notes on climate grief & righteous rage

i'm probably going to neaten this up for my more "academic" blog later, but i wanted to get my initial thoughts out first. as such, this is mostly unedited and probably very messy.

i keep being told to "be reasonable" about the state of the world. to breathe, to moderate my tone. to make the issues palatable for funders, ministers, teachers, journalists, even my fellow students. i'm told to find the silver lining, the market opportunity, the "balanced perspective" as though balance is possible on a twisted planet, as though neutrality isn't already choosing a side.

climate grief is not a malfunction, it's the body correctly reading the room. the glaciers have names and we are watching their funerals in real time, livestreamed in between fast fashion adverts and oil company rebrands. i'm supposed to keep calm and carry on – classic british coping mechanism – but my hands are shaking and my lungs have learned a new tense: future conditional, if we act, if we act, if we act.

here's the thing: grief is not the opposite of action. grief is the root system, remembering what has been lost and reminding why it matters. righteous rage is the electricity that runs up the trunk – not indiscriminate, not nihilistic, but focused, aimed. rage that refuses to let anyone call this inevitable. rage that refuses our survival being turned into someone's quarterly profit.

hope, for me, isn't optimism. optimism is good, and it helps, but hope is labour. hope is spreadsheets and rota sign-ups and working late to plan educational sessions for people the same age as you who have been left behind in the school system and are trying desperately to make it up. hope is sending a follow-up email. hope is losing the vote and coming back anyway. hope is the quiet agreement among the tired that tomorrow we try again.

people ask how we keep doing it; the polite answer is community. the impolite answer is fury. i am furious that children are learning in a burning world with no language for why it burns and who lit the match. i am furious that our grief is treated as a personal problem to be quietly recycled, while governments and corporations slap eco‑labels on new fossil fuel projects and call it a transition. i am furious that grief is pathologised instead of politicised.

but i am also tender. tender with friends who are running on fumes, with the me who cries after meetings, with the kids who ask questions the teachers aren't able to answer. tenderness is not a contradiction to rage – it is how rage stays human. it is how we don't calcify. it is how we remember we are fighting in a world where softness is safe.

we have been taught to apologise for our urgency, but i'm done apologising. i am grieving for a planet i love and raging for the futures that are still possible. i am learning to carry both without letting either drown me. i am making plans. i am emailling my MP. i am teaching climate literacy like it's first aid. i am imagining curricula that tell the truth and build the muscle to change it.