We’ve been hearing the warnings for decades. A planet in decline – a looming crisis. Scientists, conservationists, activists, and nonprofits have tirelessly sounded alarms. Yet collectively, we often struggle to truly grasp what it means, let alone how to respond.

The statistics are daunting: rising sea levels, ocean acidification, species vanishing. But these facts often feel distant – someone else’s issue, far off in the world. So we disconnect, shutting out the unrelenting news and numbing ourselves to the inescapable reality. Life can feel hard enough with our own immediate and local problems. When the news feels like doom, disengagement is easier than confrontation.

For years, the narrative around climate change has been dominated by catastrophe, understandably so. But for many of us, especially those raised in environments of comfort, a state of detachment is just another privilege we’ve taken for granted. We wait for someone else to fix it. We tell ourselves it’s not happening here. We distract ourselves with convenience, lifestyle, the next fixation or distraction.

However, the harsh truth is that this crisis is layered, fast-moving and omnipresent. And it’s felt intensely by the professionals who study it daily and the communities experiencing its most intense, real-time impacts. But then there’s the growing group of people who aren’t in those two categories who just want to make sense of what’s at stake and want to do something about it.

But for a long time, I wasn’t one of these people.