what can i do? by jane fonda

cover of what can i do? by jane fonda

do you remember where you were ten years ago and what you have achieved since then?

does it feel like a long time ago?

well, the answer to this question will put the next bit of information in its right context :

10 years is as long as humankind has left to halve global co2 emissions in order to have a fighting chance to maybe survive the (human) life-threatening consequences caused by climate change.

(ok, so the tipping point is actually 2030, but 2021 is still young.)

if you think 10 years is nothing for such a challenge – not mention all the efforts that then need to happen until 2050 – and you feel panic slowly rising in your chest, welcome to the club.

you are in very good company. celebrity company.

celebrity activism

it was this exact feeling of helplessness and overwhelming angst that drove jane fonda to team up with Greenpeace and organise a series of weekly civil disobedience protests in washington dc between october 2019 and january 2020.

in what can i do? jane fonda recounts this journey in a personal, yet highly informative narrative as each of the 14 weeks/chapters served to highlight another aspect of the climate emergency.

an eclectic and eductional mix

and that’s precisely what makes the quality of this book.

yes, fonda provides the context, but in each week/chapter, experts from varying fields lend their voices and facts to a mix as eclectic as educational.

and it is this expert information that does indeed deliver on the book’s premise of ‘what can i do?’ as a plethora of tips and advice tops off the often dire scientific truth.

two caveats

there are, however, two caveats:

the first (smaller) is fonda’s writing. large parts of it read like written speech. this makes it easy to take all the information in, but i must admit it bothered me at times.

the second (bigger) is that i wonder how well this information can be transposed to the european/luxemburgish landscape?

my inherent home bias wants to believe things are not quite as bad here, but are they?

i guess more research is needed.

feedback

how do you deal with the climate emergency? please tell me in the comments.

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