Missives from the void: Part 1

Musings on climate news, staying positive and inspiring climate action

Hello again, it’s been a while - I hope you’re all doing OK amidst these trying times. There’s a lot of scary dynamics at play in the world right now, and I fear it may get worse before it gets better.

It’s been quite a while since my last post - whilst I planned to put FtF on an indefinite hiatus, I did intend to put out a post about climate news sources and where else you can stay updated on the climate crisis. However, as you can no doubt tell from the significant gap, that post never came together - life got in the way.

The combination of running a startup and managing some pretty big changes in my life has left me with very little excess capacity. Whilst I’m grateful to have been able to pause this newsletter, it has left a void in my life when it comes to acting on the climate. It’s something I’ve been ruminating on these past few months, and whilst I’m not sure I have concrete answers (I’m not sure there are right answers), I felt like it might be worth sharing my thoughts so far. Fair warning, this is going to be a long one!

This is definitely different from the FtF News posts I used to put out here, and thus may not be your jam. If so, I get it, and I will share some other climate news resources at the end if that’s what you’re looking for.

Tilting at Windmills

Publishing climate news every couple of weeks was a way for me to feel like I was doing something, but whilst I’m sure people appreciated the effort, I was essentially spending 10-20 hours each week acting as a manual news aggregator. I didn’t have that energy to spare, and ultimately, it felt, as a friend of mine put it, like tilting at windmills. A lot of energy going towards not a lot of output, at a time where I had very little capacity. Throwing myself under the bus just left me burned out and unable to do anything, and I’ve had to learn to put on my own oxygen mask first, before figuring out what more effective action looks like. That process is still ongoing, as unlearning bad habits takes time.

However, I have had a lot more time to think and read in the space left by not reading and summarising dozens of climate articles each week. I also have had time to reconnect with the feelings I have about the climate crisis - the feelings that drove me to start FtF in the first place.

Feeling all the things

Facts are important, but feelings are what motivate us. I’ve sometimes tried to bury my feelings about the climate crisis and write from a place of neutrality, but especially in times like these, when it feels like the tide is turning back against the climate movement in some ways, it felt important to reconnect with how all of this makes me feel, with why I want to act.

Righteous anger

The world is an angry place at the moment, and I grew up fearing anger, and believed trying to be dispassionate and objective was the best way to manage it. But it’s entirely reasonable to be angry at the climate crisis. It’s big, and it’s scary, and those with the power to act continue to do the minimum possible, and ignore the effects, even when those effects are staring them in the face. All these powerful figures talking about compromise, and delay, and inaction, who are happy to embrace activists when it’s politically convenient, but renege on acting when it matters - of course it makes me angry. Let alone those who actively deny that climate change exists - in 2025!

But anger doesn’t have to be a destructive emotion. It can be a force for good - channeled in the right way, directed towards making the world better. How to do that, and what that looks like remain to be seen, though I have a few ideas.

News-based Nihilism

Part of the reason I started FtF was to stave off the almost inevitable despair that comes from confronting such a massive problem as climate change. It’s so all-encompassing, so complex, and the systems and people responsible so entrenched, that shifting things seems nearly impossible, especially as one person.

Sharing what was happening, good and bad, was a way to feel like I was doing something, turning that despair into a positive step. But over time, I found myself succumbing to a numbness myself. There’s only so many stories that I could read about CO2 levels continuing to rise, about catastrophic floods, about species being lost, before they lost their potency. When I talk to friends about climate, many feel similar - that it’s inevitable, unstoppable.

But most of us can do something, and especially if we do concrete things, we see the impacts of our actions, which makes it feel tangible. Does that replace the need for systemic change? Of course not, but apathy will guarantee nothing changes.

I still read climate news, but I realised that reading it in the quantities I was just filled me with doom and regret. I now try to consume it carefully and in manageable portions, to make sure I keep track of the big picture without letting it overwhelm me. Being overwhelmed and apathetic helps no-one, and feels terrible to boot.

Love?

Love may seem out of place compared to the other emotions, but love is arguably one of the most important. I care about and want to act on the climate because I love the world we live in. It’s imperfect, messy, and uncaring, but magnificent and amazing nevertheless.

Can the world be better? Of course. But it’s a wonderful and incredible place, filled with nuance and beauty, from the wonders of the natural world to the complexity and depth of human society, to the myriad layers and depth of each and every one of us. How can we not love that?

Hoping for More

Finally, to contrast with the despair, there’s hope. Hope for a better world, a fairer, more equitable world, where humanity and the natural world are more in balance. Where everyone has the fundamental necessities of life, from food and shelter to community, respect and purpose. When we look at climate change, normally what we see is what is going wrong, but if we define our action by that, all we do is run away from the problem. And away isn’t a destination, it’s simply ‘not here’. Fear is a powerful motivator, but not for the long-term, and climate change is the ultimate long-term issue. Hope is motivation, and motivation is how we keep going, even against the odds.

So what now?

I’m still not sure on the specifics, but I know there are some dynamics that need to change.

Climate needs to become more visible. It needs to be part of every conversation. Too often in media and politics, climate is treated as a special, separate category, when it underlies and surrounds everything we do, from the price of food to the floods that threaten our homes, to the geopolitical pressures increasing migration and pitting nations against one another.

This is hard. The narrative on climate has been thoroughly invaded by bad actors, using disinformation to deny, to confuse, to slow, to muddy the waters. Those narratives are prevalent throughout mainstream media, political discourse and social media, and pushing back on that is always going to be an uphill battle.

Another dynamic I think is important is the current political dynamic, particularly visible in the US, but also across much of Europe, and spreading elsewhere. Politics has become steadily more polarised, with hard right parties and authoritarians rising to mainstream popularity, and moderates shifting their positions correspondingly. The Overton Window has shifted alarmingly, and centrists and the left have done very little, often fighting amongst themselves rather than convey a meaningful alternative. The recent US elections are a good example - the Democrats stood on a platform of ‘not Trump’, rather than offering anything meaningful, and compromised their position rightwards to try and win over those on the other side. A similar dynamic happened in the UK election - sure, Labour won, but only because the Conservatives were so bad that anything was better.

We need to shift the Overton Window back. We need compelling narratives that show what a more equitable and fair world could be. We need ideas and leaders that feel real and exciting and inspiring, rather than milquetoast ‘more of the same’. They don’t even need to be electable policies, but visions of what the future could be.

Last (for now at least), there’s capitalism as a whole. Like it or not, it’s here to stay, but right now we’re in a period of unconstrained greed and minimal corporate oversight, with companies extracting everything they can. Call it enshittification, call it disaster capitalism, call it what you will, the system is eating itself, and funneling money and power to a select few at the very top.

The US is feeling the effects of that strongly right now, with a billionaire-led oligarchy in full effect. No person should have the wealth and power that these handful of men do, especially whilst so many have so little. We need to enact a system that reigns in corporate power, that acts on antitrust cases, that limits the wealth that individuals can accumulate.

OK, but what can we do?

But whilst identifying the systems involved is important (and this is by no means an exhaustive list), what are the more specific things we as individuals can do? I’ll start with three that immediately come to mind.

First, identify your link to the climate. Find the source of your love. For some, they care about the climate because they want the world to be liveable for their kids. Some care because they are worried for the plight of animals. For others, it might be a natural place - a childhood hangout, a favoured holiday destination - that is being affected by the climate crisis. Everyone is different, but everyone has something that will help them care. Find your motivator, your love.

Second, find small concrete actions you can take. A lot of climate action is inevitably remote and long-term - shifting corporate direction, moving away from fossil fuels, enacting political change. However, that can lead to feelings of disempowerment and apathy. Combining those bigger actions with small changes in our lives makes us feel more connected and active. Maybe it’s recycling food waste, maybe it’s having meat-free Mondays - again, everyone is different, and has different capacity for action and change. But everyone can do something.

Finally, I want to think about inspiration. I’ve had an idea in my head for a long time for a project that I’d like to put together. It’s loosely titled ‘Postcards from the Future’, and would consist of somewhere to showcase stories, ideas, poems, artworks of what the future could be. They don’t have to be utopic, but climate fiction, solar punk, from as many perspectives as possible, would allow us to dream bigger, to start imagining both what the world could like, but also how we could get there. Some of Cory Doctorow’s recent works could give an idea of the sorts of stories that might work, similarly Grist’s Imagine 2200 series.

The big idea is to get people excited about what the future could be, rather than simply being scared of what is now, and miserable about what is to come. As I said earlier, fear can motivate, but hope and love is what drives people long term.

Hopefully that gives an overview of how I’m thinking about climate currently, and what I think might help a little. I’d love to hear your thoughts - leave a comment or send me an email!

Climate News Sources

Finally, as promised, I want to leave you with a summary of climate news sources and blogs that I’ve used in the past, along with some thoughts on them. Find your balance with news - staying abreast of the climate crisis is important, but too much doom will weigh you down. In no particular order:

• Carbon Brief - Neutral and science-centric climate coverage. Leans UK-centric, but does great coverage of science and policy. Tends to support and centre global south perspectives, and also highlight the inequities rife in the climate space. Also does a great China-specific climate newsletter, which gives a more nuanced and detailed view of China’s climate policy than most western publications, whilst still being critical where appropriate.

• Drilled - focused on climate accountability, with deep dives and cutting stories as well as insightful thoughts from folks who’ve reported on the climate for decades.

• Grist - US-centric non-profit media organisation focused on climate solutions and environmental injustice.

• Greenpeace Unearthed - well known as a climate charity, they also publish deep-dives and investigative reports into climate issues.

• Bloomberg Green - very business focused, and generally US-centric. Tends to be quite establishment, leans towards markets and business solving everything, but still has some good deep dives and long reads. Also leans a bit too much on startups being the solution to everything.

• The Guardian - centre-left mainstream UK newspaper. Pushes climate a lot, and highlights activism in places. Fairly neutral on a lot of issues.

• Al Jazeera - Arabic news publication. Centres a lot of climate and news stories, particularly on areas of the world that the west tends to ignore/gloss over, such as the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.

• NYT/New Yorker - Some great deep dives and long reads. Quite establishment, and has an occasional spurt of defending the fossil fuel industry.

• FT - Good for finance-centric news and takes on the climate, and occasionally, some good opinion pieces. Good for finance, economy, and similar angles.

• Canary Media - independent news site focusing on clean energy and related technologies.

• The Conversation - independent evidence-based journalism that covers a host of issues, with some excellent climate stories.

• HEATED - Very US-centric, quite opinionated, but good for passionate journalism digging into important issues at the heart of climate, and speaking truth to power.

• MVPist - blog covering family, love and living through a climate lens, with lots of art and fun. It manages the balance between pragmatism and hope in a lovely way.

Until next time!

Oli