preparing for a future, and instead, I am nervously anticipating a climate catastrophe in the making and questioning what the future is going to look like. Climate change feels like a shadow slowly creeping toward me. Maybe next time it’ll be me in the grainy iPhone footage, watching my life—and my future—be destroyed.
Living in the climate crisis puts us in relationship with our hopelessness. Climate cynicism has become a plague in the environmental movement. With climate change being such an imminent and overwhelming issue, many people find themselves burnt out and hopeless. People who used to be energized by environmental action, now don’t bother with rallies, or recycling, because climate change has still prevailed despite all the work they have put in. Some people start to wonder if it’s even worth trying to fix anymore. It doesn’t help that social media loves to push shocking and disturbing climate news (which is often posted without context) to the top of people’s feeds, spreading panic and fear.
Climate cynicism actually stems from a person with deep concern and passion for the planet. The exhaustion they feel stems from how little control they have over the environment as an individual. We are often fed the idea that everyone is responsible for changing their individual behavior in order to solve the climate crisis, and that those small changes should be the focus of the environmental movement. This has some merit (adapting to necessary changes like switching to renewable energy in your home, using an electric vehicle, or paying a higher tax rate will become increasingly important), but corporations, energy producers, and the top one percent have made an environmental impact far greater than working class individuals ever have. And yet, we have become completely convinced that small consumer choices are what makes the biggest difference in climate change. Companies benefit from this belief, because it shifts responsibility off of their shoulders, and onto the shoulders of their customers. It is also depressing that so often these companies choose their profit and expansion over the environment.
This injustice causes people to become lost, and often creates doubt over climate solutions. The problem with cynicism is that it leads people to inaction instead of action, which takes us even further away from effective climate solutions.
As I sat and stared at the wildfire images, I found myself in a quiet rage. I didn’t choose this. But underneath that was an even quieter current of hope, still passionately flowing despite the weight of all the grief. This is the world I was given, and no, I didn’t choose it, but I am responsible for it. And I love it. And just like every other love in my life, I don’t like everything about it, but I will stand up for it.
The truth is there are so many ways to be involved and take care of the climate, and they don’t all involve deep time commitments or a ton of prior knowledge. You can get involved in local environmental issues, lobby your representatives, vote for environmental allies, spend more time outside, take your local transit, and consider your personal environmental impact. All of these ways of getting involved will help empower you to continue the fight against climate change, and help subside the feelings of hopelessness you may feel.
So maybe the trash I pick up, the rallies I attend, and the lower waste alternatives I choose don’t have any lasting impact on the environment, but they do have a lasting impact on me. They keep my will to try alive, and remind me of why the world is worth fighting for. And that hope means everything in the fight against climate change.
