A Task of Cosmic Importance

As I watch whole neighborhoods eliminated by fire in Spokane, Koreans told to stay inside as the heat outside might kill them, tens of thousands of heat deaths in Europe this summer, floods and landslides and raging wildfires and climate catastrophe after climate catastrophe unfolding in yet another “hottest summer” on record—it makes clear to myself why I’ve spent the last 20 years trying to build effective communication efforts around the climate emergency. To the point of nearly bankrupting myself again and again.

To what end? It’s hard to say. The fossil fuel interests and their daily billions in profits have effectively neutered our political systems, our media, our entire societies, in our ability to challenge them and the ecocide they are committing with full knowledge going back 70 years.

So yes, there’s the feeling of pissing in the wind against a firestorm. But what else can one do when you understand the scale of the disaster that is just starting to unfold around us? How else can one look into the eyes of any child we are leaving these horrors to without doing what one can.

In any case, A Task of Cosmic Importance is a favorite video from one of those efforts, The Climate Ad Project (which became Undeniable: The Climate Emergency Network), written by climate scientist and activist co-founder of the group, Peter Kalmus. It beautifully sets out the stakes we face as a species. The task, indeed, of cosmic importance faces us. Will this summer of fire be enough for more of us to take up the work? Or will we wait until there is nothing left to save? I don’t know, but I’m not ready to give up yet, that’s for sure.