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But at a moment when this kind of political action seems pretty comprehensively stymied, how do you do what you can without feeling futile? One answer, which has been floated by a number of different environmental thinkers, is to focus on hyperlocal instead of the national issues. It’s the approach many urged as a political strategy back when the legislation that eventually became the IRA looked like it wouldn’t pass at all. And in a slight twist from the organizing push of the last few years, nourishing your local sensibilities as an individual is now the approach a growing number of voices seem to be suggesting for spiritual refreshment, as a personal way of dealing with a political reality that feels overwhelming.

This was one of the themes of Jenny Odell’s surprise bestseller in 2019, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy: that shutting down Twitter, closing the news websites, and reconnecting to the natural world around you is itself a radical act, and could furnish the emotional reserves for better political action—“sustenance for those feeling too disassembled to act meaningfully” at present. Odell’s second book, Saving Time, was published last week, and it similarly rejects strict productivity culture in favor of a more organic way of life intimately connected to place (Odell is big on birdwatching and bioregionalism). 

Odell’s not alone in pointing to the power of reengaging with what’s directly in front of you, nor the need for an almost spiritual antidote to activist burnout. That’s also one of the themes of British author and former religious sister Karen Armstrong’s Sacred Nature, which came out last fall and argued that contemplating nature in “silence and a degree of solitude” might be necessary, as part of a broader “spiritual revolution,” to fuel policy change. “If we want to halt the environmental crisis, we need first, like Coleridge, to seek a silent receptiveness to the natural world, bringing it into our lives little by little every day.”

Mainstream outlets seem to be catching the vibe. The Atlantic’s climate newsletter recently touted the benefits of creating a frog pond in your backyard, noting that “saving species in the 21st century isn’t just about protecting big, undeveloped parks,” adding that “it can be dizzying to think about all the species that need help right now, but engaging in everyday conservation can also just be fun.” This came barely a week after The New York Times’s climate newsletter linked the obsessive tracking of New York City’s escaped Eurasian eagle-owl to compassion and “radical care” in the anthropocene, and closed by asking readers, “Tell us: what’s wild around you?”

I’ll admit to a tiny bit of skepticism about this “birdwatching, but make it socialist” approach. While it suits my own proclivities just fine, this kind of solitary engagement with nature is easier recommended by people who already find it compelling than carried out by people with little background in, or space for, avian observation and garden projects. Many people may not know how to start engaging with nature, find it time-consuming, or may not feel inclined to persist in it as a solitary pursuit. And while reconnecting with nature may lead to collective action, there’s no built-in mechanism for it if we’re all walking the urban forests alone. 

This is where citizen science comes in. You can focus on the nature around you—even get guidance on doing so—and then submit it to a collective project. Contemplate a nearby stream, then contribute data to a group tracking salt runoff from winter roads. If you do like birdwatching, your time reconnecting with feathery neighbors could feed into a broader effort to figure out the impact of climate change on avian communities. For those who find birds too high-energy for their particular breed of burnout, bivalves are always an option: Volunteer oyster gardening is a thing these days. Where I live in D.C., some of the best information on community water quality gets collected by community members. And these networks are still a way of meeting others—so while they’re a break from politics, they can also furnish not just the data but also the connections for subsequent reengagement. 

TNR’s climate desk has more to come on the topic of recharging—the emotional sustainability of the climate fight, if you will, in addition to ecological sustainability. But in the meantime, give one of the options here a try. If bad news is getting you down, focus on your immediate surroundings for a while. There isn’t a wrong answer here. Just don’t let despair swallow you whole and spit you out as someone who has given up caring about our fate. 

—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor

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