And yet even in light of such a simple and compelling set of circumstances, there are some among us that react with such fear and weakness that rather than reckon with the consequences of their actions, they would actually politicize and question a basic principle of reason — one of the most beneficial discoveries ever — the Scientific Method, to which so many advances in medicine, safety, and quality of life can be credited. What does it say about humanity, that such a crisis can’t motivate united action?

But I am inspired by the images I’m seeing in the news today from across the globe. The truly courageous, and those in the greatest danger — our youth — are forcing us to reconcile our fear and weakness with the catastrophe we are leaving for them, and to admit the selfishness of inaction against a reality that won’t affect us but will impose on them a harsh quality of life, a desperate scramble for limited resources, and the specter of world war. It’s another example of the strength of the youth and the weakness of the rest of us — my faith in them is unwavering.

Let’s heed their cry. We have to unclench the fist before we can work hand in hand. It takes courage. Tune in to the climate protests today if you forgot what that looks like.

It really made me think about the future. I am happy to do my part, from personal conservation to raising awareness, but after reading the article, I feel all the commonly advised actions are woefully insufficient. It leaves me with an instinctive thirst for a grander vision of what society needs to transform itself into, institutionally, culturally, economically. It seems we need to go far *far* beyond planting trees, and curtailing air travel and single-use plastics. It seems we need to promote Nature from finicky parts supplier to majority shareholder, with whom harmony must never be questioned. Can the sprawling outline of our communities be at all maintained? Can workplaces (at least the information-centric ones) be allowed to continue requiring employees to be physically colocated? Can we even keep living above-ground, in our old-construction homes, with inefficient heating, cooling, and refrigeration? Is it even possible to hold fast to the concept of geopolitical borders when the habitable land of other humans literally sinks into the ocean?

What radical society must we become, not just to stop temperatures from rising, but to drive them back down? I’m sort of hoping a brash futurist rises out of the tech industry - a Sierra Club version of Musk or Jobs - to hold our hands through it all. It’s a thought borne of exasperation with international failure of governments and with personal helplessness, but it’s a foolish and selfish one nonetheless.

All I can think to do at the moment, is to listen and to talk and to continue altering my carbon-generating habits.

The news is hard to process, but these waves of proof should not be normalized. We cannot become comfortable with them, desensitized to them. They are real and they are stark - they are unjustified deaths of black people at the hands of law enforcement. I can and therefore, at the least, I will inform myself about each new and particular way this nightmare plays out. I am not among those entitled to fatigue of proof.

It may be hard to process, but we must try all the same. Become knowledgable about this weeks events. It may strengthen and reaffirm your commitment to take whatever actions and apply whatever pressure and provide whatever support you can, whenever the opportunity presents itself, in big ways and small, in the short term and the long, as a person with the specialized skills and resources and privilege you have and just as a person with a heart.

I think understanding this situation completely requires an enormous amount of empathy. Whether one agrees with the protesters or not, it’s unfair to characterize them merely as fighting against freedom of speech. I am sure they recognize the speech aspect of this, but to them, that is second to what they perceive to be the central issue: equality. Arguable perhaps, but I hold that the issue of equality trumps that of speech.

This issue is part of a larger trend whereby arguably minor transgressions trigger significant protest (see the Atlantic’s coverage of Oberlin). My take is that after an oppressed class completes the initial leaps and bounds toward equality, tactics of old (e.g. nonviolent peaceful protest) cease to effect further change. New tactics therefore must evolve in order to close the remaining gap. This gap is relatively small, but its size isn’t the point - the fact that a gap, based merely on class identification, exists at all should not be accepted.

The current tactics might not be perfect - I posit they are still evolving. But they do effectively utilize available resources and processes (e.g. content virality) to draw massive attention to issues.

As for their characterization by MSM (e.g. the protesters are “bullies”, they have fostered what is uncharitably called a “victimhood culture”) we are simply observing (or participating in) the attempt to resolve cognitive dissonance between evidence of social inequality and the intellectual status quo.

I should also have noted that turning to fellow class members for support is not certain to magnify an issue; those members must still evaluate the claims of the aggrieved at their own discretion, which does serve as a natural, self-adjusting standard for this type of collective action. Often times, this, and the trigger warning debate, all seem to come down to being a little more thoughtful and to expressing a bit of respect – a small price to pay to further the cause of Equality.