Climate change is coming whether you believe it or not.

In Game of Thrones, the army of the white walkers made their way through the land, destroying cities and killing innocent people. And yet many people—including the most powerful person (the Queen)—refused to believe they were real because they were too busy obsessing over power. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is: in 2004, in an interview with Al Jazeera, the author, George R. R. Martin said:

‘People being so consumed by their petty struggles for power… they’re blind to the much greater and more dangerous threats. Climate change… is something that can wipe out the human race. So, I wanted to do an analogue with the work, not specifically to the modern-day thing but as a general thing.’

Politicians and world leaders are so transfixed with amassing power that they avoid solving the real problems. Whether this is the fault of the current political system, where you’re always campaigning for your next term, is not the issue—whatever the cause, the fact remains politicians dawdle on taking action on real-world problems like climate change, corruption, and modern slavery.

But Game of Thrones can be quite helpful; it gives us a way of approaching climate change, and considering it in a way that isn’t as terrifying as cold hard facts. Climate change is difficult for any one person to comprehend by themselves; at the extreme end, human extinction is unthinkable, and in the day to day, the brunt of climate change is borne by those in far off lands. We only see bits and pieces of climate change directly, after all. So this huge threat seems conceptual and distant, rather than tangible and immediate.

Just listen to the deniers—if the world is warming up, why is it so cold outside?

Climate change is so vast that it presents a challenge to human subjectivity; it’s literally too big to comprehend. And that leads to apathy. If we can’t see the effects directly, why should we be too concerned? We have our own lives to lead, mortgages to pay and children to feed. We have bigger problems.

Climate change is coming whether you’re ready or not.

Climate change seeps into everything we do and if we don’t do something radically different, it’s not going anywhere. There’s evidence to suggest that if people see climate change as something that affects them personally, they are more likely to take it seriously and act on the consequences. But by the time climate change is obviously impacting our lives in a way that is undeniably due to global warming, it’ll be too late.

But even evidence is met with scepticism.

It could be argued that this scepticism stems from a distrust in science or an unwillingness to accept we have been deceived for so long. It could come from reluctance to lower your standard of living; moving off-grid, rejecting consumerism, and abandoning your car seem dramatic and extreme methods of fighting back.

A political tsunami is needed for change, and it’s needed on a worldwide scale—but this starts with individuals. Real change will be made at the top at wide-reaching policy level, but for the right people to make those decisions, individuals need to recognise the issues, advocate for them, and elect the right people into power.

Even then, the most optimistic among us can be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of what is needed to tackle climate change. When we’re willing to accept the scientific evidence, we find ourselves paralysed by the enormity of the task.

We are so terrified of the end result that we tiptoe around it. This isn’t oil companies keeping things hush hush or the mass media keeping hysteria under control; this is society’s inability to handle the fear of the impending consequences of our actions. Humans, like all animals, are wired to care about immediate needs more than the future—which makes sense as a survival mechanism.

A blunt wake-up call is a necessity for climate activism. We have ignored the gravitas of the issue for far too long. Our situation is the direct result of the deliberate choices we have made for decades—and unfortunately, we have done nothing but make it worse. Our first warnings came in the early 1900s, then again in the 50s, then in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and stridently and urgently ever since. We find ourselves now at the tipping point all the warnings told us about, and yet too many of us are still ignoring it!

A typical way of managing fear is to deny the problem: one takeaway cup isn’t going to do much damage; it’s just one plastic bag.

If all 7 billion people took that attitude…

The situation is serious—not yet hopeless—but we’re running out of time. And while little steps do add up to a big impact in the end, it’s time to realise we need radical change now if we want to improve our planet’s prognosis.

If we can come together and pull this off as a global community, we will see remarkable technological breakthroughs driven by collaboration and cooperation the likes of which have never been seen before.

We all have some degree of climate denial but immersing yourself in the science, at an emotional level, is critical to face reality. This should scare you—it should terrify you—but it should scare you into action.

But what can I do?

Quitting my job, moving off-grid, living my life in the most low-emission, zero-waste, sustainable way is what I should do—but my drive to contribute to resolving global warming isn’t going to be good enough for the debt collectors coming to take my house away from me.

Even more frighteningly, I can read this article by David Wallace-Wells, feel utterly despondent and helpless, and then have my attention grabbed by my pressing work deadlines, bouncy puppy or podcast episode I’ve been anticipating.

It’s utterly bizarre, the human ability to manage apathy, scepticism, fear and denial all in one go.

And yet, amazingly, many leading climate scientists are optimistic. They have a strange kind of faith, according to Wallace-Wells: ‘we will find a way to forestall radical warming, they say, because we must.’

Is this reassuring or another form of delusion? To meet the Paris Agreement goals by 2050, carbon emissions from energy and industry—which are rising, by the way—will have to fall by half each decade, and we will need to have invented technologies to extract, annually, twice as much carbon from the atmosphere as the entire planet’s plants do now.

And yet, amazingly again, the scientists have confidence in the ingenuity of humans. They point to the Apollo project, the hole in the ozone we patched in the 1980s, and how we teeter on the edge of nuclear weapon driven mutually assured destruction. They believe that since we’ve managed to invent our own destruction in the form of causing this climate change, we’ll find a way to engineer our way out of it.

In the meantime, as clever people find clever ways to save us all, we need to stay optimistic. Studies have found that a lack of hope may undermine an individual’s response and collective efficacy, which are essential for motivating actions to solve the problem. Hope, however, is not enough: we need action.

It feels hopeless that climate change deniers are running the White House, and instead of dealing with the problem we’re still talking about the problem’s existence. It feels hopeless that for all the personal efforts we make, the people controlling the companies doing all damage remain allowed to continue. It feels hopeless that for all the (limited) climate change coverage we have, it’s doom and gloom with no real solutions on offer.

We are stuck between helplessness and despair. But there are things you can do.

Refuse the plastic bag; walk to work; choose seasonal produce; educate others.

If all 7 billion people took that attitude…

More importantly, vote. Vote with your feet, with your wallet and with your ballot paper. Join movements to demand change; support Greta Thunberg, and divest from companies who couldn’t care less.

Let hope help you sleep and fear be the death of complacency. ■