15 September

Hilarious, but also a perfect metaphor for climate change. We’re used to talking about ‘the environment’, as if we live ‘in’ the environment. That’s like a clean room, where you don’t really notice the room. But I think a teenager’s room is a way to understand climate change, because the ‘environment’ isn’t just a box you sit inside, your activity shapes your surroundings, and they in turn shape you. As in this case, where the teenager’s life in the room impacts back upon them, and stops them sleeping well. There is no more environment, there’s just a whole lot of mutually interacting things. Climate change isn’t ‘human impact on the environment’, it’s something very different. It’s humans merging with their environments, so that now they have a whole set of mutual obligations in managing planetary things, without which they will die. The metaphors about us destroying the Earth I think are very wrong, we’re part of the Earth and now we’re so woven into its systems that we have no choice but to be part of how they work. The weather for example is no longer something that just happens, now we change it in what we do, we’re a planet-level actor. We can’t just sit back and enjoy the sunshine, we have to help manage the weather as well.