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We’ve been saying “a climate-changed world” for a while now, here at The BTS Center. And time and again, when people hear that phrase, something in their heart says, “Yes – that.”
Because they know that climate change isn’t a faraway specter. And they know that climate change touches everything.
So, we asked some wise friends what “a climate-changed world” means to them.
“This moment in our collective lives – particularly for those in the U.S., but certainly in other countries as well – is fraught. The climate crisis, and tending to those experiencing climate grief, anxiety and actual disruption can feel more distant, less urgent. But we encourage you to understand our use of the term ‘climate-changed world’ as encompassing all that is happening right now: threats to democracy, cruelty to immigrants, exploitation and desecration of the Earth for profit, and so much more.”
“A climate-changed world means that every other thing we care about, everything else we’re fighting for, is made much more difficult by a destabilized climate. As Katharine Hayhoe says, climate change is the hole in every bucket. A climate-changed world also means we have the opportunity, right now, to fundamentally reshape our way of life toward a more just and sustainable future. It will be a struggle, and I will be in this struggle, like it or not, for the rest of my life.”
“Most of all, what I feel is uncertainty, as what have appeared to be stable systems – ecological, political, social, economic—dissolve, erode, wash away, submerge, burn up, explode, implode, collapse, vanish. With these dramatic changes will come great suffering. With such great undoing also comes room to make things new, once again. In this I live in hope.”
“Our climate-changed world includes harm to people and to place. It includes extractive, self-centered, greed-rewarding ways of being. It includes the rise in authoritarianism. And it intensifies pressures in global migration, immigration, and national borders.”
“A climate-changed world will challenge everything we thought we knew or needed. It will test the limits of our faith, our hope, and our love. Will we collapse under the weight of our wrongdoing? Or can we learn, transform, and endure?”
“It means our world is unsettled, out of harmony with the natural rhythms that sustain our planet and all of us who rely on it. Systems – including weather systems, which in turn impact food and energy systems – are more erratic. Communities with fewer resources and less access to sustainable infrastructure – communities that are often black and brown – suffer first and worse, from families that can’t afford gas to evacuate when a storm hits just before payday, to neighborhoods that suffer from extreme heat because they have been paved over, to communities displaced by flood, drought or conflict over precious resources.”
“A climate-changed world is not a future scenario but the air we are already breathing – where rising seas, burning forests, unaffordable housing, and forced migration reveal how deeply intertwined our lives truly are. It exposes the illusion that we can wound the Earth without wounding ourselves, and it presses a spiritual question upon us: will we continue extracting from creation as if it were disposable, or will we finally remember that we belong to one another and to this living planet?”
“To me, a climate-changed world is one where connection and mutuality are no longer interests but requirements for survival; where our political differences matter much less than the variety of skills and wisdoms we carry; where Indigenous/divine knowledge will be the answer to a future world that is still shared by humanity.”
“A climate changed world means learning that the wind blows through me, the sun rains down on me, the waters rise up to drown or abandon me, and the soil sliding away and depleted for gain needs me. A climate changed world means knowing that my stardust is accountable to my star-siblings in flight and slither. A climate changed world means abandoning the powers of man in order to harness the power of being.”
“It means that the Earth has said “no” to our modern civilizational project. It is proof positive that there is no such things as infinite growth on a finite planet. It is instead an invitation for us to listen again to the cries of our other-than-human kin and to return to life rooted in the land and in community in all its forms.”
“A climate-changed world will require more cooperation and creativity from us. We will need individual- and species-level humility.”
“A climate changed world is a world in disequilibrium. It’s a world where you can watch your summer water supply disappear because there’s no snow or wake up to cars in the water due to a freak storm. There is no more normal, only groundlessness.”
“A climate-changed world requires us to ask: who do we become when the temptation is to hoard, harden, and look away? For me, climate work is a practice of love and presence – grounded in truth, grief, and responsibility to one another.”
“A climate-changed world is one in which many threats to people and planet — intersecting crises that impact our entire Earth community, human and other-than-human — converge, resulting in political, social, and ecological turmoil. In the face of cruelty, calamity, injustice, and suffering, we must listen intently, seek a fresh burst of prophetic imagination, unite in heart and mind, and muster the moral courage to lead and serve with faith, hope, and love. In this climate-changed world, when the stakes are so high, can you hear the voice of the divine, beckoning us into new ways of being — calling us into one beautiful, Earth-honoring, peace-loving, justice-seeking Beloved Community?”
“A climate-changed world is my home and reminds me to honor and grieve the changes that have hurt people, places, and creature. It Invites me to delight and relish the forest, air, rivers and creatures that share this place with me today and inspires me to dream and adapt to what may come from our past mistakes as they dance with sacred imagination to create a future unknown. A climate-changed world is our home.”