Letting go of the life you thought you were going to have can cause a huge amount of grief.There’s a huge amount of courage in opening up to redefining your existence. There’s a huge amount of bravery to know that perhaps life even gets richer and deeper in unexpected ways.
It only takes 3.5% of the population to bring about political change. In New Zealand, approximately 3.5% of the population participated in climate strikes in autumn 2019, which was almost immediately followed by the country adopting one of the boldest climate goals in the world: to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.
Building on New Zealand’s pioneering policy, 2020 is the year we acknowledge that the most urgent thing we can do in an emergency is to passionately tell others that it exists. The call to protect the planet will become a rallying cry as climate strikes around the world continue to escalate. More people will begin to demand a better world that works for everyone. This climate movement will catalyse urgent revolutionary policy to tackle the crisis.
We’ll still know in 2020 that we have to do a lot better, but admitting we’re in an emergency means we can start to tell ourselves new stories that will help get us out of the crisis. We will redefine happiness. We will watch hopeful television and movies about a possible world that does not yet exist. We will stop seeing the Earth as an external thing to be saved. We’ll realise that we are inextricably linked to the planet: saving it is, in fact, saving ourselves.