I’m interrupting my usual post-on-Sundays routine to share this piece from the blog on my website, Restoring Sustainability. I’m sharing this for two reasons: (1) to show that I “practice what I preach” on Substack in my own work, and (2) because we all need the courage to walk away sometimes. Ok, three reasons, there’s an invite to free workshops at the end!

Sometimes realising a project or job isn’t the right path, and acting accordingly, can take a huge amount of courage.

Over Summer, I had the pleasure of doing a site visit to evaluate a potential regenerative space. It was beautiful, and sustainable timber harvesting was already well established. The vision was there, the business plan was simple but thorough, and considerations were taken to ensure local culture would thrive alongside native biodiversity. A list of potential partners and community relationships was at the ready.

But, there was one undecided detail. At first glance, a minor hitch, something that could have a workaround, perhaps, and this family of aspiring entrepreneurs and wilderness lovers were indeed looking for a workaround.

If I only cared about making money, I would have urged them to push the project through despite seeing the potential for conflict. Of course, conflict isn’t unusual, and it doesn’t mean a project is doomed to failure. Conflict resolution is a leadership skill. But so is asking, “Is this project right for this place? For this group? For this time?”

In this time of urgency, and in a culture that praises the courage to act boldly and quickly, taking a breath can be hard. Yet, this simple moment of reflection can save leaders, teams, and organisations so much money. We often think this question is inherently answered by creating the project in the first place—in sustainability, restoration, conservation, and other environmental and social work, our projects are meant to serve. They are addressing an issue, and often intended to be what this group, in this place, needs right now.

Yet, in our zeal to help, in all our planning and designing, we can miss details. That’s a huge reason why I created the Questions of Care Methodology Guide. Originally meant to address serious holes in our legal procedures and interpretation, like Environmental Impact Assessments, these questions lend themselves to preparation for projects at any scale. And Question 5 asks, “Is this project right for this place?” It follows questions that require us to understand both the natural and social history of the place, and with that information, we can pause to reassess the project. Maybe it needs a small tweak to make a big impact—or maybe it’s actually not right at all.

In this case, the social history of the place is the family’s history. And this undecided detail, though small, could put current relationships at risk. Naturally, this could put the entire project at risk.

It is not my job to tell people what to do—as a sustainability strategist and leadership coach, it is my job to help build capacity for decision-making so that people can make the best decision for themselves and their organisation. I did some research and found that the law provided a simple resolution that would clear the path for the project to move forward. We discussed various scenarios. I asked questions. A couple of hard questions, but necessary ones. For example, do we want to resort to the law to resolve this issue? How will it impact the family relationships?

The family came to the conclusion that while the project design was well-done and the place was ripe for such growth, now was not the right time. This one detail had to be resolved first for the project to be a success, and it needed to be resolved together, as a family, not a legal matter. Disappointed but not discouraged, they agreed to continue to preparing for the project and seek out a different site. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from delays, and they are a resilient bunch.

I was reminded again that two things can be true: we do need bold, swift action in response to the poly-crisis; but we also need to do it as a family, as a team, and as a community. Sometimes that means taking the time to come to consensus or moving a project elsewhere—but it always means listening and coming from a place of care.

Some food for thought, for your leadership practice:

• When have you pushed forward with something that looked good on paper but didn’t work out in practice? How does that inform your decision-making now?

• When have you left things that weren’t right for you? When have you had to stir your team or organisation away from a project or goal that appeared great at first glance, but somehow you knew better?

• How much courage did it take? How did you feel after?

If you’d like to continue exploring how to lead courageously with a supportive group of peers, join our online workshop on the 8th or 10th of September. It’s part of the free Autumn series Rooted Leadership, for women leading our sustainable future.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) was built on land that once bloomed with milkweed, nourishing monarch butterflies on their annual migrations. As I watch the USA roll back and violate so many human rights, and Trump try to use the law to undermine California’s authority to protect its coastline from oil operations that have devastated its ecosystem through oil spills so many times, a litany of irony struck me in the face. The most obvious is that continuing to produce and burn fossil fuels is a direct threat to national security because climate change is a direct threat to—well, literally, everything; but the less obvious is that the law is doing what it was designed to do. Painting this piece is about wondering how we can transform it. To do that, we need to consider what shaped the law today.

Borrowed law, borrowed monarchs.

Our “hallowed institutions” are colonial legacies. American law isn’t unique, nor does Western law in general offer some higher truth—we made it up. We made up the law. American law is based on England’s legal system, which is based on something else we made up—religion.

The American Revolution was fought for freedom from Kings, for no taxation without representation (among other things beyond the scope of this piece), and yet, we are still allowing the wrong “monarchs” to shape our society. You can ask any 2L law student; they’ve all studied legal cases from England because they were so fundamental in shaping the American legal system, even after independence was well established.

Western law, and especially American law, has barely separated itself from the Church (despite its claim to such fame with the Eighth Amendment; reading how that law has been enforced in court makes it obvious the USA favours some religions/beliefs over others). My criminal law class had no struggle directly linking crime and punishment to England’s system and the Church. It’s reciprocity based on an eye for an eye, morphed into long prison sentences, manual labour, and, in the United States, the continued use of the death penalty.

In the Washington DC area, we drained literal swamps to create political swamps. We paved over milkweed and wildflower meadows to build great halls honouring and executing the “rule of law.”

And yet we ignore the only laws that matter.

We ignore the laws of Nature, and those who have been shouting, pleading, and trying for centuries to explain to the violent colonisers of their land that “you cannot negotiate with a beetle.” This particular phrase comes from Oren Lyons, a member of the Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs and a professor of American Studies. Lyons was speaking about the four million acres of Canadian forest wiped out by bark beetles, whose range and breeding season crept upward as global warming pushed winter temperatures higher.

Legal scholars like Shirley Scott have pointed out that law is just an ideology. But Nature is not. While human ideologies that conflict must either defeat or absorb the ideas of the other to survive, Nature does not negotiate that way. It will destroy ideologies that do not respect its laws. We see it in fishery collapses, in sea level rise, in heatwaves, and in bark beetle outbreaks.

The world is on fire because we did not listen to the only monarchs that matter — the butterflies, and the bees, and the sparrows and the whales, the milkweed and the rivers, the clouds and the berries.

So when people say we need to follow the “rule of law,” I cringe. Because whose law? Surely not the one a bunch of old, white, rich men made up to hold onto power and get even richer. (E.g., in law school we learned that private property was invented/evolved into its current form in England because the nobles wanted to extract more money from peasants and serfs. This is nothing new.)

Even democracy isn’t innocent.

The United States loves to claim it was visionary when its original group of rebels decided to govern themselves and create the best version of today’s gold standard: democracy. One could argue it’s its own system of oppression, where the 51% can bulldoze what the 49% need and want—never mind how those proportions shift once you compare a representative democracy to a direct one, and the power of money to shape elections (which often has me wondering, what even is a democracy if that’s allowed?). Further, the United States has beaten the drum of its “more perfect union” and the wonders of its democracy as an excuse to invade and otherwise meddle in countless other parts of the world. Always under the veil of “spreading democracy,” the United States has pushed its imperialism.

Yet few are aware that the United States got the idea from the “savages” it was busy trying to eradicate from the face of the Earth.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s Great Law of Peace, also known as Gayanashagowa, emphasised collaboration and agreement. You didn’t win by a narrow vote; if people disagreed with you, you had to win them over. You had to work with them to find a solution, together. And it worked. For hundreds of years.

The Gayanashagowa is the oral constitution that bound together the Six Nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and later Tuscarora), attributed to the Peacemaker, Dekanawidah, and his spokesman Hiawatha. Estimates of its founding vary widely, some placing it as early as the 12th century, which would make it one of the oldest continuously operating participatory governance systems in the world, older than the nation that would eventually admit to being inspired by it (though dramatically changing it for the worse). It governs by consensus rather than majority rule, and its most quoted principle asks every decision-maker to weigh the impact of their choices seven generations into the future. What’s more, these Indigenous Nations had a completely different worldview, one that embraced the laws of Nature. Reciprocity wasn’t about revenge; it was, and still is for many Indigenous People around the world, about gratitude for the gifts of the Earth, about stewardship, about kinship, about living in relationship to Nature. We cannot respect Nature’s laws without this perspective.

This is not the only example of non-Western systems of law and governance that emphasised collaboration and agreement, and which maintained peace for hundreds of years. (If you know of some, please share in the comments; I’m always looking for more paths.)

Such systems prove that this is not the only way to organise our legal system, our society. Perhaps we can do better. Perhaps we already knew how—many belief systems of Europe (today, we call them Pagan) were based on living in relationship with the Earth. Perhaps, if we look farther back to our ancestors, we can find we have more in common with each other and with the Earth than we thought.

I titled this piece, When Monarchs Make Laws, because it’s up to us which monarchs we let influence our laws—the kings of old, the current political leaders… or the pollinators, upon whom all life depends.

I chose this composition because our ‘hallowed halls’ will one day be overgrown, as Nature returns to its place. Nature is already forever changed by some of humanity’s activities, yet its laws will continue even if we do not.

If we’d like to be good ancestors and consider our impact seven generations from now (never mind the horrifying things we are projected to see in our own lifetimes and the fears we have for just one generation after us), I ask you, how can we transform law into a healing practice? How can we take our hollow halls and transform them like butterflies, like the monarchs we should be listening to?

I did write a thesis on this transformation. What’s clear is that there are many paths. I’m eager to know what you would do. Please share ideas in the comments, and don’t be afraid to dream big. We’re trying to heal *and* build something beautiful, after all.

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Your reusable water bottle is going to the second-hand shop on its way to the landfill, while plastic production remains unchanged.

Plastic versus reusable bottles is the prime example of corporations and polluters shifting the burden from them to individuals. This is how industry has pulled the wool over our eyes and convinced the masses that the destruction of the planet is a suicide, not a homicide. It’s the most successful PR effort in history, and it’s killing us.

Before plastic bottles, there was no packaging problem. Beverage companies used glass bottles which we returned locally to be sterilised and refilled—hundreds, sometimes thousands, of times—before a chip or crack finally took one out of circulation. Even then, nothing was wasted: glass melts down and reforms into new glass indefinitely.

The infrastructure for reuse was the business model.

Literally every effort boils down to how it’s supported. Cars did not become popular until there were paved roads and traffic laws. No one would use a smartphone if there weren’t cell towers. Systems and ads drive consumption.

How the Lie Began

In 1953, Vermont passed the country’s first “bottle bill” — the Beverage Container Law — banning the sale of beer in non-refillable bottles. Part of what drove it was livestock: farmers were reporting cattle injured or killed by discarded can parts turning up in fields.

The beverage and packaging industries didn’t take this to court. They did something more effective: they lobbied. Vermont’s legislature let the law expire after four years, in 1957, under sustained industry pressure.

And in that same founding year, nearly two dozen beverage, packaging, and cigarette companies formed a new organisation: Keep America Beautiful. Its purpose, from the start, was to get ahead of exactly the kind of regulation Vermont put forward. KAB is the group behind the 1971 Crying Indian ad, which, in a truly repugnant move, appropriated the image of Native Americans to illicit guilt while swapping the burden of littering away from those who produce plastic (the corporations) to individuals. As the Italian actor dressed up as a Native American cried a single tear after seeing white people litter, the narrator said, “People start pollution. People can stop it.”

It is, by a wide margin, the most successful anti-litter campaign in American history. It is also, quite explicitly, industry-funded messaging designed to make packaging waste look like a behaviour problem rather than a design problem. Think about the logic for one second: People start pollution. Sure we do… those of us responsible for the companies that pull oil from the ground and make plastic products; not those of us trying to hydrate or attend a BYOB party.

So here we are.

We now each own a small collection of metal, insulated, and/or hard-plastic “reusable” bottles; bought with good intentions or given as gifts, often in response to exactly this kind of messaging. But it is literally just another way for corporations to make money because look at all those designs, you know you need the latest one that shows how much you care! And don’t get me started on the number of Stanley Cups I’ve seen in thrift stores; are the people who buy those even thinking about the environment or just trying to match every outfit they own?

Researchers studying the recent reusable-bottle boom have pointed out that most of these “reusable” bottles aren’t actually recycled at end of life in the US; the steel core, for instance, typically just goes to landfill, meaning more virgin material has to be mined to replace it.

It’s a linear pattern wearing the costume of a circular one.

Meanwhile, plastic production hasn’t slowed down.

The only way to get a truly Plastic Free July is to end plastic production. There are countless viable alternatives, but they are struggling to become mainstream because of lobbying and infrastructure. But we have forced industries to change before, and we can do it again.

So this Plastic Free July, let’s stop promoting corporate PR and actually do something about plastic. Let’s support meaningful legislation!

Please comment on local legislation in your area and share this to raise awareness and spread the word so that more of us can take action to end plastic pollution at the source. Below is a guide for my readers in the USA who want to take action.

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Find State/Local Legislation & Call Your Representative

Plastic laws in the U.S. are being passed at the state and local level, so the fastest way to make change is to support existing bills or push for new ones in your area. Here’s how:

Step 1: Find Plastic Laws in Your State

• Check for bans:

  • Plastic bags: NCSL Plastic Bag Legislation Tracker

  • Polystyrene (foam): Search “[Your State] polystyrene ban 2026”

  • Single-use plastics: Use Ballotpedia’s search tool to find recent bills.

• Check for EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) laws:

  • EPR makes companies responsible for recycling their packaging.

  • See if your state has one: Source Intelligence EPR Guide

• Look for local bans:

  • Many cities have stronger laws than their states. Search “[Your City] plastic ban 2026” or check your city’s website.

📌 Pro Tip:
If your state doesn’t have a law yet, look for bills that failed last session—they might be reintroduced, and you can tell your representative that’s what you want!

Step 2: Call Your Representative to Support the Law

Calls are 10x more effective than emails or letters. When staffers are too busy to work because they are answering phones, it’s noted. Here’s how to do it:

Who to Call:

• State Legislators: Find yours at OpenStates.

• City Council Members: Search “[Your City] city council contact.”

• Governor’s Office: If the law needs their support.

What to Say (Optional Script):

Hi, my name is [Your Name], and I’m a constituent from [City/Town]. I’m calling to urge [Representative’s Name] to support [Bill Name/Number], which [briefly describe the law, e.g., “bans single-use plastic bags” or “creates an Extended Producer Responsibility program”].

This law is important because [1–2 sentences on why, e.g., “plastic pollution is harming our environment and our health, and recycling isn’t enough”].

Can you confirm that [Rep’s Name] supports this bill? If not, will they commit to voting yes when it comes to the floor?

Thank you for your time.

When to Call:

• Best times: Tuesday–Thursday, 9 AM–5 PM.

• Leave a voicemail if you get an answering machine.

• If a vote is approaching, organise a group to make calls!

Follow Up:

• If the bill moves forward, call again to thank them.

• If it fails, ask what next steps are (e.g., “Will you reintroduce this next session?”).

Local Groups to Join (By State)

Joining a group is the easiest way to stay informed, volunteer, and amplify your impact. Here are some of the most active organisations in the U.S.:

National Groups (Chapters in Most States)

Surfrider Foundation - Beach cleanups, plastic bag/foam bans, EPR laws, surfrider.org

Upstream - EPR laws, reusable packaging, system change, upstream.eco

Break Free From Plastic Corporate accountability, bans, cleanups, breakfreefromplastic.org

Plastic Pollution Coalition Education, policy, business partnerships, plasticpollutioncoalition.org

5 Gyres - Research, policy, and campaigns to reduce plastic, 5gyres.org

🏙️ Local/Regional Groups

• New England: Clean Water Action (CT, MA, RI, NH)

• Pacific Northwest: Ecology Center (OR, WA)

• Southeast: Southface (GA)

• Midwest: Illinois Environmental Council (IL)

• Southwest: Sonoran Institute (AZ, NM)

🔍 How to Find a Local Group Near You:

• Search: “[Your State/City] zero waste group” or “[Your State] plastic ban coalition.”

• Check social media groups

Power to the People!

Seeing a full grown orca swim right next to your boat is a once in a lifetime experience. Or so I thought.

I was only ten years old, and that was Wizard, a male member of J-Pod in British Columbia. Decades later, as a full grown adult myself, I had another orca encounter. Off the coast of Portugal. It was the scariest two minutes of my life. I know orca don’t harm people in the wild, and I know these particular orca are likely just playing with boats — no harm intended, despite the damage they cause. It was that accidental damage that was so scary.

Out of pure instinct and no small amount of desperation, I ran to the helm, held onto the backstay with one hand, reached the other toward the water, and shouted:

Please don’t break my boat. I’m an ocean advocate. I love you, I work for you!

And — coincidence or not — they left.

I’ll be honest: I’ve never worked directly on orca issues. But I felt like I made a promise that day.

So when I was in Gran Canaria and discovered that four Orca are held captive at Loro Parque on Tenerife — the island just 40 nautical miles west, visible on a clear day — my heart broke. I was on my way to the Global Sustainable Island Summit with a million things on my mind. But after the Summit, the orca came to me in a dream.

I dreamt that the entire park came to visit my harbour. I was running along the cement walls of a dolphin and orca show, frantically looking for a way to release them. I woke up knowing I had to do something.

All of it — the anger, the sadness, the helplessness — made me realise something. This is the perfect opportunity to appeal to our humanity. We like to tell ourselves we are rational beings, and sometimes we go as far as demonising feelings and emotions. But humans always make decisions with their gut first, then wrap logic around it. Our emotions show us what matters. We need only respond accordingly.

That’s why I’m starting Orca Love Letters.

Through a global, handwritten letter campaign, we will flood the corporate offices of marine parks holding orca captive — and politely ask for their release. The suffering of these animals is well documented. Boycotts and protests have made progress. But I think we can finish this with compassion — because that’s what it’s always been about.

We, the letter writers, are appealing to the human capacity for compassion. Marine park directors and CEOs are human. The idea of the “faceless corporation” is partly a fiction — corporations are made of people, who sometimes want to hide their face. And why wouldn’t they? Holding Orca in captivity is shameful. It’s exploitative. It’s a symptom of a broken relationship between humans and the natural world.

So we will ask for healing. True leadership responds to what communities want and what the world needs.

It is my sincerest hope that after we mail our letters on World Orca Day, 14 July 2026 — and share them across social media — marine park leaders do show their face. Not because they caused all the harm, but because they are the ones with the power to create real change.

I hope you’ll write a letter.

I’ve created a free Orca Love Letters toolkit for individuals and organisations — the full concept, writing prompts, and mailing addresses. Download it here.

As always, thank you for reading and supporting Artist at Law. If you’d like to support Orca Love Letters specifically, you can BuyMeACoffee — just add a note so I know it’s for the campaign. I’m hoping to partner with nonprofits to make next year even bigger.

You can also opt for a paid subscription, which helps me keep all content free for everyone, all the time.

Subscribe now

And if you’re a nonprofit, an ocean advocate, or simply an orca lover — come celebrate with us. I’m hosting a free virtual gathering on Friday 17 July to share our letters, orca encounters, and ideas for year two. Register here.

Thanks for writing, sharing, and showing up. Have your favourite day.

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1. Make a sailboat your home.

2. Start your own business.

And I did both. At the same time.

Sailing life has a steep learning curve and a steep budget with plenty of “Oops” line items — the occasional big surprise, like getting towed into a marina because your engine died, but usually it’s the small stuff: spending a month somewhere instead of a couple of days, never mind sorting out all the gremlins on a boat that’s new to you, even if it’s as old as you are.

Starting your own business means everything is on you. Even if you know what products or services you want to offer, there’s still choosing how and where to register, building a website, developing a brand, marketing, networking — each with its own steep learning curve and a million choices. And if you need investors, your business plan has to look like you know exactly what you’re doing, even while you’re questioning every step.

And I absolutely questioned everything, repeatedly. But what makes these two simultaneous life-altering transitions easier is that both decisions are an expression of my deepest values.

I have been an ocean advocate since preschool. Living on the sea, in rhythm with the currents and the wind, brings me closer to the source of all life and restores me. Dolphins playing in the wake of my bow, Minke Whales feeding in the distance, the colour of the water at anchor — these things don’t just remind me about what I’m fighting for or that not all is lost (despite what the news cycle tells us), they also help me maintain a feeling of awe, wonder, and appreciation for the marvel of life and all the beauty in this world.

Starting my own business is the answer to a question I’ve carried since I was a teenager: what can I do, with my specific set of skills and knowledge, to help build a better future right now? My whole life was spent searching for where I truly fit. I earned several degrees and stacked skills along the way. And when I realised no one was doing the kind of work I wanted to do — I created a business to do it.

My husband and I had walked up a hill with a beautiful view of a lush island and a tiny marina where our boat was safely docked after three and a half long days at sea. It was night. We watched the city lights twinkle and the clouds glow in the moonlight as they drifted past. My shoes were off; I could feel the earth under my feet. It felt so good, I wanted my whole body pressed against the Earth. Lying there, it hit me: I can be both. I can be a gardener and a sailor. I can be connected to the land and the sea.

So often we are taught to label ourselves as one thing, as if that’s all we’re allowed to be. It starts in school, when you’re practically branded as a jock or a nerd or some other stereotype. But human beings are so much more complex than that — and truly, I can’t think of anything in Nature that is just “one thing.” Land and sea are connected. All living things move through cycles and stages.

Lying in the grass, connected to both, I realised this was the abundance mindset I’d been cultivating starting to take root at a new depth.

There are several exciting business opportunities ahead of me, including work with value-aligned people and my own family. We are all doing our best to create abundance for one another because we share a belief that all flourishing is mutual.

Growing up, I never imagined I’d have opportunities like these. I never thought this much abundance would find me; that I could sail to present at a summit while planning a biodiversity-culture project in the Nordic countryside; that I could be an ocean person and share my green thumb.

And that was the wildest part of starting my own business: I just keep taking action as if everything is going to work. I visualised my goals — short-term and long-term — and pursued them, even when timelines stretched or something I’d counted on had to be postponed. I saw every step as going well, as aligning with the bigger picture, as things falling into place the way they were meant to.

And it’s working.

I had to laugh at myself — whenever I started questioning my qualifications or my capacity, I found myself reaching for my own leadership coaching tools. Ha. It *does* work, I giggled silently.

Starting this business is truly a reflection of everything I’ve learned, from my mom teaching me the meaning of “kill them with kindness” when I was three, to environmental decision-making in grad school. It’s built on my experience in program development and a deep appreciation for the power of community. Boat life reinforces that too — people come together quickly around a shared passion, and there’s a baseline of trust between strangers because of what they understand about each other.

The Resources page on my website is a direct reflection of my values. My core leadership coaching services are geared toward mid-career to C-suite professionals and organisations who want to embed regenerative sustainability into their work — but I’m committed to offering things at low or no cost, because accessibility is central to a better future.

There’s a free Leadership Self-Assessment, originally created as a gift for participants in my free workshop series, Rooted Leadership, but available to anyone who wants it.

Drawing on personal experience and an early dive into the harms of overtourism, I created The Place Audit: A Diagnostic Tool for Regenerative Tourism. I’m currently planning a five-week program for tourism operators that invites them to listen to the communities they work within, begin to heal any harms, and build something beautiful together that supports local culture and ecosystems.

The first self-paced course I published is Women Leading Conservation. As I wrote and recorded the visualisation exercises, it became clear this was something I needed to hear myself. The challenges of working in a field with scarce funding, high burnout, and a sense that you’re easily replaceable — we must build our capacity to rest, to feel connected to one another, and to identify the systemic issues we can actually change.

And of course, my love for the ocean shows up in the Restorative Ocean Community Programme Template for nonprofits — designed to be tailored to any organisation’s mission, the community they serve, and the local ecosystem.

Soon, I’ll finish the free community guide to starting a Restorative Ocean Farm and building community networks around it. Like nearly all of my work, it’s place-based, and therefore easily adapted to each ecosystem, permitting jurisdiction, business plan, and set of community values.

I was chatting with my mom about the first Rooted & Rising Leadership cohort. It’s a prime example of continuing to take action from your values, abundance thinking, and as if everything will work out: my mom is co-facilitating and we found the perfect venue in southern France for our Week 3 gathering, with hosts who share our values (and who I stumbled upon when I wasn’t even looking for a venue! But I knew it was mean to be when I saw their name: Root & Rise).

An abundance mindset really is a practice: you must practice seeing opportunities, train your brain to see abundance instead of scarcity or fear; and to do that, you need to be honest about what you want. That’s often deeper work than we expect.

To my readers, and especially my handful of paid subscribers: thank you. The comments, the conversations, and the small auto-deposits from those of you who chose a paid tier or bought me a coffee have been more encouraging than you know. It means everything to know I’m not alone in my thinking, my empathy, and my vision for a better future.

We visualised what our street would look like 100 years from now, if we got everything right. Sustainability and equity, totally sorted.

This is what people saw:

• No cars.

• Intergenerational activities.

• Community gardens and solar panels.

• Food forests.

• Trees everywhere.

This is what people heard:

• Children’s laughter.

• Birds—so many birds.

And for the second time since March, someone mentioned that the place they are right now is what they wish for the whole world in 100 years: being surrounded by Nature, having local food, and a group of supportive people and loved ones.

We asked ourselves if these visions hinted at something we’ve been waiting for permission to do—permission from our organisations or ourselves; and when we should ask for forgiveness instead of permission to do the right thing, or if we don’t need permission at all.

Then, one participant shared how her vision felt: she felt relaxed, she felt no fear, and her heart was at peace.

Immediately, another participant chimed in: “Thank you so much for saying that! I was struggling to find the words to express what I felt.” Her vision had given her permission to live in the now—to stop fearing what the future will be if she doesn’t do ‘x’ or ‘y’ thing.

That mindset shift frees us to live the future we want, right now, which is critical to creating it. Sustainability and regenerative businesses and lifestyles are not one-off, single solutions: they are a practice, something we do and learn and adapt, every day.

This is why my coaching model always starts with Reflect. That’s how you set yourself up for success; by examining assumptions and fears (which destroys their power over you), and recognising your values and goals.

It’s so much easier to lead with courage when you’re on that solid footing, because courage comes from within.

This is why I love facilitating women’s spaces. These insights, these shared moments of recognition — they’re so beautiful and authentic that I’m often holding back tears of joy. This is the future I want to create. And in these gatherings, it’s also the future I’m already living: one where women support women in building something beautiful.

After the hour ended, a few of us stayed on to chat for almost another 30 minutes. The energy was electric, book recommendations were flying, and it felt like a little community was already building.

I hope you can join us at any of our future gatherings. They are always free and, so far, always inspiring.

Learn more about the next three themes (June, July, and August) and register here for one or all gatherings.

People stop performing expertise and start wondering. They get curious, playful—and playfulness, it turns out, is one of the most underrated tools in the sustainability toolkit, because closed minds don’t innovate. This is the space I try to create in my work—where imagination opens the door to different ways of thinking, relating, and leading. The Global Sustainable Island Summit was a unique opportunity for me to do just that by presenting through live painting and conversation.

Art invites people into this shift, into curiosity and playfulness. As I painted species from restorative ocean farms around the world, I chatted with many attendees. Our conversations weaved through the connections between our work, values, and passions.

Looking at all the flags moving across the Opening Ceremony slide, I realised something about this summit that makes it unique: people came from all over the world, from different ecosystems, cultures, histories, and economic realities—but with the shared understanding of what it means to be an islander.

And I think that’s why even brief chats were invigorating. With the common ground established, it was clear that we are all on the same planet and can unite--not despite our differences, but because of them—by celebrating our differences because that’s what makes humanity so vibrant and life so full, and because being inclusive of all voices only increases our capacity to collaborate and find meaningful solutions.

The sustainability movement is missing a critical perspective that excited many of my conversation companions: the mindset shift from do less harm to build something beautiful.

This shift requires accepting that humans are not, and cannot, be separated from the environment in which we live, and that’s ok—all species impact their ecosystem, and we can choose to be keystone species: a positive force in the ecosystem.

Restorative Ocean Communities do this when they meet their needs by asking, “What does the ocean want us to grow?”

“Oh my god, we need that,” said one attendee. “And it works in any ecosystem!”

“Yes, it does!” We smiled at each other.

By the end of the Summit, I’d finished two live paintings: Cold Tending and Tropical Tending. Each one depicts species from real projects around the world that are already generating measurable ecological and social impact. For example, a pearl oyster ocean farm in Fiji has improved the water quality of the bay while providing women with economic opportunities. The ripple effect is that fathers now have more time with their kids because they are not the sole earner.

I wonder how many more benefits we’ll uncover with similar solutions.

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And dead, compared to the marshland it used to be.

Before it was engineered into a long, rectangular basin designed for reflection, this wetland was moving, humming, alive. Early colonisers frequently described marshes as “waste,” “miasmic,” and “unproductive.” Land that could not be easily farmed, built upon, or extracted from was deemed useless. To drain a swamp was to “improve” it. To fill a marsh was to make it valuable.

The transformation of wetland into monument mirrors a broader colonial imagination: land has worth only when it yields market goods or political symbolism. What cannot be possessed, straightened, monetised, or displayed has no value.

And yet, in the climate era, marshlands have emerged not as marginal spaces but as frontline defenders. Wetlands sequester carbon in astonishing quantities. They buffer storm surge. They filter water. They cradle biodiversity. What was once dismissed as a waste of space is now understood to be among the most essential ecosystems on Earth.

It’s a lesson Western society keeps forgetting and re-learning.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the stunning wetland wading birds were slaughtered in staggering numbers so that their breeding plumes could adorn women’s hats. Egrets, herons, and other marsh birds were hunted nearly to extinction for fashion. Entire rookeries were wiped out during nesting season, leaving chicks to starve in their nests.

People had to confront how close they came to erasing beauty from the world in favour of hoarding beauty as possession for individuals.

The crisis sparked something unexpected. The modern conservation movement began to coalesce in response to the visible collapse of bird populations. Organisations like the National Audubon Society formed to protect migratory birds and curb the plume trade. As detailed in Beloved Beasts, early conservation was complex and often contradictory. Hunters themselves were among the first conservationists, realising—with pragmatic clarity—that they could hunt their way out of hunting. Their concern was, at first, self-serving: preserve enough wildlife to continue the sport. But it marked a cultural awakening to impact and limits.

Conservation, in this form, was an important turning point. It recognised that human activity could unravel entire species. It sought restraint. It attempted balance.

But balance is not yet relationship.

Conservation often operates within the same framework that once drained the marsh: humans as managers, nature as resource, protection as a matter of calibrated control — how much can we take without collapse? It is a negotiation between economy and environment, a strategy of doing less harm.

There is another way of understanding our place here.

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer describes the Honourable Harvest: a set of principles rooted in Indigenous knowledge systems that guides us to ask before taking, take only what we need, to use what we take fully, and to give back in reciprocity. It is not management. It is participation as members of the community of living beings.

Under this lens, a marsh is not waste. A bird is not ornament. Land is not raw material awaiting improvement. Ecosystems are life support systems; plants and animals are understood as kin. We are ecosystem citizens.

Imagining the reflecting pool as reclaimed marshland, I placed a Whooping Crane wading into the shallows. Their story is our story too—by the 1940s, there were only about 15 cranes left. The survival of this species required human intervention: habitat protection, captive breeding, and carefully planned reintroduction. I love how this flies in the face of the argument that “we should not interfere.” It’s so silly—first, we’ve already interfered. It is our responsibility to heal the harms we’ve caused. And second, the idea that humans “interfere” with Nature requires the illusion that we are separate from Nature. But clearly, we are not. We will always be impacting the ecosystems in which we live—we can choose to restore, to heal the harm. The Whooping Crane reminds us that we can make positive change when we accept responsibility and act with care. It’s not just about ecological restoration—it’s the restoration of humanity’s relationship to life. We no longer see Whooping Cranes where this marshland once was—this place no longer supports their lives or resembles their homes. I like to imagine a future where the conditions are such that they return of their own accord.

And you know what? Even if the highly manicured Reflecting Pool were to be rewilded to overgrown, lush marshland, buzzing and shifting and alive, the water would still offer reflection on calm days. The only question in my mind is, What do we want to see in it?

Hello all - you may have been expecting an art post last Sunday. Due to my very aggravated shoulder injury, I had to put a lot on hold, but I hope to be sharing it this weekend. I was able to dictate most of this post, so while it’s not Sunday, I’m taking a stab at normalising irregular posting schedules because we are all human. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

A few weeks ago, my mom and I hosted our first public workshops, and honestly, we didn’t know quite what to expect.

What we got was beyond anything we could have planned.

Two participants told us the guided visualisation brought them to tears—the good kind. The kind that comes when something long-held finally has space to breathe; when flipping the script feels good. As facilitators, there is no greater signal that you’ve created something worth showing up for.

The workshops began with a simple invitation: imagine a world 100 years from now where we got everything right. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Then we reflect: what does that vision tell you about your values and how you want to lead today?

What emerged from that question was remarkable. Across two sessions, with women from different industries, different countries, and different stages of their careers, the same themes surfaced again and again.

When we dream of a future we can fall in love with, we dream of a world where everyone is taken care of; where there is belonging, connection, community, safety, and calm.

And then someone said something that stopped the room: we can create this future by living it now. Celebrating wins. Supporting each other. Building community, in both our personal lives and in our professional ones.

This is something I believe deeply. There’s a quote often attributed to Emma Goldman: “If your revolution doesn’t have dancing, I don’t want any part of it.” It took me years to understand it, but when it hit, wow.

Joy is not a reward for when the work is done. It is the work. Celebrating wins, caring for each other, building community, finding pleasure in the everyday—these are not distractions from building a better world. They are what building a better world actually looks like from the inside.

We live in a system that profits from your exhaustion and isolation. The relentless news cycle, the culture of overwork, the sense that everything is broken and nothing you do matters — this is not an accident. Burnout and helplessness are extraordinarily convenient for those who benefit from the status quo. A person who feels overwhelmed and alone does not organise. They do not vote. They buy something to feel better and scroll on.

Choosing joy is a radical act. Leading from a place of abundance rather than scarcity is a radical act. Believing the future is worth falling in love with and acting like it’s possible, leading like it’s possible—that’s perhaps the most radical act of all.

Many other insights that stayed with me:

That there are already many places leading the way in transformative sustainability—we are not starting from nothing, we are joining something.

That holding two truths at once is one of the most important leadership skills of our time: the polycrisis is real, systemic change is necessary, and the scale of what we face is staggering—and collective action matters, even when we can’t see our individual impact.

That being afraid to put yourself out there and doing it anyway is not recklessness. It’s courage. And that accountability—not perfection—is what earns trust.

That finding what works for you, from work-life balance to knowing when to push and when to rest, is not a luxury. It’s a leadership practice.

These conversations confirmed everything my mom and I believed when we designed our Rooted & Rising Leadership program. The most transformative thing a leader can do is work in alignment with their values and have a strong vision for a future they love.

Which is why we’ve decided to continue with a summer series called Rooted Leadership—a name that puts leadership front and centre, where it belongs. Same guided visualisation, same intimate conversations, but each month we’ll gather around a fresh theme to keep the exploration alive.

If you attended one of our March workshops, thank you. You made it what it was.

And if you haven’t joined us yet, we’d love to see you this summer. Our workshops will be the second Saturday of the month, from May-August 2026, and always free.

All the Details & Registration Links:

Rooted Leadership: A free monthly workshop for women shaping a sustainable future

Join us for one hour of guided visioning, intimate conversation, and genuine reflection.

This summer, we’re gathering every second Saturday around a leadership theme, offering fresh ideas for returning participants while making it easy to drop in at any time for new participants.

9 May - Lead with Courage (register)

13 June - Lead with Connection (register)

11 July - Lead with Alignment (register)

8 August - Lead with Joy (register)

Saturdays at 9:00 Los Angeles / 17:00 London

We’ll open with a guided visualisation, explore three reflection prompts, and you’ll leave with a free leadership tool to continue the journey in your own time.

Space is intimate and intentional.

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This post is from my monthly blog, Insights, on my website, Restoring Sustainability, where I share leadership tips, mindset shifts, and otherwise provide thought pieces for transformative sustainability in business sectors. Free Leadership Workshop offered on 21 March (Sat) and 25 March (Wed) for all you amazing ladies! More info below.

It was drizzling as I arrived in Paris, and I was happy to escape the icy wind as I found a seat on the metro. Thankfully, the weather cleared before I reached my stop. Walking past Place de la République, I found myself thinking about the revolutionaries who once gathered there—people who challenged the systems of their time and helped open doors to the freedoms many of us benefit from today.

It made me wonder: could I be meeting a future changemaker tomorrow?

The Director of the master’s program Business Transformation for Sustainability invited me to spend a day lecturing at KEDGE Business School’s Paris campus. The title alone told me this was not your average business program, and I was excited to meet students who had already chosen to focus their careers on sustainability. My goal was to inspire them, challenge them, and offer concrete examples of how different worldviews and environmental values are shaping real change.

The program director asked me to focus on one of my areas of expertise: ecocentric legal movements around the world and their implications for business. In preparation, I also looked into developments in France, including the 2021 Climate & Resilience Act, which introduced stronger mechanisms to hold decision-makers accountable for environmental harms linked to business activities.

As I built the lecture, the material naturally organised itself around the model I use in my work: Reflect, Integrate, and Implement.

First, I asked the students to reflect on what sustainability meant to them personally, and what the future could look like if we got everything right. So often, we are taught to fear the future because of how unsustainable current systems are. But what is a future we could fall in love with? What would that look like? From there, we explored movements from around the world—starting with ideas more familiar within Europe and expanding outward to systems and practices many had never encountered before.

Several times I asked, “Has anyone heard of this?” Each time, the class slowly shook their heads.

“Great,” I said. “I love sharing new ideas.”

And so we explored them together, always grounding the discussion in how these frameworks might influence the businesses these students will one day lead or advise.

The questions they asked were thoughtful and engaged. One, in particular, stayed with me. A student raised her hand and said:

“Everything you’re saying seems so obvious—at least now that you’ve explained it. But how do I convince others this is the best path for business and the world?”

She openly admitted something I’ve heard many times from students: as someone just entering the workforce, she worried employers might dismiss her perspective.

My answer was simple, but important.

Your voice matters, regardless of your position. This is your future, too.

Not everyone will listen right away—and that’s okay. Over time, you find your people: colleagues, mentors, and collaborators who share similar values. And those who challenge you often help refine how you communicate your ideas.

During my own graduate studies, I was fortunate to study the sociology of environmental decision-making, along with an environmental writing course that emphasised the importance of rhetoric: understanding when, why, and how we communicate ideas. These skills are invaluable for anyone working at the intersection of sustainability and business. I encouraged her and the rest of the class to seek out elective classes and opportunities that strengthen these skills.

In many ways, that work is central to my professional practice. A large part of what I do is help people clarify their vision and values, find the courage to use their voice, and communicate innovative ideas in ways that resonate with others.

When you deeply understand what you believe—and why—you can speak about it with clarity and conviction. And that conviction is often what inspires others to listen and makes for inspirational leaders.

By the end of the six hours we spent together, I left feeling energised and encouraged.

While I don’t like placing all our hopes for the future on the next generation—after all, meaningful change must happen now—the students in that room reminded me that the transformations I’m seeing today will find support and likely be improved upon by the leaders of tomorrow. The students in that class came from around the world, bringing different perspectives and experiences, yet sharing a common goal: building businesses that are nature-positive, climate-responsible, and aligned with the well-being of both people and planet.

With so many seeking to move beyond the status quo, we all have good reason to feel hopeful.

If you are a woman looking to lead projects, teams, and your organisation in transformative sustainability, join my free workshop!

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Prefer to listen? This content will be available over a time-lapse video of the painting on Tuesday, 3 March 2026, on YouTube.

Empires have long commemorated themselves in stone.

Ancient Egypt raised obelisks to honour the sun god Ra—monoliths carved from a single piece of granite, lifted skyward as symbols of cosmic order and divine permanence. Rome later stole and transported many of those obelisks to its own capital, trophies of conquest. Monuments have always been a visual language of justifying dominance: look how great we are, they say.

When the United States chose an obelisk design for the Washington Monument, it followed in the footsteps of these empires that believed might makes right. A young republic borrowing the architectural grammar of ancient empires was making a claim: we belong among civilisations that last.

But the monument’s own history complicates that myth.

George Washington died in 1799, and shortly after, a monument in the first president’s honour was proposed. But it took 85 years to complete. Construction didn’t even begin until 1848, and was repeatedly stalled for a variety of reasons, and all the while, funding came and went. At one point, a nativist political party briefly seized control of the building society and, not liking the Pope, took the stone he donated and chunked it into the Potomac River. The Civil War halted progress entirely; for a brief period, the stump of a monument was surrounded by wartime cattle and slaughter operations. It was a fractured symbol of a nation at war with itself. When construction resumed decades later, a different quarry supplied the marble, leaving a visible colour shift about 150 feet above the ground—an unintentional line of division. The monument is literally branded with interruption.

Architects ensured it was the tallest structure in the world upon completion in 1884, but it didn’t keep the title for very long. Five years later, the Eiffel Tower surpassed it. Another monument full of controversy, yet also built on the idea that bigger is better and progress is vertical. The struggle to complete the Washington Monument reflects how hard it is to create a civilisation out of alignment with the ecosystem; we are constantly being told “this is the best way to do things” when, in fact, we’re working harder than we ever have in history, the planet is being murdered, and everyone is competing for titles because they hold the promise of status and monetary comfort (that’s supposed to make life easier, right? And make us happy? Does that end the rat race, when we get the best title?).

Trees do not compete for titles.

Before colonisation, the Mid-Atlantic region surrounding what is now Washington, D.C., was part of a near-continuous forest. Tulip poplars (Liriodendron tulipifera, the “tulip-bearing lily tree”) were among the tallest beings in that ecosystem. Still growing today, they get their name from their tulip-looking flowers, which bloom in late spring, offering pollen to native insects, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Their trunks rise straight and strong, not to dominate, but to participate in a forest community structured from canopy to root, air to soil, and in cyclical time. Hundreds of years ago, these forests were dynamic, full of different tree species, soil microbes, and flourishing life on the forest floor.

Colonial expansion nearly erased that forest in the name of “development” and “progress,” both narrowly defined as the conversion of living systems into resources—using Nature instead of living with Nature. The Washington Monument stands on land that was once home to the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Chesapeake region, including the Piscataway Indian Nation, Piscataway Conoy Tribe, Pamunkey Indian Tribe (farther south but part of the Powhatan paramount chiefdom network), and the Nacotchtank (also called the Anacostan). Before marble rose from the Mall, this land was part of a carefully tended forest. Algonquian-speaking peoples shaped the Chesapeake landscape through fire, agriculture, and seasonal movement. What settlers later described as “pristine wilderness” was in fact a cultural ecosystem—abundant not because it was untouched, but because it was in relationship.

Given how most high school history textbooks (in the USA) ignore the Indigenous Peoples across what are now called “the Americas,” I think it’s important to emphasise that these were not small, scattered bands of people just wandering aimlessly through the wilderness (which seemed to be the impression in my high school). They were structured societies with diplomacy, agriculture, trade, and territorial governance.

Indigenous nations actively managed forests and land through:

• Controlled burning (low-intensity cultural fire)

• Selective harvesting

• Agroforestry

• Rotational agriculture

• Intentional encouragement of certain species

These practices created:

• Open understories

• Meadow-like clearings

• Abundant game habitat

• Nut-producing tree dominance (oak, chestnut, hickory)

• Travel corridors

When colonists arrived, they often mistook these carefully stewarded systems for “natural abundance.”

The Piscataway Confederacy was a powerful political and trade network already in existence long before colonisers came—so, the colonisers had a choice. They could have chosen to respect the existing frameworks of Indigenous People and learn to live with them in a place that’s new to them; but instead, en masse, they chose violence.

A few individuals did choose to assimilate into Indigenous communities—so many that Benjamin Franklin commented on the phenomenon, noting that some Europeans who lived among Indigenous nations chose to remain, but the reverse was rare. I don’t bring this up to say that Indigenous cultures were some kind of utopia—no one is perfect—what’s key here is that this asymmetry challenged colonial myths of cultural supremacy then, and it continues to challenge it today. The United Nations and international environmental law are all still based on the colonial ideas of civilisation, development, and that humans and Nature are somehow separate; but there are other worldviews that can help us, as the human species, “live in harmony with Nature” as the UN likes to say is possible by just slapping the word “sustainable” in front of “development” without questioning the systems themselves.

Of course, as we know, this conceptual challenge did not change colonial extractive practices: Timber harvests cleared land for homes, railroads, fuel, fences, agriculture, and cities. Maryland’s population surged from 34,000 colonists in 1700 to 300,000 near the eve of the American Revolution. Private property regimes and extractive agriculture replaced Indigenous land stewardship systems that had long maintained ecological balance.

The myth of American greatness is inseparable from its history: genocide of Indigenous peoples, enslavement of Africans, deforestation, and environmental destruction that continues today in the name of progress. The obelisk stands on land violently remade, commemorating a slave-owning man who even took their teeth for his dentures. And the excuse of “it was different back then, people didn’t know” does not fly with me—human beings didn’t just recently develop empathy. They chose not to listen to other people’s pain. The hypocrisy of the USA’s birth was not missed by Thomas Day, a British man, who noted how ridiculous it is to write with one hand that “all men are created equal” while holding a whip against enslaved people in the other hand.

Building empires or “civilisation” on dominance and ignoring our habitat only scales the greatness of suffering.

Tulip poplars tell a different story about what it means to be ‘great.’

Yes, these trees grow tall—but in so doing, they reach sunlight while having few lower branches, providing a canopy and not taking more than they need; their roots go deep, stabilising soil; their greatness in height and size plays a role in the ecosystem that benefits and supports more life.

Unlike the colonial concept of linear time, where we march forward toward an ever “better” future, these deciduous trees move in rhythm with the seasons: they photosynthesise and grow in Summer, they turn vibrant shades of yellow in Autumn, they rest in Winter, and in Spring, when the Earth renews herself, they bloom.

The historic range of the tulip poplar spans the eastern seaboard, from present-day Florida up into Canada and just across the Mississippi River. For the Cherokee and other Indigenous peoples, the tree was medicine and material, shelter and vessel. Bark infusions treated fever and wounds; wood became homes, furniture, baskets; the long straight trunks were carved into dugout canoes, carrying people across rivers not as conquerors, but as travellers in relationship with water and wood.

We cannot undo the histories that shaped this land. But we can choose what kind of structures and systems we build now.

I decided to represent all this by placing the obelisk within a tulip tree flower, because nothing we do happens outside an ecosystem—all our empires, all our wars, but also all our families, our celebrations, our joy—we are a species cradled in a habitat; by recognising we are just as connected to the trees as to each other, we can model our systems after ecosystems, creating symbiotic relationships and systems of care. Because isn’t that the point of society? To make life easier and more enjoyable for all of us?

This year, I’ve been very intentional about living a “slow life.” Unlike most things in my life, I didn’t even bother to research it. Maybe I have a head start, being raised by hippies who value the little things, practice gratitude, teach thoughtfulness, and focus on collective care. Growing up like that didn’t prevent me from living a fast life—when society demands you move faster than a human pace, it’s easy to get caught up. And there were some pretty intense years… at one point, I was caring for my immunocompromised dad through multiple surgeries during a pandemic while in law school (among other things). The pressure was unimaginable, and every day it felt like there was more news about how the world was on fire. It took everything I had just to get out of bed in the morning. My body rebelled—I’d fall asleep nearly every afternoon, no matter how much I slept the night before or how much coffee I had, or whatever other “self-care” I had done. The stress was so high for so long, every day my body just said, Nope.

It feels like I’ve spent the last several years doing what I can to come down from that awful cortisol high, to heal my mind, body, and literally grow back some grey matter.

Two weeks ago, I was preparing to give a lecture at Kedge Business School in Paris. It was 6 hours of class time, all about what Earth Law is and how we can re-imagine sustainability based on its principles. I was working on my slides and felt a bit nervous—I’ve never taught for 6 hours in one day before. Did I have too much material? Too little? How did I want to frame the day? Should I present this or that first? What makes the most sense?

Instead of pushing through, I took a break. I went to the local pool, enjoyed the sun, and swam the laziest laps with my sunglasses on just to feel the salt water pressing against my skin. After my mind and body relaxed, the presentation wrote itself as I slowly swam back and forth. Thoughts just flowed. I finished the slides that afternoon.

This is why slow is pro. I’ve shared this expression before, sailors say it a lot, usually about docking the boat. But it applies to so much—double-checking the wind, expecting things to take longer because they always do.

So today, after much research, I had the essay complete—but not the art piece that goes with it. And I decided to be ok with that. I also decided that, after nearly one-and-a-half years of posting every Sunday, I am going to post bi-weekly and maybe even work on normalising irregular posting times! Apparently, other authors are doing this, as life doesn’t always neatly fall in line with calendars. This speed will allow me to maintain quality and add more of what I enjoy: art. I’m working on a surrealist watercolour series exploring societal myths, our reality, and transformation—and I want to share at least one painting per month while continuing to live at a human pace.

Next week, you’ll have the first art piece and essay.

Thank you for being loyal readers and staying with me on this journey, where I learn to live at a human pace.

I promise, I say, as I open my navigation app and look up the not-so-secret anchorage.

This happens a lot. Sailors share semi-secret spots with other sailors they deem… worthy. And by worthy, I mean respectful of place and culture. Not a frat boy on spring break. Not someone chasing the next viral video.

Living on a sailboat, a travel blog is a logical way to make some passive income. Post gorgeous photos of crystal clear water and sell everything through affiliate links: my bikini, my snorkel, my travel DIY laundry bag, my cute waterbottle, oh, and don’t forget links to this tour and that tour, so I can get a commission on your booking. Blah blah blah.

But as someone who watched my home fall victim to overtourism, it just felt…iky. And as someone who used to love travel and has grown to dread it (not sailing, the rare occasion I have to fly and stay in a hotel), I knew something about travel had changed. To sum it up, when my parents met travelling, they slept on beaches and could easily hop on and off local and international trains, and making a reservation never crossed their minds. But I went backpacking in my 20s, it was chaos, and expensive, and you needed a reservation for everything, and it was challenging to get away from touristy spots because that’s where transit took you (but I did manage). I tried to find the quiet, beautiful towns my parents visited, but nothing was the same.

But also, as someone who sees travel as part of human nature, as an opportunity to share ideas, expand our worldviews, and deepen empathy for our fellow people and the wonders of the world… was I being selfish for hiding these places?

So I decided to do a deep dive into the tourism industry.

When Home Becomes a Destination

California has always been a big tourist spot. When I was a kid in the Bay Area, we used to play a game called “Spot the Tourist.” It was easy, they were in shorts, flip flops, and a bright I-Heart-SF hoodie they’d bought that day because they were freezing. Tourists don’t usually know that north of Pismo, you don’t go to the “beach.” You go to the coast. It was funny back then.

But as I got older, the crowds got bigger. I felt priced out of my own state. A favourite bar got featured on a TV show, and suddenly you can’t go anymore unless you’re willing to wait an hour in line. My quiet beach spot, where we used to picnic and watch the stars come out, is swarming with people in summer like a beehive. The beautiful redwoods downtown were cut down to make more parking. And don’t get me started on the cost of living, even just a cup of coffee where I used to study for finals. (Ok, I know tourism isn’t the only factor there, but it has been explicitly linked.)

I’ve moved a lot, but there are a few towns that settled into my heart as home. And I’ve watched every one of them fall victim to overtourism.

Once, I tried to show my best friend a hiking trail near my old house; it went along the cliffs, down to the beach. It was one of those places that shaped my sense of belonging to this Earth; it was where I learned to walk and where I learned to listen for rattlesnakes and cougars, while marvelling at ferns and waterfalls and the majestic Pacific. But when we arrived, the only road was bumper-to-bumper. There was a huge parking fee. Crowds spilling out everywhere.

We turned around and left. That grief is hard to describe unless you’ve felt it: the slow realisation that a place you loved is no longer there for the people who live there.

At some point, it stops being quirky.

The Colonial Legacy of Leisure

Many overtourism solutions ignore the core causes of harmful tourism. While management does matter, the typical response of “these places just need to work on tourist flow and be resilient and be sustainable” does not provide a complete picture and therefore does not offer complete solutions. One tourism leader suggested building additional attractions on the way to iconic sites so visitors won’t “linger too long” at the main one. Can you imagine travelling thousands of miles to see a wonder of the world… only to be rushed past it? It’s making tourism faster, instead of slowing it down.

To understand the causes of harmful tourism, we need to examine how we got here: tourism is often called “the leisurely face of colonialism.” Tourism today has evolved into a core expression of neoliberal capitalism: a system that transforms places into products, cultures into aesthetics, and ecosystems into experiences. Beneath the glossy promises of opportunity for the residents lies environmental degradation, dispossession, cultural erasure, gentrification, and widening inequality.

For example, Dutch colonialism presented Bali to the world as a “gateway to paradise,” and today Bali is still framed as exotic and romantic—even as locals lose land and water, sacred spaces are trespassed, and culture is commodified for entertainment. Instagram Bali does not show the reality.

But colonialism was so long ago! Nope. It’s not a discrete event in history: it’s carried on today literally by colonial powers continuing to occupy Indigenous lands and violate treaties, and it carries on in legacy institutions, laws, policies, infrastructure, and other systems that support neoliberalism and capitalism, because neoliberalism and capitalism are colonial worldviews. It is the reason that culture and Nature are commodified for tourism.

For example, in Hawai’i, Hula is a spiritual practice, an offering to gods, occurring at specific times for specific reasons and in natural spaces; the western gaze has not only taken these out of context by placing them in hotels as entertainment, but also by literally changing the clothing and rhythm of the dances to please western tourists. Furthermore, when Hawai’ians try to access their sacred sites to engage in traditional practices, they are basically told to f!ck off. Dr Kiona, the Founder of Education Thru Travel, shared her experience in an interview: she was leading a high school field trip to Pearl Harbour, the number one visited site on the island. Originally, Pearl Habour got its name because it was covered in pearls—they disappeared quickly after the USA military occupation. The field trip was intended to allow high schoolers to learn about traditional Hawai’ian culture by participating in the protocols of entering a sacred space, including chanting and leaving an offering. Dr Kiona and the children were confronted by the National Guard, threatening to kick them out and telling them they cannot practice chants on “national park property.”

Ironically, the colonial legacy is so harmful that it’s also harming the descendants of colonisers. The Dutch and Spanish in particular have had to address overtourism in cities like Amsterdam and Barcelona. This is because neoliberal tourism doesn’t just bring visitors; it brings an economic structure where profits flow upward—to conglomerates, corporations, foreign investors—while communities absorb the costs. For a long time, the promise of “development” and “progress” as narrowly defined by the West made everyone think it was a good thing. So tourism was propped up by policy choices: aviation fuel tax exemptions, cruise ships burning bunker fuel that is not allowed on land, and when things started to tear at the seams, governments were (and still are in most cases) unwilling to confront the industry because taxing vacations wouldn’t be a vote-winner.

Overtourism is not accidental.

It is designed.

Destinations as Wounded Places

With the understanding that the harmful impacts of tourism are a colonial legacy and the result of capitalism commodifying absolutely everything, we can more easily understand, identify, and heal the wounds.

These wounds show up in intertwined ways:

Material wounds: loss of affordable housing, neighbourhoods converted into short-term rentals, shrinking public space, and ecological decline.

Affective wounds: grief, frustration, alienation; the emotional dislocation of watching your home become unrecognisable.

Mnemonic wounds: struggles over memory and meaning; when marketing campaigns rewrite a place’s story, and protest is reframed as hostility rather than heartbreak.

Tourism is not a singular outside event. It becomes an enduring condition of intersectional injustices.

How do these wounds manifest?

Development for tourism (and most sectors) often results in tangible displacement and ecological damage, causing massive socio-ecological ripple effects.

In Cambodia’s Koh Kong Province, a large Chinese corporation displaced thousands of families from their ancestral homes—land they had lived on for generations—in order to build a major турист development. The families resisted, but in the end they were offered pennies for their land.

And tourism development often targets biodiversity hotspots—places home to species found nowhere else on Earth. The deforestation required to accommodate tourism infrastructure directly contributes to habitat fragmentation. Wildlife populations become isolated, and animals struggle to find food, shelter, or mates.

One badly affected example is the Mesoamerican Reef, which has already lost 80% of its corals, largely due to pollution released from insufficient infrastructure in trending destinations like Cancun, Tulum, and Playa del Carmen—places hosting increasing numbers of tourists every year. Luxurious resorts are being developed fast, without plans to upgrade wastewater treatment facilities and supporting infrastructure.

Across Southeast Asia, the expansion of tourist resorts along coastlines has led to the destruction of crucial mangrove forests. These forests are vital not only for local wildlife, but also for protecting against coastal erosion and flooding. They provide shelter and breeding grounds for countless species, including endangered sea turtles. And they are a massive carbon sink the planet cannot afford to lose.

The Galápagos Islands, one of the most famous biodiversity hotspots, have seen a surge in tourist numbers over the past few decades. Despite conservation efforts, the sheer volume of visitors continuously overwhelms the natural environment of the islands and exponentially increases the risk of introducing invasive species and pollution.

Other national parks and protected areas across the globe face similar challenges. In countries like Costa Rica and Tanzania, where tourism is a major economic driver, protected areas originally established to conserve wildlife are now struggling to balance conservation with the demands of tourism.

Tourist interactions with wildlife often have unintended consequences for animal behaviour. Animals that become accustomed to human presence can lose their natural fear of humans, putting both animals and people at greater risk of harm. In some national parks across Africa, close encounters between tourists and animals have altered behaviour, making animals more aggressive or dependent on human food sources. This kind of interaction also contributes to the spread of diseases between species—or even from animals to humans.

Of course, don’t get me started on my dislike of social media influencers showing you how to swim with sharks, resulting in sooo many more shark bites, and the harassment of animals in their own homes, all in the name of “get the photo/video” culture. That could be a post by itself.

And recently, despite Costa Rica being heralded as an example of sustainable tourism, locals publicly complain that they are banned from beaches that used to be public.

Then there is water—one of the clearest and most heartbreaking examples of tourism inequity.

A special report on Water Equity in Tourism from 2012 mentions a statistic that is hard to sit with: globally, almost 900 million people still lack access to clean water, and 2 million people (mostly children) die every year due to health problems arising from hindered access. Many of these numbers include people living in countries with popular tourist destinations, mainly in the Global South and the Mediterranean.

Zanzibar, Bali, India—but even Greece and Spain—are suffering from these consequences.

In Zanzibar, for example, an average household consumes a little over 93 liters of water per day. Meanwhile, the average consumption per room in a guesthouse is 686 litres—seven times more. And the difference becomes even more staggering when it comes to a luxurious five-star hotel room: consumption rises to an unbelievable 3,000+ litres of water per day.

But overtourism is not only slow violence. Sometimes it becomes an immediate tragedy.

In the small French village of Saint Guilhem le Désert, someone actually died as a direct result of overtourism: an ambulance was unable to reach a person having a heart attack because of traffic (as if we needed another reason to get rid of cars). Traffic flow has since been altered to prevent this from happening again.

We can also look at the damages incurred just from getting to the tourist destination.

The most polluting form of travel in terms of emissions is air travel. Airplanes accounted for 40% of total CO₂ emissions in the tourism sector in 2005.

Cruise ships are among the top polluters as well. These “floating cities” create extra noise in deep waters and along migration routes of aquatic mammals, who are highly sensitive to disturbance in what should be a serene environment. Cruises also release high amounts of raw sewage and passenger waste directly into the water. Unfortunately, their waste practices are not transparent, and corruption is a known issue.

At the same time, these giant ships burn fossil fuel and release pollutants into the air, including excessive amounts of carbon dioxide. And worse, their fuel is artificially cheap, which contributes to the continued rise in cruise passengers. As mentioned earlier, cruise ships burn one of the cheapest and most polluting diesel fuels, with such high public health risks that it is not allowed on land.

Back on land, most accommodations still rely heavily on fossil fuel energy to run air conditioners, heat water and rooms, and power extra services like spas and pools—amenities that consume enormous amounts of power and water.

But what about all the tourism jobs?

The tourism industry loves to talk about all the jobs they create and how important it is to the “local economy.” But those jobs are often low-paid, sometimes seasonal, and generally lack security, benefits, and potential. This argument also harkens to the “white savoir” complex, because it says, “Oh, but you need my tourism dollars.” Yet most of these places were doing just fine, even flourishing, before the development of tourism in the area—which by now, we can see, often causes more harm than good. Of course, in big cities like Barcelona and Amsterdam, the “but you need tourist dollars” argument falls flat.

There’s also a terrible flaw in the logic of “you need our tourism dollars” and the image tourism also tries to sell us: You can’t market something as a “hidden gem” while in the same breath talk about all the jobs you create through tourism. If you’re creating that many jobs, then it’s no longer hidden. And this absolutely happens: I took my dad to the doctor and in the waiting room, he picked up a travel magazine and read the cover: “‘Italy’s Last Secret Beaches, Revealed!’ Oh My God, why would they do that! Perverts!”

Then there’s social media and the sneaky sale—influencers selling you an aspirational life and getting around their video being an ad in various ways. Again, this could be it’s own deep dive, but the result is a highly curated, often highly inaccurate view of travel destinations: the FOMO (fear of missing out) is for a completely fictional experience. Perhaps the most famous example is when VOX exposed the Instagram capital of the world (Positano) as having crowds so claustrophobic, you need to dissociate from your body just to make it down the street (the article was called “The Instagram Capital of the World is a Terrible Place to Be”).

To make matters worse for your wallet and the economy, your government is likely subsidising airlines. The global aviation industry sealed a deal in 1944 known as the Chicago Convention, giving tax exemption for aviation fuel. The lack of duty and no VAT on aviation fuel resulted in a “subsidy” that, in the UK, amounts to £9bn a year according to Friends of the Earth. Due to upset since that report was published, aviation fuel is now subject to air passenger duty (APD) of about £3bn, reducing the subsidy to about £6bn. When asked about this, former Prime Minister David Cameron expressed concern that taxing people’s vacations would harm votes. In essence, governments are unwilling to confront the aviation industry about the tax exemption given to its fuel. In addition to tax-free fuel, there have been allegations that some governments pay airlines to land in their countries to attract more tourists.

What it all boils down to…

The practices of tourism prioritise profit at the expense of local communities, often dispossessing and marginalising the original inhabitants while destroying the environment.

Now that we’re all thoroughly depressed, let’s look at some solutions.

In 2023, my husband and I were living in the Netherlands. Normally, we’d never go to Amsterdam in summer, never mind on a Friday! But we had an immigration appointment (forever grateful I can easily sponsor his residency). The crowd was overwhelming compared to just ten years earlier, when I had visited. I never liked big cities, but back then, I remember thinking, “Oh, what a calm city, I could live here.” Ten years later, feeling the pain of watching my own hometowns change, I understood when a commuter angrily rang her bicycle bell at tourists who obliviously walked into the crossing bike lane despite having a NO WALK sign. Tens of bicyclists had to slam on their breaks, nearly causing crashes. The entire flow of traffic (foot and fiets) was messed up. I wondered how many times a week that happens in summer.

It was just a few days later that the Amsterdam city council voted to ban cruise ships. The city council made clear that cruise ships are environmentally damaging and that the wave of tourists strain infastructure and do nothing for the economy—they eat at chains and buy cheap trinkets made in China. Locals are livid. Major Femke Halsema went a step further and commissioned a campaign of discouragement, targeting British stag parties and telling young British men planning any ‘vacation from morals’ to stay away.

Like Amsterdam, locals are standing up for their culture, their historic sites, their infrastructure, and their ecosystems:

Hallstat, Austria: 100 (of the 800 total) residents fought for a cap on daily visitors and a curfew on tour coach arrivals.

Venice, Italy: In 2021, protestors won their long battle to ban cruiseships from entering the Giudecca Canal.

Marseille, France: Marseille Provence Cruise Club introduced a flow management system for cruise line passengers in 2020, easing congestion around the popular Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde Basilica.

Orkeny, Scotland: At the beginning of 2023, the local council confirmed that 214 cruise ship calls were scheduled for the year, bringing around £15 million in revenue to the islands. Following backlash from locals, the council has since proposed a plan to restrict the number of ships on any day.

Rome, sitting at popular sites, such as the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps, has been restricted by the authorities.

Borcacy, Philippines: In 2018, the government temporarily shut it down for rehabilitation.

In Kenya’s Maasai Mara, the Narok County governor has introduced on-the-spot fines for off-roading. He also plans to double nightly park fees in peak season.

Two scholars living in an area of over-tourism offer two guiding principles that grassroots communities and governments can use to help them create meaningful change and help prevent the risk of “wound-washing,” where harm is repackaged as an attraction or branding device.

1. Local wounds must not be used in destination marketing, tours, or heritage storytelling unless affected groups have co-designed the narrative and share directly in its benefits. Without consent and fair participation, the story should not be told at all.

2. Symbolic gestures must never replace real repair. Any public storytelling, whether through plaques, exhibitions, or promotional campaigns, should be paired with concrete, measurable actions that address the original harm, such as housing access, environmental restoration, or improved governance. Without such commitments, acts of remembrance may turn into aesthetic performances that obscure ongoing injustice.

While ports may limit cruise ships and cities are banning vacation rentals in favour of residents’ ability to rent or own a home, these movements are not about closing doors; rather, they are asking you to come to the door more slowly and respectfully.

Palau has an interesting approach: all tourists must make an eco-pledge. The Palau Pledge, stamped on passports, is in the form of a poem vowing to the children of Palau that the visitor will “tread lightly, act kindly, and explore mindfully.” To ensure this is not a superficial gesture, Palau also requires all incoming flights to play a video educating passangers on their environmental responsibilities and providing a checklist of dos and don’ts. Moreover, national policies have been added to strengthen enviornmental protection and enforcement. The goal of this initiative is to ensure the youth of Palau inherit the same place as their ancestors; one capable of sustaining them not only economically, but also culturally and spiritually.

We can transform tourism with practices rooted in care and justice. If your town is suffering from the harms of tourism, I hope these examples help. Grassroots movements are showing an increasingly good track record.

If you’ve read this far and are wondering about systemic changes to tourism/travel, you’ll also like The End of Air Travel, an invitation to use our radical imaginations to envision how the world could be better without planes.

If You Travel, Be a Traveller, not a Tourist.

Definitions may vary; the exact terms are not the point. The point is the mindset.

Tourists

In Iceland, social media has spurred a wave of visitors who often wander off designated paths to capture the “perfect” photo and trample sensitive vegetation like moss fields. Litter left behind in national parks and reserves also presents a recurring issue.

At the Toulourenc Gorges in France, the influx of visitors—rising from 51,000 to 115,000 between 2019 and 2020—has caused significant ecological damage. For instance, tourists have built rock dams to create artificial pools, disrupting the natural water flow, raising temperatures, and decreasing oxygen levels, leading to an increase in algae. These alterations have had severe consequences for the ecosystem, including a decline in the brown trout population. Moreover, the rise in human activity has contributed to elevated levels of faecal bacteria in the water.

When on vacation, most of us want to forget daily responsibilities. This includes meal planning or carrying with us that refillable water bottle or other long-term use items like quality slippers or reusable shopping bags.

When indulging in that new experience, many rely on single-use plastic. In fact, tourists can produce twice as much waste in a day than residents. It has been estimated that the marine litter in the Mediterranean increases by up to 40% during the peak season.

Noise pollution arises from transportation and recreational vehicles such as snowmobiles and jet skis. Noisy tourist destinations and activities can disturb and distress wildlife, especially in sensitive ecosystems that are often the reason why tourists visit the location in the first place.

Such behaviours threaten the long-term sustainability of these places as tourist destinations and as functioning ecosystems that can support the lives of local residents (both human and more-than-human). Each piece of litter, each trampled plant, leaves a mark on the environment that may take years, even decades, to recover.

So what’s a traveller?

Of course, not all travel is harmful. The question is not whether we should travel.

The question is: how.

Travel, at its best, is slower. More relational. Rooted in humility.

While sailing in Greece, I saw what it meant to spend time in off-the-beaten-path places, guided by locals. My husband and I earned our ICCs (sailing certs for insurance purposes) with a local sailing school. Our instructor took us to small harbours, little towns, and more remote places that only fishers and other sailors could easily access. And the locals were happy to see us, chat with us, ask where we’re from and what our plans are after the course. The sailing school had a relationship with restaurant owners and harbour masters. Maybe because we were all already in the “learning” mindset, us students were also eager to listen and try traditional Greek food. (I thought I didn’t like Greek food until I ate it in Greece!)

Aside from choosing your location carefully (maybe avoiding places already known for overtourism or lessening your mark by going off-season), also consider who you’re supporting with your stay. There’s an aerial arts studio in Mexico where the owners didn’t just want to cater to wealthy tourists to turn a profit; they consciously became part of the local community and ensure that the small groups who visit engage in cultural exchange. The property itself is ecologically sound: composting toilets, biodegradable cleaning supplies, and local food prepared by local people hired at a living wage. The aerial studio also offers free classes to local kids, and guests can opt-in for tours run by local businesses, including an educational seaturtle release. And when dining out, it’s family-run restaurants all the way.

I can almost hear people crying out, “But those trips you just described must have been so expensive!” Yes and no. As we’ve seen, the cost of travel has fallen dramatically in the last 20 years, becoming increasingly accessible. As public interest in sustainable travel increases, there are notably affordable options that are eco-friendly and community-based, like a family-owned and run hostel in Costa Rica (near a public beach still frequented by locals). There are travellers on YouTube showing their no-fly journey around the world—“slow travel” blogs, I guess. If you can afford to travel, it just seems worth it to plan beyond the Instagram hotspot—you might not get the same photo as everyone else, but you’ll likely have a better time.

For example, when I finally lived the dream of snorkelling in tropical water at the famed Mesoamerican Reef, we stayed in a small hotel owned and run by locals. It was more affordable than any of the major hotels. The road wasn’t paved, kids played outside, and we were tucked away from the parties (just how I prefer it, peace and quiet). On the way to the beach, we noticed the road behind all the fancy hotels had piles of plastic waste along it. It was like the hotels literally turned a blind eye, all facing the other direction, no rooms with windows to the street. My husband and I bought trash bags and spent a whole day collecting as much as we could. I designed possible municipal ordinances and tax programs to ensure that towns could fund cleanups, support local communities, and provide education for tourists with new requirements and best practices for hotel involvement. If Palau can do it…

Not to sound preachy about my efforts or bitter about my hometowns being lost, but I think it really boils down to being thoughtful. The corporations sucking the life out of these destinations are doing so without a second thought. Until that changes, it’s up to us ‘travellers.’

So no matter when or where you go, and regardless of your budget, go mindfully.

Not a Travel Blog: Sailing for Sustainability

So no—I didn’t start a travel blog. I don’t want to be part of the machine that turns places into content. I hesitate to post photos and carefully consider the message of my Substack posts and videos when they relate to my experience in a new place or as a sailor.

But I do want to be part of something else: the sharing of ideas, cultural exchange, and engagement in the human nature of being constantly, and respectfully, curious and willing to learn. I’m not Polynesian myself, but I look up to their example not just as wayfinders, but as travellers. Their history of exploration did not result in colonialism. As Dr Kiona points out, Polynesians were sailing across the Pacific a thousand years ago and learning about each other and the ecosystem, from ridge to reef. It’s little wonder their travels left no lasting harm: their belief system includes kinship with all life. For example, today Indigenous leaders from across the Pacific, including Hawai’i, have written a treaty to recognise the legal personhood of whales, because they are not a ‘resource’ but living beings and their ancestors. Following their example, when I travel, I do my best to come to a new place with an open heart, looking for things to share with kin, both human and more-than-human.

So I focus my sailing videos on what I learn from sailing, not necessarily where I go, although sometimes that is part of it. I just hope my “Sailing for Sustainability” YouTube playlist lives up to its name.

You Made It This Far! You Earned a Cat Photo.

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As tech encroached further into my life, I realised I wasn’t uncomfortable with technology itself—I’m not a Luddite. My concern is how we understand and use our tools. Tech is both shaped by consumer culture and radically accelerates it, speeding up our sense of life: faster fashion cycles, constant upgrades, endless optimisation, and all of it always across more and more screens.

Then someone pointed out the connection between Neuralink, colonialism, and capitalism, and my mind was blown.

The ‘ichy’ vibes I got as a kid made sense. Immortality fantasies via technology are the final stage of a system seeking to control and extract. I would say that it’s commodifying the human experience, if it weren’t for the fact that it seeks to completely erase it.

So what can we do? Know how we got here to figure out where to go.

There’s a lot to unpack here, and I’ve only just discovered this wealth of discourse, so I’ve chosen to break down three concepts and provide further reading for those interested.

Let’s dive in.

(1) Indigenous Time vs. Linear Progress

With Linear Time…

• History is treated as a straight line: past → present → better future

• Progress is assumed, not questioned

• Cultures, lands, and peoples are ranked as “advanced” or “behind”

• Death becomes failure; endings become inefficiencies

Linear time isn’t neutral—it’s a colonial concept. It allowed colonisers to frame land as “unused,” cultures as “undeveloped,” and extraction as benevolent improvement. If someone is “behind,” intervention (*cough cough* violent colonialism *cough*) becomes justified. If the future is always better, whatever is destroyed along the way is collateral damage.

By contrast, many Indigenous worldviews understand time as cyclical, relational, and place-based. Meaning doesn’t come from lasting forever; it comes from taking your turn well, being a good ancestor. Death is not an error in the system—it is what allows knowledge, responsibility, and life itself to circulate. It’s an ecological necessity; fallen trees nourish the soil. Leaving a legacy behind (as opposed to living forever) creates meaningful intergenerational relationships as wisdom and skills are shared; it’s why some people can engage in stewardship that considers seven generations ahead. It’s why we will plant trees that won’t provide shade for us, but for our descendants. Immortality fantasies collapse this circulation, creating scarcity and promoting wealth-hoarding.

See also: Time is (not) A Human Construct

(2) Why Tech Loves Disembodiment v. Scientific Understandings of Cognition

• Bodies get tired, sick, pregnant, disabled, and old; thus requiring care.

• Bodies require care (it’s worth mentioning twice), land, food, water, and relationships

• Bodies impose limits—and limits slow extraction

Tech culture consistently imagines intelligence without flesh: pure cognition, clean interfaces, frictionless selves. Disembodiment seeks to remove ethical struggles. A mind without a body owes nothing to ecosystems, caregivers, kin, or future generations. No ageing, no dependency, no grief, no pain of any kind.

This is colonial abstraction turned inward. Just as land becomes “resource” and people become “labour,” the self becomes data, pattern, and asset; something severable from time and place, something to be bought and sold, to be owned—it’s not just colonising your mind, it’s also commodifying your mind.

But modern neuroscience keeps ruining the fantasy: cognition is hormonal, microbial, sensory, relational. Cognition is distributed throughout the body: your heart sends more electrical signals to your brain than vice versa, the microbiome in your guts is busy producing/regulating serotonin, GABA, dopamine, and telling your brain things, plus other systems inform your brain of your experience that shapes not just your physical health but your mental health. Cognition isn’t just neurons firing—it’s immune responses, microbial balance, and metabolic processes interacting. You don’t have a body—you are one. There is no mind-body separation. Uploading “you” would be like uploading a wave without water.

(3) The Broken Promise of Escaping Climate Collapse

• Immortality fantasies have surged as ecological futures destabilise

• Billionaire longevity projects rise alongside climate breakdown

• Escape narratives replace repair narratives

This isn’t optimism—it’s exit planning. When extraction comes up against planetary limits, societies face a choice: repair systems through care, redistribution, and creating reciprocal relationships with ecosystems—or escape through bunkers, Mars, and digital eternity. Tech culture overwhelmingly chooses escape because repair requires accepting we cannot control everything, and we are not the superior beings colonialism has taught us we are—we are a species living in an ecosystem, and we must live with it to thrive. Moreover, it requires us to be present in time and place—to lean into the friction of being human; we must grieve for what we’ve lost, and we must consider ethics to move forward and heal together.

Immortality becomes climate denial in sleeker clothing. Not “this isn’t happening,” but “I won’t be subject to it.” This feeds directly into the core of American culture, which is highly individualistic. The irony here is that when people say they want to be uploaded to the cloud, what they may not be aware of, is that they are saying they want to live a life of “luxury” (as defined by tech bros) that requires rare earth minerals to create the data centers, immense amounts of energy to run them, water to cool them, and of course, other people’s labor to maintain them.

Uploading consciousness wouldn’t transcend collapse—it would accelerate it, while offering salvation only to a select group of wealthy who can afford it. And who will eventually “die” when the data center can no longer be maintained by us Poors.

And I Get it.

Death is scary. It’s a huge unknown. And with climate change threatening our very existence, it makes sense that the average person could be easily seduced by digital immortality. It has the added benefit of appearing to escape the pressures of end-stage capitalism: we’re being crushed by the increased cost of living and low wages, the stress of multiple jobs, of not being able to turn on the heat, of worrying about how to feed our children or how to care for our parents. Sprinkle the keeping up with the Jones’ consumer culture and bombarding people with images of perfection, and it’s no wonder so many have lost touch with what makes life meaningful. The desperation in the air is so thick you could cut it with a butter knife.

What if we fall in love with the future? ~ Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

Immortality isn’t the answer to fear or despair; connection is. It’s through community and caring for each other that we face the ups and downs of life, joy and grief, struggle and growth—the friction of life. It’s that friction which makes life interesting and exciting, and yes, if we’re lucky, we learn and grow from it. It’s why “no rainbows without rain” is so cliché: because it’s true. A life without friction isn’t life. I’m sure some people might be thinking, “I guess you’ve never had a hard time!” Ha. Haha. The reason I’m in love with systems of care and community is that I know firsthand how essential they are.

Community isn’t a “nice to have,” it’s how humans have always survived. It’s the core element of any meaningful climate solution and of finding meaning in life. Through connection and community, we become stewards of each other and of the Earth; we create a future we can fall in love with and be happy to offer our descendants. We become good ancestors, part of something bigger than ourselves. We live deeply, we live well.

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Further Reading:

Mind Uploading — Wikipedia overview
A clear, balanced summary of the mind-uploading concept, including key scientific and philosophical critiques (e.g., copying vs. preserving consciousness). Mind uploading (overview)

Transhumanism — Philosophy of enhancement
Explains the transhumanist movement, including its goals around enhancement and longevity — useful context for why tech culture gravitates toward immortality. Transhumanism (philosophy)

TESCREAL — critique of intertwined Silicon Valley ideologies
Explores a coined term (Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalists, Effective Altruism, Longtermism) used by critics to describe how certain tech futurist beliefs justify big projects like longevity and AGI. TESCREAL (ideological critique)

“The Machiavellian Science of Immortality” — Worldcrunch critique of billionaire transhumanism
Article focusing on how and why tech elites champion longevity and transhumanist ideas. Tech billionaires and immortality critique

Cambridge Core: Welcome to the age of longevity capitalism
Examines how longevity research reflects capitalist and elite priorities rather than collective needs.

Scientific paper: “The quest for the Benjamin Button effect…”
A bioethical/ecological analysis of the pursuit of longevity and immortality in Silicon Valley. Bioethical and ecological issues in longevity research

Indigenous Futurisms
An overview of how Indigenous artists and thinkers reconceptualise time and future narratives, challenging Western linear progress assumptions. Indigenous Futurisms Movement

“Why Conscious States Cannot Be Copied or Repeated,” ResearchGate
A philosophical argument about why consciousness might not be something that can be duplicated or “uploaded.”

“Rethinking AI in the age of climate collapse” Paper
Examines broader technological optimism versus ecological reality.

“Virtual Immortality” book entry
Scholarly exploration of transhumanist visions and how they relate to broader philosophical and religious themes. Virtual Immortality (book)

“Hopi time controversy” shows how assumptions about temporal concepts vary across cultures. Hopi time controversy (linguistic debate)

I immediately fantasised about employees quitting en masse, bringing the giant corporation to its knees.

But that can only happen if we use clotheslines.

It can only happen if we have community systems in place to support those employees quitting. We need community gardens, communal childcare, lending libraries of things, publicly owned solar farms, and yes, clotheslines because dryers are expensive to the wallet (and the planet).

Why should we do this? How will this help?

Because it’s not just about Whole Foods. It’s about supporting each other in taking whatever actions we can to stand up to fascism—it’s about being a united front. It’s about showing the government that we, the people, hold the power. The government is not doing its job—which is to support a society that takes care of everyone. So we’ll do it.

That way, if a bunch of Whole Foods employees want to go on strike, they know we have their backs. We’ll make sure they have food, childcare, electricity, and other essentials as they go on strike or quit or protest—because they are standing up to fascism for all of us, and that needs our support in whatever way we can offer it.

This is also bigger than ICE, bigger than the woes of today. I listen to Dr Ayana Elizabeth Johnson a lot, and she talks about “falling in love with the future.” Imagine that. Loving the future, being excited for it; what does that look like to you? Is it solar punk? Is it a community-centric revival of the Arts & Crafts Movement? Is it a global gift economy?

Whatever it is, we start now. We start with backyard vegetable beds and hijacking HOAs to promote clothes lines and beekeeping and banning lawns. It’s creating the circumstances that support employees quitting their jobs when their employers side with aspiring tyrants.

So go forth and organise your communities. Create systems of care. It’s ok to start small, to be imperfect. Just start.

For those of you who responded to my questions about clothes lines all those months ago, thank you. A short history of perspectives on dryers versus clothes lines is below.

For those of you wondering why tf I wanted to research laundry habits, now you know.

When clothes dryers became widely available (mid-20th century onward)

Post-WWII United States (1940s–1960s): convenience as progress

• Electric clothes dryers entered the American market alongside washing machines as part of the postwar “modern home,” heavily promoted through advertising.

• Ads framed speed, automation, and labour-saving as moral goods—especially for women—equating modern appliances with freedom, happiness, and success.

• Hanging laundry outdoors was subtly recast as old-fashioned, inefficient, and incompatible with the modern suburban ideal.

Suburbanization + advertising (1950s–1970s): visibility and respectability

• As suburbs expanded, clotheslines became visually coded as “messy” or “unsightly,” clashing with manicured lawns and uniform neighbourhoods.

• Homeowners’ associations and local ordinances increasingly restricted or banned outdoor clotheslines.

• The presence of a dryer became a quiet marker of middle-class respectability; a clothesline suggested you hadn’t fully arrived into modern prosperity.

The symbolic shift: clotheslines as a marker of poverty

• By the late 20th century, line-drying in the U.S. was often associated with:

  • Not being able to afford a dryer

  • Living in rural, low-income, or immigrant communities

  • Being “behind” technologically

• This stigma persisted even though clotheslines are cheaper, gentler on clothing, and more energy-efficient.

Efficiency = speed (not energy) in American culture

• In the U.S., “efficiency” came to mean faster and less visible labour, not lower resource use.

• Time saved for the individual household was prioritised over energy consumption, infrastructure strain, or environmental cost.

• The dryer fit perfectly into a culture that valued instant results and invisible work.

Europe: a very different trajectory

Dryers as optional, not the default

• In much of Europe, dryers were slower to become standard household appliances due to:

  • Higher electricity costs

  • Smaller homes and apartments

  • Older building stock without dedicated laundry rooms

• Line-drying (outdoor or indoor racks) remained normal across income levels.

Line-drying as practical, not symbolic

• Clotheslines never carried the same stigma; they were understood as:

  • Economical

  • Environmentally sensible

  • Better for fabric longevity

• Seeing laundry outside was (and still is) culturally neutral—or even charming—rather than a sign of failure or poverty.

Efficiency defined differently

• European notions of efficiency leaned more toward:

  • Energy conservation

  • Cost savings over time

  • Shared infrastructure realities

• Dryers were framed as conveniences for specific situations (weather, space constraints), not as a moral or social upgrade.

The late 20th-century irony

As climate awareness grew, Americans began rediscovering clotheslines as a sustainability practice—often framed as a lifestyle choice rather than a norm. Meanwhile, Europeans largely continued doing what they had always done, without needing to “rebrand” it as green or virtuous. The U.S. is unlearning decades of advertising that equated more machines with better living.

“Ok, you can stop talkin’ ‘bout my mama now.”

“Oh, we don’t mean your mom! She came here legally.”

“How do you know?”

Stunned silence.

“What makes you think my mom arrived legally or that I’m not an anchor baby?”

The look on their face says it all: because you’re white. And in that moment, they can’t say it because they realise they aren’t talking about “immigrants,” they’re talking about “brown” people. They have no problem with blonde, blue-eyed people like my mom immigrating to their country. But they’ll look at other members of my family with suspicion and make assumptions about their citizenship status. It wasn’t hard for me to see darting looks, hear the micro-aggressive comments about my siblings and/or step-dad; and I saw how people changed their demeanour and tone once they realised these people of colour are related to my mom and me—we are a family. And ironically, it never occurs to them that my family members with more melanin (the pigment that makes skin darker, an evolutionary advantage living in sunny places) are the citizens born and raised in the United States, while my fair mother is the immigrant who never became a citizen, possessing only a green card.

Immigrant: a person who has come to live permanently in a different country from the one they were born in.

Expatriate: a person living in a country that is not their own, with the intention of eventually returning.

In the Banksy Museum, Barcelona, there’s this artwork depicting birds with protest signs about other birds—migrant birds. “Go Back to Africa!” one sign says. I chuckled at how ridiculous it would be to try to control bird migration, and I felt a deep sadness in how we treat humans for doing the same thing; once a normal, natural, common thing to do.

Human beings migrated out of Africa to cover every continent (ok, only scientists and extreme vacationers on Antarctica, but still). We migrate when there’s famine, war, natural disasters, etc. Sometimes we migrate for fun, adventure, or out of a sense of curiosity. I fall in the latter category.

Like my mom, I have also become an immigrant. I packed up my favourite pot and a couple of suitcases, and moved to the other side of the world with my husband and our cat. We left behind loved ones, routines, our favourite places, everything we knew—to build a life from scratch.

We know firsthand what it’s like to be in a foreign country, not speak the language or know our way around, be confused in the grocery store, try to quickly pick up on slightly different social customs and cues, learn public transit, and begin new jobs and education. And of course navigate visas. It’s no small feat. There’s a lot for your brain to process, which I noticed upon visiting countries where I do speak the language: it was like a little cloud lifted, like I could see more clearly and be less awkward in public. It’s challenging to rebuild your life, to start over. There’s a reason so many people who try eventually move back. I understood more than ever why big US cities have neighbourhoods like Chinatown and Little Italy—you want to feel at home, so you create that community with others.

But we have it easy: I have an EU passport, so sponsoring my husband’s residency was no problem, and we moved because we each had great opportunities to pursue. We are lucky to have this experience. In fact, many would call it a privilege, which I do not argue. Many are jealous, wish they could do it. And I am so grateful for the experience, even though I currently have almost no idea where life will take us next.

So why do Americans look down on those who immigrate when it’s not a privilege? When they are fleeing for their lives, when natural disasters or war destroy their homes? Or when they are simply looking for a better life for themselves and their children? How can Americans, of all people, judge others for doing what their ancestors did? How can you claim to uphold the “American Dream” and then judge people for pursuing what you have? Let’s be honest with ourselves and everyone else. No one has a problem with immigrants; it’s thinly veiled racism. Unless you are Native American, you are an immigrant of some kind. Maybe your family came here joyfully, maybe as enslaved people, maybe as refugees, but—and I’m looking at you, white people—YOU ARE IMMIGRANTS or their descendants.

I have so much respect for immigrants, everywhere. They are doing something challenging, they are trying to build a life from scratch. My experience doing so is a privilege, an exciting life path, and it’s still challenging. I can’t imagine doing it, having fled my home instead of choosing to leave.

Esther Aldaz is another artist who touched me recently. A Gran Canaria local, her photographs of paper houses floating on water explore the fragility of home and our basic “animal essence” to find shelter and the “wondering condition of our being.” Even if we have a home, a community, it can easily be lost. Many of us spend a great deal of time searching for it, for a sense of belonging that is critical to long-term feelings of contentment, happiness, and satisfaction with our lives. We may literally wander around the globe, or metaphorically wander in our minds and in various positions within society, always seeking belonging. This art made me think of how we used to enjoy moving about the world freely—in Europe, people would take months long pilgramages to holy sites, and pre-colonial North & South America had super “highways” of travel and trade. But these days, it takes an immense amount of strength, courage, and fortitude to move about the world because it is no longer free. It is burdened with bureaucracy, borders, money, and an increasing amount of hatred.

I can’t imagine being rude, upset, concerned, afraid of, or having any other negative feeling toward someone who walked hundreds of miles with nothing but the clothes on their back and children in their arms to find a peaceful place to live. That person is welcome to be my neighbour. Anyone daring enough to move to a new country under any circumstances is welcome to be my neighbour.

With all this being said, let’s be clear: ICE is not about immigration. It’s about racism and fascism.

Fuck ICE.

The “natural” world may not care if it’s 10:38 or 10:57 or whether it’s 2016 or 2026. But all the coral know when it’s that Autumn full moon, the special one where they spawn en masse every year. Humpbacks know when to migrate North or South, to eat or birth their calves. And strange creatures in the depths of the sea make a daily migration upward to feed as the night falls and the entire ocean turns dark. Time exists outside of the human mind and human systems in Earth’s cycles, from day to night, season to season, and on grander scales than we can easily comprehend, in the cosmos and in the stones.

If anything, most of humanity is trying to defy time. We turn the lights on so that we can get up before the sun and stay up after it sets. And thanks to capitalism, we are forced to be productive year-round, and more productive each year, into infinity.

Yet, our bodies and minds crave rest in Winter because it is a time for rest; and the world around us is resting—hibernating, dormant, burrowed—awaiting Spring’s light and warmth to ease us into Summer. I like to fantasise about what the world would look like if we shifted our economic systems to be in line with Earth’s systems, specifically, everyone resting in Winter. I draw on pre-capitalist history (which is plentiful since capitalism is only 400-500 years old) and Indigenous societies I’ve read about (book reviews to come this year!).

I had to force myself to rest over the holidays. I wanted to keep up with the news, go to protests, do research, create more YouTube videos, paint, write-up a working group invite and send it, and omg check my emails over and over, and seek out more speaking events, find healthy recipes, submit a paper to this conference… blah blah blah. Instead, I let myself rest. I told myself there are millions of people doing the good work, and it’s ok for me to enjoy family time right now. I will do the things I need to do in due time.

You are better when you’re rested.

You are healthier.

You are kinder.

You are a better friend, a better parent, a better partner.

You are a stronger activist.

You are a more exciting artist.

You are more you when you’re rested.

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So, if your New Year’s goals have already fallen flat, don’t fret. You are just doing what you’re supposed to be doing in Winter: resting. Easing into the new year. In many cultures, including pre-Christian Pagan Europe, Winter is a time for stillness and reflection. There’s nothing wrong with New Year’s goals. But you’ll achieve them only if you give yourself enough time. Go slow. Slow and steady.

This advice is extremely challenging for me. I’m partly writing this post to remind myself that I am choosing a slow life, and that slow can be meaningful, impactful, inspiring, life-altering…

The time I took to “unplug” proved this. Speaking as a creative, I can tell you “creative rest” is critical. We need time to let our minds process the work we’ve done, consider the work we want to do, and let ideas emerge from the act of living life. The more time I gave myself to just be, the more ideas came to me for art, writing, and business.

As an activist, I know it can be extremely hard to rest. The world is on fire, how can we rest? Consider firefighters. Does a firefighter work nonstop? Is an individual firefighter responsible for putting out an entire forest fire? No. They work in shifts, as a team. Different firefighters have different jobs that suit their skills, abilities, and experience. Activism is the same. The world is on fire, and sometimes the best thing you can do is rest. Rest is resistance, rest is resilience. When I can no longer find joy in the work, I know it’s time to rest. The powers that be would love nothing more than for you to exhaust yourself and no longer be able to work on systemic change.

And let’s not forget that we must live the lives we are fighting for, not only to rest and recharge ourselves, but to show others it’s possible. Isn’t rest among the things we fight for, something we all deserve? Isn’t celebrating each other and being cozy together part of our vision for a better world? Lead by example.

Love is quieter than bullets, but there’s more of it.

James Miller

When I say to you, my dear readers, Happy New Year, I mean it. I hope 2026 is filled with rewarding work, play, joy, and the kind of activities that promote happiness all year long. I know I recommend this often, but if you haven’t seen it yet, watch Dr Ayana Elisabeth Johnson’s TEDtalk on finding climate joy. Take this time to rest, reflect, and figure out how you can have the best 2026 possible.

Cheers.

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My dear friend is leading our small group through a guided meditation. We’ve all travelled some distance to be here, so we greet the place via the four directions. But when we turn to the North, meditating on winter and our ancestors, I’m suddenly filled with rage.

A churning heat fills my belly, climbs my throat—my fists clench, and I want to scream: I HAVE TO CLEAN UP YOUR MESS! Just when I feel like I can’t take it anymore, a calm washes over me.

The rage was for my more “immediate” ancestors. I was livid because surely some of my ancestors were colonisers in some form or another, however direct or indirect. As a European, that’s just the way it is—I don’t need to know specifically who or how closely we are related. Europe benefited and continues to benefit from colonisation, and I am within that. My rage is at the injustices and continued inequities I’ve dedicated my life to healing—something I wouldn’t have to do if my ancestors weren’t such horrid people.

But that sense of calm that washed over me, that was from my ancestors, too. Long, long ago, my ancestors, whose names I’ll never know, worshipped the Earth. European pagans used to live in harmony with their ecosystem and respect all life, including each other. I thought about the legacy of women healers and spiritual leaders that I’ve read about, and even some in my own family lore. On my Sicilian side, my great-grandmother was known as a healer with critical knowledge about pregnancy, birth, and infant care. And my German grandfather told me war stories of when he was a child, hiding in basements, because our family opposed the Nazis. These are the legacies I choose to uphold.

This realisation has stuck with me on a deep level. Even if we don’t know anything about our blood relatives, we can look to the society from which we come and decide what is worth carrying into the future. That is how we can be a good ancestor, how we can provide for future generations.

So, this holiday season, I’ll be reading The Little Book of Paganism to feel a little closer to my ancestors, who did their best to walk in harmony with all life, to be grateful for the Earth’s gifts, and to respect a diversity of lifeways. Winter is a time of rest and reflection; I will be taking a break from the digital world of Substack and other media to enjoy time with loved ones and let everything that happened this last year sink into my mind and heart, integrating with my being.

Wishing you all a restful holiday season, filled with joy and love.

I’ll be back in January… mid-January? Something like that, whenever it feels write.

Someone asked me once, are sailors extroverts or introverts? I don’t know—perhaps it’s a rare breed that can go for weeks of solitude, then suddenly pop into a bar for drinks and storytelling. But I do know that most sailors are warm people—always ready to lend a hand, recommend a mechanic or a beach, let you borrow tools, and share knowledge freely. Virtual strangers eager to help.

I’ve finally been reading The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It’s a small book, written so well, I could whip through it in a few hours. But I’m not. I’m savouring every page. The words are feeding my mind and my heart so fully, I relish taking a day to digest just two pages.

Last night, the two came together: sailing and serviceberries. Kimmerer describes gift economies in Indigenous cultures around the world; generally speaking, in my understanding, a gift economy is created when a people look at their habitat and see abundance; everyone shares what they have with the group because all flourishing is mutual, and community values are based heavily on gratitude and reciprocity. Wealth hoarding is… dishonourable. Social status comes from generosity.

The Western idea of economics is the opposite. The mindset is not of abundance of Earth’s gifts, but rather scarcity. We have been separated from our habitat, so that it can be viewed as a “natural resource,” and cut into pieces for commodification and market economies. And how is that working out for us? Given this system is pushing planetary destruction and the largest wealth gap in human history, I’d say not so great.

Anyway… as I was reading about gift economies, my heart felt light. It’s a beautiful example that around the world, for millennia, “human nature” is not defined by greed, scarcity, and self-centred behaviours, as western economists would have us believe is the “rational” person. Ironically, this Western economic belief goes against established Western scientific knowledge: in evolutionary biology, altruistic cooperation is remarkably common across species, and necessary for human survival.

Recognising gift-type economies in the sailing community is particularly exciting for me. You’d think that people who may never see each other again wouldn’t be so generous. But even these highly nomadic people form communities across time and ocean for the mutual benefit of all. Chat groups keep us relatively well-connected, even if we don’t see each other for months. We still live in the same weather patterns—wind, swells, and tides. We can easily empathise with each other, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, etc., because even if we’ve never met and stumble over language trying to find words, we share the same challenges and joys.

I think sailors are prone to a gift economy of sorts because we are very aware that we live in a habitat; we are regularly challenged, humbled, and in awe of the “natural” world and care about each others’ ability not just to survive, but to thrive in it. And so we freely share whatever we have with each other, whether that means anchorage tips, a round of drinks, or giving away spare parts.

There is a sense of gratitude and reciprocity among sailors for this sharing. In The Serviceberry, the reciprocity is more immediate—hunters share their meat and perhaps next week someone who enjoyed the meal helps repair a boat. But with sailors, we don’t expect the exact same people to provide the reciprocation. It’s more of a “pay it forward” set up. And it works.

So when I think about “human nature,” gift economies seem much more natural. We’ve had to tell so many lies to promote capitalism and Neo-liberalism, but if they are the “natural order” of things, then why are we so prone to behave otherwise?

The class discussion took a turn: how we are all complicit in climate change and other environmental destruction because we put gas in our cars and buy food wrapped in plastic. Before I knew it, my mouth decided I’d had enough.

“That’s a lie,” I blurted out.

“What’s a lie?” My professor seemed genuinely confused.

“We are not complicit in environmental destruction. We are fighting it every day. Everyone in this room has dedicated insane amounts of money and time to get a law degree to save the planet in one form or another, to change the system. You can’t call people complicit for being born into a system they did not create. I’m a woman living in a patriarchal society, but that doesn’t mean I’m complicit in my own dehumanisation. I fight it every day. That community in Richmond fought Chevron—would you call them complicit? Would you call any person of colour complicit in white supremacy because they were born into such a system? Why do we demand perfection when it comes to systems that harm the environment? You cannot live perfectly in an imperfect system!”

The class was silent. My professor said something, but I was in no mood.

“And how are we supposed to escape the system? By moving onto a homestead, being completely off-grid? Becoming a monk high up in the mountains? Maybe our individual actions no longer directly contribute to the fossil fuel machine, but how does that actually help solve the problem? How does removing ourselves from society help those who need it most? How are we fighting climate change, fighting environmental racism, fighting any kind of injustice if we are hidden away, not participating in society at all?

This narrative that we are complicit if we do not live perfectly in harmony with the environment only benefits the conservatives, because they get to call us hypocrites—they get to say that we don’t have integrity, or that we can’t even make the ‘extreme’ changes we’re asking all of society to make. But that argument is backwards; systems must be in place for individuals to make eco-friendly choices, or simply to make everything eco-friendly, and don’t tell me it can’t be done, it already has been countless times around the world. But big oil doesn’t want you to know that, they want you feeling guilty and inadequate and obsessed with your grocery list so that you don’t have the time or the money or the energy to engage in collective action. They want you to feel like it’s your fault, to paralyse you with guilt, and it’s the biggest con in history! The destruction of the climate is not a suicide; it’s a homicide.”

I don’t remember what happened after that. Class was almost over. My professor may have said something like “interesting perspective,” I’m not sure. Later, some students told me they liked what I said.

I share this memory because it was a turning point for me. While I had known for years that British Petroleum put the first carbon footprint calculator online, something clicked. It sank in. You can know something, but it’s not fully integrated until you know it and feel it.

That day, rage welled up in my stomach about this false narrative, solidifying in my mind and heart that we are not “complicit.” I felt the need to stand up for my classmates, not necessarily against our professor, but against the narrative in general. As it goes, standing up for others changes you. I never felt climate guilt again.

I hope this little story does something for all of you—you who work every day to change the system. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re complicit—don’t let them undermine your effort, your impact, your time. You are doing the work. It won’t be perfect or immediate, but it’s better than doing nothing. Those who know of a problem and do nothing are the complicit ones.

Here’s a hug from me to all of you out there, the activists, advocates, educators, guides, caregivers, etc., doing your best to change the system for a better future. More power to you.