Looking at the latest bad news about climate change and feeling just a *tad* frustrated at some of our fellow human beings...

If you're in shock and surprise about this, maybe (just maybe) imagine asking yourself *why* it's news to you that infinite growth isn't possible on a finite planet (a formulation we have had for decades) and that there are costs to pushing that.

Of course some ppl are 16, are struggling to survive in violent relationships, homeless etc. - but that doesn't describe the chorus of liberal noise around this.

Maybe actually think about what it says about your social world and the culture you rely on that this stuff is news to you...? Because that context has important implications for the possibility of doing something about it.

The basic principle has been known since the Club of Rome report in 1972 if not before - and we have had movement after movement struggling around this. Did you not notice?

Are you *still* imagining that "if only the right people knew they would do something about it"?

Exactly how hard is it to think through the history and notice that there are concrete, organised *interests* supporting the activities that are leading headlong to ecological catastrophe?

If you still somehow think that a combination of science, the media and policy-makers will sort this, you have only yourself to blame when it turns out that won't be enough.

If you want to know what you can do ... think a bit harder.

Don't just recognise that there is a crisis, but recognise that there are social roots to that crisis: economic interests, power structures, cultural formations that have to be challenged.

Stop looking upwards for someone else to save us. They won't - not corporations (including media corporations), and not states (without massive social change).

Think hard - maybe even learn something - about what it takes to challenge deeply-rooted economic interests.

Get to the point where you're focussing on *social movements from below* - and realising that if we want to save the future in any real way, that is what we have to commit to.

100% put energy into agitating (sharing knowledge, trying to get people outraged, convincing people that we can take action) - without patronising. Find ways of making this real for people in their own lives.

Put energy into educating - working with each other into thinking through not just the science. That's easy. What's clearly not easy is thinking through how these problems are rooted socially, what it will take to change them, and how we can get there.

That's where organising comes in.

Ecological destruction is happening because it is socially real - it is rooted in powerful economic, political and cultural processes and structures. If we want to slow, halt or reverse it we have to make the forces of creation equally real.

And for G*d's sake - don't settle for a movement strategy because it sounds nice, because some dudebro ran a workshop, because it looks shiny online. It's too late for that cr*p.

Honestly, have some f*ing self-respect and try to think like an adult.

I've completely lost patience with ppl who treat acting on this level as some huge achievement rather than a normal part of human history over the past quarter-millennium.

We have built massive movements and defeated kings, empires, dictators. We have forced welfare states, women's and LGBTQ+ rights, defeated fascism and racism, won workers' rights and better pay. This is not new stuff.

Again, not a critique of ppl who left school at 12, who are suffering violent daily oppression, who are struggling to make ends meet - but notice the way they are often the *best* at making movements that win?

That's because they can't afford to *rse around the way liberals can.

If you have the privilege to read Serious Novels, take the bloody time to read some Serious History and something about social movements ffs.

Don't just make up some sh*t that kind of sounds nice and non-threatening, or kind of cool, or whatever else it is.

Remember those Qs about why on earth this is news to you and why you're still half believing Them Up There will save us all?

Do the real work to find out how people have forced social and political change through *against* the opposition of the powerful, the wealthy and the culturally privileged.

Realise that there are many different readings of this history, based on different interests and experiences. And think it through as best you can. That's your basic homework.

Find out what movements are going on around this kind of stuff now - and particularly what kinds of movements have actually had real success in standing up to ecological destruction.

That means above all looking at indigenous movements, who have made actual wins on this stuff - not just got themselves in the newspaper.

It means looking at how movements were able to defeat nuclear power in some countries.

It means looking at movements around comparable social change - defeating empire, forcing welfare states, forcing an end to the Cold War, facing down racism and patriarchy. And thinking what those experiences tell us for the kind of change we need now.

In other words: *think* this stuff through as though you were an adult and trying to live up to that in the world. Try to learn something about social reality and what it actually takes to change it - and don't be satisfied with answers that feel comfortable.

If you want other people to "take this seriously", maybe start by taking it seriously yourself and seeing what the crisis asks for you?

With full respect for everyone who is actually fighting in meaningful ways around the world - and deep gratitude for the people who are doing so facing down massive state violence, extreme levels of exploitation and oppression, appalling cultural stigmatisation. We can do this.