It’s extremely easy to get completely overwhelmed with being a climate activist (and yes, you are one!) because there is so much climate news to follow and so many things to take action on.
But that’s actually a grand thing because it means there is so much more attention being paid to the climate emergency and so many smart people taking action.
Instead of being overwhelmed, here’s my Create + Climate suggestion: choose one channel to pay attention to that inspires you to take one creative action this week.
For example, I love Grist.org and they recently ran a story about the Icelandic author and poet Andri Snær Magnason who has written a book to help give the climate crisis a vocabulary.
“We see headlines and think we understand the words in them: ‘glacial melt,’ ‘record heat,’ ‘ocean acidification,’ ‘increasing emissions,’” he writes. “If the scientists are right, these words indicate events more serious than anything that has happened in human history up to now. If we fully understood such words, they’d directly alter our actions and choices. But it seems that ninety-nine percent of the words’ meanings disappear into white noise.”
What if you “translated” one aspect of the climate crisis into a form that might help someone else feel what’s going on?
To quote from the article about Magnason again:
“At first, Magnason didn’t think he was qualified to write a book about the climate crisis. A scientist convinced him otherwise, telling him that without help from writers, scientific warnings were destined to go unheard.”
What if our job as creatives is to help the scientists be heard?
To add the sound or color or humor or beauty or poetry or whatever is your thing and put it out into the world?
Maybe you amplify the message about carbon capture?
Or maybe this short story gets you thinking about how to write a little flash fiction about a climate solution?
Or maybe Earth in Color will get your creativity flowing?
Or the proposed Environmental Justice Day?
Make something and share it. Share on social, send it to your political representative, create with a group of friends if you are lucky enough to be vaccinated and film the results, whatever you do raise your voice!
What is Create + Climate about? Here’s the explanation and invitation.
Here are previous posts and suggestions for creating.
Create + Climate is a free service and our impact will grow because you share this with your corner of the world.
On social? Share what you make, discover, experience with #createclimate and tag me @jenlouden on Instagram and @jenlouden on Twitter.
Know that creating anything for anybody is going to feel so good. Action + stubborn optimism is what we need! Don’t make this a big ding-dang-do, just make it a do!