![]() She writes, too, about how she keeps her own hope alive: “I’ve learned that the feeling that nothing will change is just mental weather, and that the record is all in favour of change… I try to distinguish between despair as a feeling and a forecast.” ![]() Solnit looks at successful protests, from those against the Keystone XL pipeline to undocumented farm workers' fight against McDonald’s, and through them makes the case for hope. ![]() It is easy for those who are safer from the impacts of global heating to surrender, she writes, or to decide that climate action is too difficult or too late those who are in harm’s way – many of them in the Global South – do not have that luxury. In this powerful new essay, specially commissioned for Greta Thunberg’s guest edit of the New Statesman, Solnit examines the privilege of “climate despair”. You have to take the long view, says Solnit, to see the positive social and political changes that have occurred in the past half-century: “history is full of ruptures and surprises”. What began as a response to the cynicism that followed the invasion of Iraq ("we didn’t stop the war, we have no power, we can’t win") has evolved into a sustained argument for the value of protest. ![]() Rebecca Solnit has been writing about hope for nearly 20 years, starting with her 2003 essay "Hope in the Dark", which became a bestselling book of the same name. ![]()
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