Not Too Late, Changing The Climate Story From Despair To Possibility

“Climate scientists say this is the crucial decade, and what we do now decides the future for centuries to come.”

Not Too Late, published in April 2023, looks at climate chaos soberly while arming its reader with an honest and legitimate hope. 

This statement provides hope in the fight for our climate. And unfortunately, it is a fight. Many parents have experienced moments of deep sadness for what “we” have left our children, but you don’t need to be a parent to feel this anguish. Yet even with these realities, as the first chapter in this book is aptly titled, “Difficult Is Not the Same as Impossible.”From this point forward, you will understand not only useful information on progress made but also on how people throughout our world are utilizing measures to cope with climate chaos.

Not Too Late is edited by writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit and digital storyteller and activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua. Both women are also co-founders of the project, Not Too Late. The book is for anyone who is despondent, defeatist, or unsure about climate change and seeking answers. It features a collection of essays from 20 academics, activists, scientists, lawyers, filmmakers, writers, artists, organizers and others who provide accounts, stories and interviews from the frontlines of the climate emergency.

This economical, fulfilling read discusses solutions, possibilities, the future — an especially bright section — and a message from the editors.

Solnit posits that it’s not foolish to be hopeful about what we can do to mitigate climate change — and the energy solutions we already have, the growth of the climate movement and the biggest victory the climate movement has had — the battle for public imagination.

At one time, most of the public was uninformed about climate change. The number of people who care about the climate emergency is underestimated — and what makes people feel defeated. Solnit said it’s possible to come to terms with uncertainty and see possibility. This is borne out in the book, through accounts of grassroots campaigns, popular movements and Indigenous uprisings by people who believed it was worth trying to act on their beliefs and commitments.  

Renato Redentor Constantino, who has led networks, campaigns and organizations on international climate policy for three decades, wrote the piece “How the Ants Moved the Elephants in Paris.” It tells how people from the most climate vulnerable nations shifted the agreed upon global limit to temperature rise from 2 degrees Celsius to 1.5 degrees Celsius in 2015 at the Paris Climate Accords, through “passion, brilliance and tenacity.” 

“Many people at the climate talks considered 1.5° unachievable, not because of science but because of politics,” Constantino wrote. 

Representatives of  “elite international nongovernmental organizations or INGOs viewed the 1.5° limit with disdain. Some even lobbied leaders supporting vulnerable country governments to quash efforts to advance the more ambitious climate goal,” claiming that this was in order to not harm “global” consensus. But for a huge number of developing countries, fractions of a degree mattered. It meant the difference between “survival and annialation.” 

Had this and other achievements not happened, we would be heading toward increased climate warming, far deeper into catastrophe than we are now. And we’d be far less equipped to deal with it.

Our world is made up of varied communities. It’s from these groups where Not Too Late maintains we will gain the strength, resilience and even love necessary to create a future where we can survive. Gloria Walton, president/CEO of The Solutions Project tells us we repeatedly read reports that reiterate Black, Indigenous, immigrant and people of color communities and women are hit worst and first by climate change and all of its damage and systems of oppression. Yet, it’s rarely mentioned that these communities are also at the forefront of creating solutions to tackle varied issues: protecting their and their neighbors homes, preserving natural ecosystems, building clean, resilient systems for food, housing, energy and water and creating local, lasting jobs that pay well and further an economy rooted in care.

Solnit, in a recent interview, described how human nature has proved itself time and again in disaster, asserting that it can lift us from this emergency and into an ultimately hopeful situation.

“Disaster shows us what we want most deeply is meaning, connection, belonging and to be in a world where we take care of each other, … where we belong with each other and … we have power and … a voice,” said Solnit.

She added, if we respond to the climate crisis with a focus on those aspects of human nature, we see how the response we have to it can give us those things. We cannot just avoid the worst case scenarios but we can build a better world which is the only way to respond to this crisis.

Details: https://www.nottoolateclimate.com