Haymarket Books
I often get asked what gives me hope. For me, my hope isn’t passive or flimsy. It can’t be. That’s not going to keep me going in the face of how completely terrifying everything can be. My hope is based on evidence. It’s based on history. It’s based on how change has happened before; how worlds have been transformed before, and how they can be again. It’s based on the change that millions of ordinary wonderful, loving people have caused through movements like the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, the Zapatista movement in Mexico, the Black Liberation movements in the United States, and so many more.
It’s also based on where I can tangibly feel the new world that’s on her way, breathing. Like I said, I feel that breath when I’m in organizing spaces, surrounded by people who care so deeply that they are giving pockets of their life to try to build a new world. I feel her breath there because we become the breath of the new world when we take the task of creating change into our own hands. We can become the hope we need. We have to.
To fight for the long run, we must find what breaks our hearts and what makes them swell out of our chests. We need to be angry, outraged, and saddened by the harm and the violence that comes with the climate crisis and exploitation. We cannot ignore these realities, but we also need to find that thing that mends us; the hope for something better that excites us so much that our hearts feel huge and full. Only when we have acquired both anger and hope will we realize that we have no choice but to act in such a way that we will bring about change. We can’t help ourselves; the prospect of creating something better is irresistible.
When we are fueled by outrage alone, our actions aren’t sustainable. We run a cycle of reactionary actions, hot takes, and short bursts, lacking the sort of stamina required for long, constant, movement-building work.
When we are fueled only by fear, we risk running into isolationist, individualist ideologies. We risk compromising justice. Or this fear can be all-consuming and lead to defeatism. These emotions are valid and valuable. I feel them all the time. I’ve had many climate cries. I’ve felt fear, heartbreak, outrage, and despair. I’ve allowed myself the space to fall into all of these holes. I’ve realized that to have a heart that has remained soft, that still breaks in the face of the immense harm that is inflicted on fellow humans all over the world, is to remain in touch with our humanity. These feelings, however hard and painful, are not to be rejected.
I’ve also felt my heart quicken and swell. I’ve seen people come together to be the active change we need. I’ve been reminded that we aren’t just fighting to preserve the world as it is; we are fighting to end all oppression and to create something better. We are fighting to end, but also to build.
Before we go any further, ask yourself this: What breaks your heart and what vision of the future mends it? It’s there that you’ll find your fight. Despite what we are often told, change is not passive. Sadly, things don’t just “get better” over time. Change is an active process. It’s a process that requires participants. It’s a process that requires all of us. History shows us this. The future is not set in stone; it is up to us to build it.
I’m not going to sugarcoat things. We have to tell the truth about climate change. False hope won’t save us. But active hope can. I base my hope on what has come before us. Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit showed me that this type of hope is possible. When we look at the movements for social change that have come before us; when we look at how people have come together to demand change; the fact folks haven’t sat on the sidelines but have grasped a new world from the bottom up, I am reminded that we are not the first to do this, and that to hope is to do what they did, to follow in a tradition that has come before us. To learn from their successes—and their failures—and see that we can do that too. We can change the whole world as we know it. But we can only do that if we, well, do it. Together, we can save so much.
I am hopeful because my ancestors, who were kidnapped from their homeland, chained, shoved into boats, forced to labor day and night, and treated as inhuman, had to believe that their fate was not sealed. They had to believe that the world could be radically transformed. Not only did they have to believe it, they had to act with this belief. Hope had to be a verb. They took drastic action, not because they knew they would win but because making the world safer and better is always worth it.
It is because of their active hope that I am here today. I will never know their names or their stories because those too were stolen. But I feel them with me every day. It is their breath in my lungs that I use to speak and shout. It is their blood in my veins that fuels my hands as I write this book and my feet as I march for justice. I still carry their dreams in my mind. If they were able to imagine a way out of a situation that felt so impossible to escape, so can we. So must we. We must learn from communities of the present who are surviving against all odds, in the face of powerful opposition, and participate in active solidarity. We must learn from struggles of the past, and we must honor them by continuing to push forward and demand better for our future. The necessity to believe in and act on a radical imagination of the future is not new.
There is simply no other way to radically transform the world than to believe in it and do it. Everything can change. Every single thing can change. Nothing is immutable. Once you know that—once you believe that everything can change, and that everything that is changed matters—that’s when we can transform the world around us. We have always had the power to do that—it simply requires us to realize that and act accordingly.
I am hopeful that as you’ve made it this far through this book, you are no longer passively reading it. I am hopeful that you have already reached out to your local climate group—or started your own—and have started or continued your organizing journey. If you haven’t, it’s absolutely not too late.
It’s extremely urgent—and we need to do as much as we can as soon as we can—but it’s not too late. In the powerful words of essayist Mary Annaïse Heglar: “If you’re worried that it’s too late to do anything about climate change and we should all just give up, I have great news for you: that day is not coming in your lifetime. As long as you have breath in your body, you will have work to do.”
The climate justice movement needs you now and will always need you. We need you because, whether you believe this or not, you have a unique perspective and skills. I assure you that there is a role for you, so please find it. I’ve scattered a bunch of resources through this book to help you on your way. When times get tough, we don’t give up; we get organized.
Excerpted from the book It's Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform Our World, by Mikaela Loach. From Haymarket Books. Copyright © 2025. Reprinted with permission.