An inside look

We are going through dark times. There is armed conflict in many parts of the world, racial and religious discrimination, hate crimes, terrorist attacks, a political swing to the far right fueling demonstrations and protests that, all too often, become violent. The gap between the haves and have - nots is widening and fomenting anger and unrest. Democracy is under attack in many countries. On top of all that, the COVID- 19 pandemic has caused so much suff ering and death, loss of jobs, and economic chaos around the world. And the climate crisis, temporarily pushed into the background, is an even greater threat to our future — indeed, to all life on Earth as we know it.

Climate change is not something that might affect us in the future — it is aff ecting us now with changing weather patterns around the globe: melting ice; rising sea levels; and catastrophically powerful hurricanes, tornadoes, and typhoons. There is worse flooding, longer droughts, and devastating fires that are breaking out around the globe. For the first time, fires have even been recorded in the Arctic Circle.

“Jane is almost ninety years old”, you may be thinking. “If she is ware of what is going on in the world, how can she still be writing about hope? She is probably giving in to wishful thinking. She is not facing up to the facts.”

I am facing up to the facts. And on many days I admit that I feel depressed, days when it seems that the efforts, the struggles, and the sacrifices of so many people fighting for social and environmental justice, fighting prejudice and racism and greed, are fighting a losing battle. The forces raging around us — greed, corruption, hatred, blind prejudice — are ones we might be foolish to think we can overcome. It’s understandable that there are days we feel we are doomed to sit back and watch the world end “not with a bang but a whimper” (T. S. Eliot). Over the last eight decades I have been no stranger to disasters such as 9/11, school shootings, suicide bombings, and so on, and the despair that some of these terrible events can elicit. I grew up during World War II, when the world risked being overrun by Hitler and the Nazis. I lived through the Cold War arms race, when the world was threatened by a thermonuclear holocaust, and the horrors of the many conflicts that have condemned millions to torture and death around the globe. Like all people who live long enough, I have been through many dark periods and seen so much suffering. 

Jane Goodall