What if there's already nothing left to save? There's microplastics in the clouds and soil and our blood and brains. Climate disasters and warming are happening faster than scientists thought it would and all the governments in the whole world are just protecting the corporations and billionaires that are causing this. We're not safe, too much irriversable damage has been done already and its getting worse even more and I'm so scared. We could hit so many tipping points that will kill everyone very soon if things dont change completely from how it is now. I'm only in high school I just want a future. Please tell me I have a future
I received a bunch of asks similar to this one over the last several days, and Iām not sure if they are all from you or just a lot of people feeling similarlyābut Iām going to try to cover them all here.
First, you still have a future. Full stop. And if you donāt want to take it from me, take it from actual NASA climate scientist Kate Marvel, who said āI unequivocally reject, scientifically and personally, that children are somehow doomed to an unhappy lifeā.
The future may be harder and more complicated than we would have envisioned without the obstacle of climate impactsāit will certainly be different. But it can absolutely still be full of joy and fulfillment and happiness.
Climate change is not a switch that gets flipped when we reach a certain threshold and then almost everyone dies or lives in a post apocalyptic disaster-movie reality. Climate impacts mean a gradual increase in the difficulty of meeting everyoneās needs, mitigating increasing natural disasters, preserving vital ecosystems, etc. as the climate gets warmer. Tipping points may accelerate that change, but it's still not a matter of a "human society kill switch".
Second, Iām so sorry you are feeling this way. Iām sorry that you feel like your future has been taken from you before itās even started, Iām sorry that you feel betrayed by the generations that came before you. I canāt imagine how hard it must be to be a high schooler right now, entering into adulthood at a time when the world is in such turmoil without the years of adult life experience to give some buffering perspective.
I know that looking at all the progress we still need to make it seems impossible that we will get anywhere close to where we need to beābut when I was in high school the idea that we would make as much progress as we have right now seemed laughably impossible. In my high school reality carbon capture was a sci-fi idea, electric cars were basically nonexistent, clean energy was such a negligible drop in the bucket that no one really believed could ever meet a significant portion of our energy needs, and climate change was generally considered a low-priority, "tree-hugger" issue if people even believed it was real.
The idea that we would have this much popular support, this much worldwide government action, this much investment and progress in clean energy and other climate solutions would have made my high school self cry with disbelieving happiness.
Every tenth of a degree of warming that we avoid will make life in the future measurably easier. Weāve already shifted that needle from 4 degrees to 2.7 in just a couple of decades. We need to keep pushing, but we are making progress and we have already steered the world away from the worst and most apocalyptic climate impacts.
Just getting this far is incredible, heroic work. That is millions of real humans that have been saved from death and poverty, that is an entire planet of people whose lives will be better than they would have been otherwise.
There is still a beautiful, vibrant, complex, life-giving world out there to save. Things will be different, the world will be different, but there is still a future to look forward to. And I would bet that when you've been out of high school for a couple of decades, the future you'll look back from will have seen a lot more progress than you're expecting right now.
(PS Just as a final side note, if you're feeling spiraling climate anxiety all the time, I would really encourage you to reach out to friends, family, or a therapist for support. Any kind of anxiety--climate related or not--can have a really awful impact on your mental health and we all need extra help sometimes (speaking as a very anxious person myself))
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