There are 30 feedback loops that will wreck us. "Forever chemicals" are in every fish that's caught, as well as in "surface and groundwaters around the world at levels much higher than many international regulators allow". People are fleeing the effects of natural devastation in their home countries. As if that weren't bad enough, there is not enough snow to ski.
We will have to change our lives. And, as Sarah Lazarovic writes today: "It’s not about sacrifice." It will be hard, but not everything hard is a sacrifice. "Yes, we can do hard things."
Many people suffer, but even if we don't believe we suffer in our own comfortable, modern life, Lazarovic says, "it's not true that we don’t know how to suffer, don’t have capacity for suffering. My grandmother didn’t do HIIT workouts in preparation for the invasion of her country. People do hard things when hard things come at them. We’re malleable."
"I'm tired," she says, "of the ‘I couldn't do this’ mentality. Because it's patronizing. To let the planet burn on the presumption that we, the people alive now, cannot rise to the occasion, is such a risibly terrible frame. And this is not about hustle or the treacly platitudes of you-go-girl culture. It's just what is. Let's define humanity not by its susceptibility to the illusory softness of an overacquisitive lifestyle, but by its potential for greatness."
Read Lazarovic's essay
"Can you do hard things? (Is the wrong question) Of course you can." Sarah Lazarovic. Minimum Viable Planet (Substack). October 9, 2023.
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