This May 13th, Pledge to Celebrate #DoNothingForTheClimateDay

Perhaps instead of doing more for the climate, we simply need to do more nothing. So why not #DoNothingForTheClimate for a day?

Lately, I’ve been reading an increasing number of articles about how many young people now suffer from climate anxiety, and watching talks about how young climate organizers are “burning out,” including this Keynote presentation from the 2020 Bioneers conference by youth organizer, Jamie Margolin, cofounder of the climate organization, Zero Hour. As an environmental organizer in the early 2000s, I certainly saw many colleagues chewed up and spit out by the organizations I worked for and with. However, climate burnout now seems more internal than external — as many youth work with organizations or chapters that they, themselves, have helped create, and the driver is not unrealistic organizational campaign deadlines but the overwhelming (even if self-imposed)* urgency of stopping the world from burning.

It makes me wonder three things:

1. Are young people and activists nourishing themselves, with walks in the woods, and time with nature as a partner (or subject) rather than an object that it’s up to them to save (because nobody else is)?
2. Do they have people who can support them (not just other activist-comrades who can push them forward), whether their family, their church, or some other supportive community?
3. Are they simply trying to do too much in too short a time, rather than…