I’m a bit older than the average Camosun student. I grew up in the early 2000s, which means that textbooks, schoolyard conversations, and commercials were full of information like “The worst impacts of climate change could be irreversible by 2030.” It scared us, but at the time, I thought, “30 years is still a while; the next few decades will be interesting.”
They have been.
If an entire town burning to the ground weeks ago isn’t enough to get that message through, I’m throwing up my hands in defeat. It’s felt like we’ve been living in the future in lots of ways for over a year, and that’s because we are. The heat dome was, according to most experts, not possible without human influence.
Shattering temperature records by several degrees is dangerous. That’s just a fact. But it’s time for danger to mean something other than being scared. You can feel fear, but that doesn’t mean you have to be scared. It’s more prudent to be ready, to allow the thought to give way to a new behaviour that protects you. Are there times when the danger becomes real and it’s time to be scared, it’s time to run? Of course there are. But on a day-to-day basis, generally speaking, we don’t need to be scared.
My family calls me a hypochondriac, and I may be. But I also know that when it comes to climate change, sooner or later, they eat their words. The images of this year speak for themselves: it’s hard to deny that things are more extreme around the globe in the past couple of years than they have been in recent history.
Part of living with that is recognizing the importance of moving on from the culture of fear that is now all around us. But it’s also important that we don’t disregard that fear communicates the essential; fear stems from the unknown. Fear communicates immediate or possible threats. Listen to the fear, and use it to be ready. We can be protected, we can take essential precautions, but we don’t have to be constantly scared.