Something’s not right.
You can feel it,
in the heaviness of mornings,
in the hacking between headlines.
In the way the stories roll around in the news cycle blender, touching everything, with smoothie indifference.
There’s a tiredness that sleep doesn’t fix.
A low hum of disorder.
Not just in the world, but in the way we move through it.
Systems we once trusted: healthcare, transport, housing, food;
have become sources of stress, not solace.
It shows up in the anxious glances, in the price of survival.
You don’t need a chart to tell you.
Your body already knows.
“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.”
— Rumi
We talk about war, hunger, displacement, exploitation;
but rarely about how they make us feel, the power they take from us.
The fear that robs us of honor, and pollutes our love;
tainting what we teach our children.
“The stability we all depend on is breaking.”
— David Attenborough, COP26
Beneath all of it; quiet, sprawling, inescapable;
Our mother planet is responding; critical, changing, compensating, in crisis;
And not just with climate.
It cannot be represented on paper or power point.
It is experienced through heat, fire, storm, flood, and the slow undoing of trust.
Revealing how fragile our systems have become.
It’s the drought that empties fields and fills border crossings.
The heatwave that breaks infrastructure.
The flood that flows as governance collapses.
In 2023, over 43 million people were displaced by climate-related disasters.
(Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2024)
Why do we stand still in this crisis, with all its bells and whistles.
Why are we loyal to a system of governance that will at best protect only a few?
Are our traumas so powerful that we can no longer envision:
A brighter future, that building something better is our destiny?
Why else would we be here, how else did we come this far?
How did we become creatures that exploit others to serve ourselves?
How did we lose the desire to master ourselves in service of others?
Ask the question of your heart:
Are you content for this system to represent the fire in your soul?
The systems to protect the environment aren’t built for people.
They are built for process, for politics, to churn through yesterday’s arguments, injustices and failures.
Not to protect families.
Not to mobilise, make provision for, nor to measure safety.
They are, not even, a sweet song, dancing us, delighted, into our doom
At COP after COP, promises are made.
And yet emissions continue to rise.
(UNEP Emissions Gap Report, 2023)
Who built this system that doesn’t require a return on our investment?
In which no one is held accountable.
Where there are no consequences for failure;
And worse, no consequences for failing to even try.
We built this system.
We often treat climate change as the final problem.
Could we possibly see it as the gateway to our salvation?
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
— Arthur Conan Doyle
What if climate is our golden ticket.
To a place where we can build something that listens, acts, delivers, and protects?
What if Climate Change was here to save us from AI, not the other way around?
What if the focus was not tonnes of gas reduced?
If we measured progress by how communities grow and leverage their resilience.
Not because their places were suddenly made totally safe;
but because we’ve done the work to make them safer.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”
— Greek proverb
Human ingenuity and teamwork has the power to create a better world.
Imagine a modern capitalism, that step by step, brings all things of value into focus.
Unshackling Capital — bringing all forms of Capital into equilibrium.
Creating an economics of care that will secure lives and futures.
Stand up, release the conditioning, and remember;
we still know how to build systems that serve.
“The tragedy of the horizon… By the time climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may be too late.”
— Mark Carney
A system that incentivises and tracks people’s safety,
That supports humans in their flourishing, and attaining their highest potential,
Unlocking not just financial, but human, environmental, social and cultural value.
We need to know who delivers, and who doesn’t.
We need to reward action, not ambition.
To print our promises on our coins.
Should we do what we must for our people and our homes?
To believe we can, even when not everything can be saved.
Lets turn loss, into opportunity, as we build back better.
What remains now is this:
the truth must guide what we build.
Not because it is easy, and not that there is only one truth.
But because our future is the people, and people with trust, work together.
Let nothing stand in the way, of rebuilding a system that nurtures and cares for our planet;
and the people on it.
Sacha Meckler is an innovator, change maker and thought leader working across technology, economics and policy domains.
