Our world is now witnessing a global summit to talk about climate change. Some of us have also decided to contribute to it by organising and running local activities. At my workplace, we have a full agenda that involves students and businesses.
For me this was going well until I started to feel what some people call eco-anxiety. I do not like big gatherings or feeling that I am out of place. Talking about how we need to do something now and urgently to save our planet got to me in a bad way. Because to my mind I have been doing things.
From buying and using an electric bike to changing our old family car to one that does not emit too much carbon dioxide to refurbishing our house loft with foam insulation to reducing my car travelling to eating less meat to working with students on looking at how campus food can be better managed, I now feel that somehow this is not 'enough'. My perfectionist self has kicked again on the face of so much information.
Perhaps a better way of framing what I feel and think is to say that climate change is a very complex thing and that we are still learning how to do things. It would be better to be more aware that we are also part of complex systems whose direction(s) are the result of many individual actions. At the moment, there are some parts of such systems which I find difficult to navigate with, possibly because they are entrenched in their own and radical views about what needs to be done now.
We need to gain more awareness and continue doing things. But for me I need to take a small break from all this talk on climate change and breathe. Maybe take a back seat and let things unfold. It would be good to listen to what goes on and share what we have learned or what we could be doing differently in our lives or work.
But not at my own expense.
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