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I know there’s a huge amount of pressure put on us as individuals to solve the climate crisis, but it’s much more systemic than that. It requires a fundamental change to the social, economic and political structures in our society. When these huge fossil fuel companies tell us that we’re the problem because we’re not taking five-minute showers or turning the lights off at every moment, we can feel very paralysed.
That said, I helped to organise the 2019 London school strikes. They showed we were willing to take creative risks – like walking out of classrooms and getting hundreds of thousands to join us – and visualised change for a different world.
Community is the most important asset we have and it can be filtered down into daily life. Maybe there’s a small campaign, like lowering the levels of pollution in your local area. Maybe you want to enact a national campaign to change what is taught in schools about the climate crisis. All of those things rely on community and networks.
Do a callout and reach out to the people around you. In almost every local authority, there’ll be people signposting what they want to change, there’ll be town halls and different community events. Check out your local gardens, maybe there’s an allotment nearby. There’s actually a lot more people around to help than you might think.
Engaging in our communities can help us understand that if we’re not able to be the most pure form of activist that we’ve been taught about, that’s okay. But I want a future that brings back the heart of activism to our communities, a future where people feel that they don’t have to ask permission to make a change.
Interview by Chiara Wilkinson
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