Last night I was reading a book about Buddhist responses to climate change.

One Tibetan guru was talking about his experience of being in Tibet before the Chinese invaded. He said that there were many signs that this was going to happen, but that the people couldn’t really believe that this could happen. It was such a big thing, and their life would change so much, and become so much more dangerous and painful, that everyone just basically blocked it out. They put it out of their minds and carried on as normal.

He said that this is how the world is responding to the climate emergency. The signs are all there, but we can’t cope with the full implications of what this means for us and for our children. So we carry on as normal, not doing what we need to do to avert this catastrophe, and in so doing, we make that catastrophe inevitable.