1. Generation Dread
Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis
Britt Wray • Alfred A. Knopf Canada
Feel it all. Connect inward to transform oneself. Connect outward to transform the world. These are Britt Wray’s reminders (and the aptly titled sections of her book) as we “shore ourselves up against what’s to come” in facing the climate crisis. At a glance, these calls to action may make mitigating eco-anxiety and effecting change seem like individual pursuits, akin to recycling our way out of planetary disaster. But Wray, a writer and broadcaster who holds a PhD in science communication, explores how tending to each of these calls to (inner) action is indeed connected to collective action.
Wray’s voice is refreshing and rooted in the realities of the world we live in. Naming a fear many of us struggle with, that “the world is ending,” she describes living in a wildfire zone as part of her way into the terrifying yet hopeful awareness that “life is by nature impermanent and in a constant state of flux…we are not in full control.” Accepting this doesn’t mean that we should despair, but that our decision-making can be guided by a clearer perspective.
This doesn’t mean