Climate Is Just the Start
A guide to tackling the climate crisis from a prominent activist working on the front lines! Mikaela Loach's approach is one of HOPE and big-hearted optimism, inspiring kids and making them feel truly empowered to change the world.
Kids hear about the climate crisis pretty much every day. From their parents, from their teachers, on social media, and in the news, there is no escaping it. Against a broader backdrop of social inequity and unfairness, it's easy for young people to feel a sense of "doom and gloom" about everything and to feel powerless.
In CLIMATE IS JUST THE START, UK-based climate activist Mikaela Loach offers her urgent and inspiring message for kids who want to STOP the climate crisis and START building a better world for everyone. Mikaela explains the climate crisis and its broader social implications through personal stories about her activism journey. She writes about friends from around the world who are experiencing the worst of it today and about what they are doing to fight back. She delivers a message or not only hope, but of excitement for the opportunity to create not only a sustainable future for Earth, but better lives for people in the process.
Mikaela is truly on the front lines of the climate movement: leading street protests, confronting fossil fuel executives, taking the UK government to court, and speaking up to those in power. Not only will kids love engage with her style, they will be inspired by her example.
An Excerpt fromClimate Is Just the Start
This is a book about our climate.
But maybe you guessed from the title that it’s about some other things too.
This is also a book about how our climate—our climate crisis—hurts some people far more than other people, and how unfair that is.
This is also a book about hope!
About how we can actually fix things. About how the solutions are in plain sight, right in front of us.
We can—quite literally—change the world. But before we can change the world, we have to feel the world.
And you’re in luck. Chances are if you’re reading this book you are young. And when you are young, you are more likely to still have one very important gift—your big feelings. You’re going to need those.
That’s because you can’t change the world without your feelings.
Have you ever looked at a situation you thought was unfair and said to yourself, “That just doesn’t make sense!”
It could be something close to home, like in your family or your school.
Or it could be something much farther away. Maybe it’s the fact that some of our fellow humans have no safe place to live. Or that billions of people around the world don’t have access to enough food or safe drinking water. Perhaps you saw a politician on TV say that they care about the climate crisis and then turn around and create rules and laws that make things worse.
Maybe these situations have made you feel really sad. I know I still cry regularly when I hear news about our climate crisis, read stories about injustice, or learn about a tragedy on social media. My heart breaks often.
When asking questions about things that don’t make sense in our world, has anyone ever told you, “Look, it’s just the way the world is,” or “That’s something you’ll understand when you’re older.”
I was a kid who asked lots of questions, and adults would answer me like this. I asked “But why?” a lot, and I was rarely satisfied with the response. I couldn’t help wondering: Why is this “just the way that the world is”? Honestly, why? Why don’t we change the world so that this isn’t the way it is? Aren’t we “society,” so if together we want the world to change, isn’t it up to all of us to do something?
But lots of adults wouldn’t want to get into it. And something seemed different about them. They cried less than I did—and, sure, sometimes for understandable reasons—but they also felt less.
And that was celebrated like it was a good thing . . . like it was better to not feel things deeply, to not cry or be moved by injustice, but instead to look through or past it. This made no sense to me. It still doesn’t.
If someone is so “tough” that they never cry about anything, this is seen as strength. If someone can witness or experience something sad, scary, or tragic and seem untroubled by it, this is somehow rewarded as bravery.
I see it differently.
I think it’s braver to feel heartbreak, even if it hurts. If we completely shut down the part of ourselves that feels bad things, if we toughen ourselves up so much that nothing can reach our hearts, won’t it just become easier to ignore the bad things, like how much pain there is in our world? To just let it pass? And who wins if we do that?
I believe the correct response—the natural human response— is to react to unfairness and harm in our world with a broken heart. This softness is a strength. A power. It is absolutely not a weakness. To not be moved? That is what is unnatural.
If you are not moved by the world, you will not act to move the world. It’s that simple.
So hold on to your soft heart. It’s the most important thing you can do! The world needs your soft heart. Allow it to break—but please don’t stay stuck in the heartbreak. Feel all the feelings, but don’t let them overcome you. Channel them. Find a way to transform them into something else. This book will help you learn how we can do this.
Let’s find a way to make what moves us move the world. Together.