​It's Possible to Face Climate Horrors and Still Find Hope

MARGARET KLEIN SALAMON, TRUTHOUT, Feb. 2019, Posted by Wayne Morgenthaler

This is an important assessment as we enter the new era of "It is just too late unless we mobilize". People will be asked to sacrifice. The time for talking is past.

For decades, the climate movement suffered from a self-imposed "lead by hope, not fear" dictum, which hindered a real understanding of the crisis. Author David Wallace-Wells broke through that barrier with his New York Magazine article, "The Uninhabitable Earth." In his new book of that name, Wallace-Wells expands the conversation by examining likely outcomes of the climate crisis but fails to discuss a major source of hope: the sudden surge in climate activism, which his article helped catalyze

Greta Thurnberg, the 15-year-old pigtailed Swedish prophet, embodies the tell-the-truth candor of this new movement. She told the richest people in the world at Davos in January 2019:

I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.