An interesting question that came up in the Climate Reality training I’m currently doing. Basically, it was asking “what is your personal story that is at the core of your environmentalism?”. One of the mentors mentioned for example that his mother died of lung cancer exacerbated by air pollution...

So, what deep down motivates you to care about the environment based on a personal connection or experience? I found the question to be refreshing and evocative; refreshing because it was less about reciting yet another statistic to make the point, and evocative because the fuel for activism is personal passion after all. The following is my answer.

I'm passionate about climate action because… from my earliest memories, I had only two impossible wishes - one was to know everything about everything and the other was to save the world. It sounds silly, I know that myself… but still it's something I've always kept in the back of my head and has influenced many of the major decisions in my life. I still remember watching David Attenborough documentaries many a night together with my mum and dad, learning the most intimate details of the living planet and the incredible unspoken evolutionary journey that we are a part of, almost begging the question what happens next. This burning curiosity to “know everything about everything” is what led me to study bio-chemical engineering, literally learning to deconstruct the most basic reactions that govern all life and then try to scale them up for industry. The urge to "save the world" is what made me pick up (public) policy analysis for my Masters, diving into the design, communication, implementation and delivery of socially benefical outcomes.

For me, these two wishes *clicked* while learning to model complex systems; it was as if I finally had a language to start connecting the problematic historical arc of our civilization, the many social problems we currently face, and the irrefutable science that is predicting the logical and horrific future impacts we will see unless we fundamentally change the trajectory of our societies.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

I saw a vision of sustainability when I personally joined an expedition to go to Antarctica in 2017. Imagine an entire continent 1.5 times the size of the continental United States, protected by an international treaty to prevent commerical exploitation. Truly it is one of the last great wildernesses left in the world. Except you know instead of a landscape of sprawling lush green forests, Antarctica is a kingdom of white ice as far as the eye can see in every direction. Even in this frozen wonderland, life is everywhere from the adorable penguins, playful seals and the majestic whales - not to mention the host of microscopic krill and plankton that are equally crucial to support this precious ecosystem. Here, so close to the South Pole which experiences some of the most extreme conditions on this planet, this ecosystem has lived and thrived interdependently and sustainably. In this remote environment, literally each lifeform depends on every other lifeform as part of their lifecycle, and the health of one species existentially affects the health of every other in that food chain. It’s a tight non-negotiable loop. These populations live together, but they don't destroy one another. For millions of years, these species have lived here but you cannot in good conscience call the environment here polluted or dirty or unsustainable. Instead, Antarctica remains pristine, almost seems untouched, even as life thrives in and around it. There is such an efficient cycling of energy and materials in this ecosystem that it would put a chemical engineer to shame trying to match that achievement. What if humans could learn to live like that again?

In contrast, I see the great vulnerability of our current position and trajectory especially when I read the science of what is to come. No doubt many economic commenters have rightly pointed out that Covid-19 did not so much break our system as much as exposed the cracks that already existed in our society. It is logical that a lockdown to protect public health results in the possibility of millions of people unable to pay their rent, but it was not inevitable. It is tragic that so many people are so distrustful of good advice from public institutions like mask-wearing and social distancing, but it was not inevitable. It is unjust that traditionally disadvantaged communities such as people of color are the ones most likely to be deemed "essential workers", who receive minimum wage and face maximum risk, but it was not inevitable. It is scary to imagine that in the middle of a global pandemic and the resulting economic recession, there will be communities that have to deal with inevitable environmental disasters like hurricanes and heatwaves as well, but this too was not inevitable. All of these failures were the result of specific decisions - maybe good for some people at that time at the expense of others - that have brought us to this point. As a researcher who studies complex systems, it seems obvious to me that if we try to go back to this idea of "normal" that existed before the pandemic, we would just be setting ourselves up for inevitable future crises.

We cannot go back to normal because normal was the problem.

That is why I am standing up for strong climate action including a rapid shift away from fossil fuels, a just economic transition that puts people first, and a commitment to sustainability that aligns with the planetary boundaries of a living planet. These are what our best science tells us is the right thing do, and we know that if we act quickly and decisively, we can correct our present trajectory. We must do this because the great and terrible truth is that what happens next is entirely up to us.