Rebecca Solnit

Thelma Young-Lutunatabua

An energizing case for hope about the climate, from Rebecca Solnit (“the voice of the resistance”—New York Times), climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua, and a chorus of voices calling on us to rise to the moment. Not Too Late is the book for anyone who is despondent, defeatist, or unsure about climate change and seeking answers. As the contributors to this volume make clear, the future will be decided by whether we act in the present—and we must act to counter institutional inertia, fossil fuel interests, and political obduracy. These dispatches from the climate movement around the world feature the voices of organizers like Guam-based lawyer and writer Julian Aguon; climate scientists like Dr. Jacquelyn Gill and Dr. Edward Carr; poets like Marshall Islands activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijner; and longtime organizers like The Tyranny of Oil author Antonia Juhasz. Guided by Rebecca Solnit’s typical clear-eyed wisdom and enriched by photographs and quotes, Not Too Late leads readers from discouragement to possibilities, from climate despair to climate hope.

Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

Not Too Late

Karolina

Hope is not optimism. Optimism assumes the best, and assumes its inevitability, which leads to passivity, as do the pessimism and cynicism that assume the worst. Hope, like love, means taking risks and being vulnerable to the effects of loss. It means recognizing the uncertainty of the future and making a commitment to try to participate in shaping it.

To hope is to accept despair as an emotion but not as an analysis. To recognize that what is unlikely is possible, just as what is likely is not inevitable. To understand that difficult is not the same as impossible.

To live with hope in a world that seems determined to race off a cliff: this is the real radical choice.

Despair is a self-fulfilling prophecy; it blocks us from taking agency, which makes it all the more likely that our worst fears will come to pass.

But beyond strategy, there is also just the simple, humble, profound task of being authentically alive on this planet in a time of collapse. Here, too, there is action, because there is more life in the taking of agency than in watching it flutter past us.

Most victories are partial or compromised, nearly all of them are interim, because the story continues.

The most essential equipment for surviving a sudden upheaval is the neighborhood, civil society, the people who will dig you out of the wreckage or start the soup kitchen with you or help rebuild the town or check on you in the heat wave or the blizzard.

Despair is the opposite of complacency, but both can lead to inaction. If you don't believe there's a fire or if you don't believe the fire can be put out, you don't join the firefighters.

Not Too Late quotes

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