When All News Feels Like Bad News

We didn't realize until 1969 how small we are, what a small dot in the universe we are. And that we thought of resources as inexhaustible. Like, doesn't matter, you know, the oceans, we could never pollute the oceans tomorrow because they're just so big. We could never pollute the sky because it's everywhere. And I think this convergence that we now have of understanding the planetary health at a very granular level is too much for most people. And it actually is too much for me. I mean, it's almost, you know, that there's so many inputs telling us how much is going wrong that people close down. There's only so much bad news that people can take before they freeze up and calcify. And I think we're there. I really do. I think people don't want to hear the next bad thing about climate change or, you know, soil health or species decline or, and I actually, I overheard someone talking about the David Attenborough movie and saying, Jesus, it was just such a downer. Like, and so some, some of us are able to, like, process it and understand a positive vision of where we want to go. But I think for many people, it's just like, Good God, are we, you know, what does that mean? We've diminished the planet, we've diminished these resources, we have kids, like, what does it mean? And what's my accountability and responsibility for that? And it's tough. I think psychologically, you know, my response to people when they ask me is, you know, mental health is being able to hold opposites in balance. So on the one hand, we've got planetary decline and the other we have incredible innovation and leadership and different thinking and many different ideas about where we can go and we kind of have to grieve for what we've lost.