Struggling to picture the climate apocalypse? Just look around you

Even if you do want to resign yourself to doomerism, no matter what happens, we will all have to deal with it – some of us already are, writes Scarlett Westbrook

Despite the headlines, the world isn’t going to simply switch off

When you think about the climate crisis, what springs to mind? Barren, deserted wastelands decades in the future? Melted ice caps without any polar bears on them thousands of miles away? Perhaps, like many, you just envision a black screen; a definitive end to the world with absolutely nothing left on it.

Decades of alarmist headlines and poorly communicated messaging around climate have created a false dichotomy where we seem to only be able to understand the future as completely okay or destroyed beyond recognition.

Climate reporting is hinged on inaccessible statistics around global heating that people who aren’t scientists don’t really understand, neglecting to explain what the actual human impact of those numbers will be. Media output is dominated by incomprehensible statistics without any attempt to show what this actually means in practice.

This despite the fact that there are plenty of examples of what climate looks like in real terms all around us, with the recent Canadian wildfires that send smoke plumes as far as New York being the most recent and shocking.

So, if you struggle to picture what the climate crisis looks like – you’re not alone. From the majority of information around us, it would be easy to believe that the climate crisis will make the world just stop.

In reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

This all-or-nothing framing has given way to the rise of two prominent schools of thought that now dominate climate scepticism. The first talking point is attributed to climate deniers, who argue that “people have been going on about climate change for decades and yet we’re still fine”, and therefore they reject the prospect of a climate crisis altogether.

The other, however, is the sentiment put forward by climate doom-mongers who wholly believe in the climate crisis but think that the world will succumb to disaster regardless of what happens, and so aren’t engaged in or supportive of climate action.

Although these groups may see themselves as polar opposites, both of their positions ultimately equate to passivity in the face of crisis, and looking at the state of our climate communications makes it easy to see why. For decades, we have been under a constant barrage of media telling us the world is going to end, and that has left us with a society that has no idea what it is about to face.

If we want to truly fight back against the climate crisis, we need to make sure that people actually know what it is. We need to liberate messaging from being solely statistics and science, and root it in stories of what that will actually look like for people. That has to be through mediums that centre people, whether that is through storytelling, theatre, the arts, and talking to those already on the frontline.

Despite the headlines, the world isn’t going to simply switch off. It is true that we will experience terrible events as a result of the climate crisis – we already have – but we will still exist through them all. The climate crisis is a reality that we all have to face, regardless of our attempts to distance ourselves from it by acting as if it’s an issue we won’t be around to deal with.

From the Pakistan floods, to the wildfires in Chile, to fatal heat waves across the globe, people have continued to survive in the midst of climate disaster and will continue to do so through community and mutual aid.

It’s true that if we don’t act with the urgency the climate crisis warrants, we will have an apocalypse on our hands – but that won’t be a sudden end. The climate apocalypse will indeed look like a series of public health crises – food shortages, mass displacement, widespread disruption and more – but it will also involve billions of people surviving these events together through community care, the way humans have gotten through every crisis in history.

We still have time to decarbonise and mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis, and everyone can play a role in securing the climate action we need to achieve that. However, even if you do want to resign yourself to doomerism, no matter what happens, we will all have to deal with it – some of us already are.

Surviving through climate emergencies is climate action, and if nothing else we will continue to survive by looking after each other. No matter how difficult things get, we will always have tomorrow.