Misplaced Positivity on Climate is Harmful
By Stella Nyambura Mbau.
As I witness millions of people newly displaced and in need of humanitarian aid due to the current impacts of climate change, I wonder, who has the luxury of staying positive?
Through this journal, we are inviting you into a new way of thinking and doing, one which begins with questioning everything we take for granted. In particular, how we contribute – or think we contribute – to a better world. We will not have all the answers, but we want to ask better questions.
The questions we ask are not about the answers, nor are they about new ideas. There are enough ideas out there to reinvent the world several times over. As Audre Lorde said “there are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to save us… There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves – along with the renewed courage to try them out.”
By Stella Nyambura Mbau.
As I witness millions of people newly displaced and in need of humanitarian aid due to the current impacts of climate change, I wonder, who has the luxury of staying positive?
“Think of a formation of migrating birds that knows the way across oceans and continents to its far-away destination, and the pathfinding capacity of which resides not in the individual birds but somewhere in the connection between them.”
– Anna Katharina Schaffner
Baskut Tuncak, Lawyer & Scientist and former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Toxics. Baskut is the director of the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI) where he leads the organisation’s efforts to advance safer and healthier environments and workplaces.
By Robert Schwartz.
I devoted over 40 years to working on children’s rights, helping to shape the field. I have been contemplating, in retirement, the role that elders play in a world that is rightly propelled by youthful energy…
The weather events of the past months have placed climate change at the centre of many conversations. While this is not new for millions of people in the global south, more of us in the global north are realising that our lives will also be directly affected…