Psychologically and emotionally, I have really been doing badly lately.
I have spent all of my adult life studying environmental politics and trying to fight climate change, and now we are at a juncture where the world’s leaders have effectively given up. They won’t acknowledge fossil fuels as the root of the crisis, and they are far too controlled by the fossil fuel industry to accept phasing them out as a solution. They see every new potential oil, gas, and coal project as a vehicle for wealth and self-advancement. Meanwhile, environmentalists are distracted by social issues as the long-term crisis keeps deepening, and people generally are too frightened to even perceive the truth of their situation. Perhaps scariest of all, young people don’t have a coherent and politically-activated sense of what is happening. They can’t see that their leaders are destroying their futures, and they are being drawn into the same sorts of non-solutions which are driving the rise of charlatans and authoritarians to power.
The path forward is totally unclear, and I don’t know how — psychologically or morally — to cope with a world where we have identified that the processes of collapse are accelerating but where we don’t have the honesty or the courage to work through what that means or work toward any remedy.
These are dark, dark days.
“It was this exhilarating moment of feeling so swept up in social change, of feeling undefeatable,” says Vegesana, now the director of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, which helps coordinate climate groups across the country.
At the time, organisers saw that day as a launchpad to even larger rallies. Activists hoped to see the biggest protests in the country’s history. Instead, it was the movement’s peak, to date.
Inside AYCC’s office in Sydney, photos of those strikes hang as a reminder of unrealised potential. A Lowy Institute poll found concern over the climate crisis among Australians aged 18-29 peaked in 2019, falling eight percentage points by last year. The movement that thousands of young people had hoped might change their future has, on the face of it, petered out.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/22/australias-student-strikers-for-climate-believed-they-could-change-their-future-where-are-they-now
Canada’s top candidates talk up fossil fuels as climate slips down agenda
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c87pev3jpyyo
As the threat posed by US President Donald Trump tops Canada’s federal election agenda, the issue of the country’s contribution to global warming has been largely overshadowed.
The two main contenders are pushing plans for new energy infrastructure as the country seeks to pivot away from its reliance on the US.
Mark Carney’s Liberals are promising to make Canada a global superpower in both conventional and green energy. The Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre want to invigorate the oil and gas sector and scrap the industrial carbon tax.
It’s a big shift from the 2021 election, when the environment topped the list of voter concerns.
A grim signal: Atmospheric CO2 soared in 2024
Scientists are worried because they can’t fully explain the big jump, but it might mean that carbon absorption is slowing down.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/a-grim-signal-atmospheric-co2-soared-in-2024/
Students in Canada elected the Conservatives in a mock federal election
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/canadian-students-elect-conservatives-in-mock-federal-election/
Maybe the focus should move from attempting to avoid collapse to working to reduce its seriousness? What skills and capabilities would equip young people to get through the problems awaiting them?