All the Right Words on Climate Have Already Been Said - By the Real Sarah Miller - The Real Sarah Miller⁠↗

I told her I felt like all I did every day was try to act normal while watching the world end, watching the lake recede from the shore, and the river film over, under the sun, an enormous and steady weight. There’s only one thing I have to say about climate change, I said, and that’s that I want it to rain, a lot, but it’s not going to rain a lot, and since that’s the only thing I have to say and it’s not going to happen, I don’t have anything to say. I said I had one more thing to say, which was that I didn’t even want to talk to my friends about it because of course none of them were doing well either and I just didn’t want to talk about how afraid and how sad I was because if I told them then I would just make them feel worse so that basically meant that I was never actually telling anyone what I was thinking so I just felt full of feelings that would be better not expressed and at this point I felt that my relationships were becoming yet another casualty of (points at relentlessly blue sky) “this.”

Let’s give the article she was starting to maybe think about asking me to write that I was wondering if I could write the absolute biggest benefit of the doubt and imagine that people read it and said, “Wow this is exactly how I feel, thanks for putting it into words.” What then? What would happen then? Would people be “more aware” about climate change? It’s 109 degrees in Portland right now. It’s been over 130 degrees in Baghdad several times. What kind of awareness quotient are we looking for? What more about climate change does anyone need to know? What else is there to say?

Writing is stupid. I just want to be alive. I want all of us to just be alive. It is hard to accept the way things are, to know that the fight is outside the realm of argument and persuasion and appeals to how much it all hurts in every way. It is terrifying to know that the prize for many who care may be prison or worse. But all the right words about climate have already been deployed. It’s time for the right weapons.