When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
It is our job to be the shepherds. It is our job to herd these sheep—be they apathetic or ignorant—into making the right choices. Into saving the world. We have to educate people, because without education, we are all lost.
Back in 2009, I had an epiphany. I switched on the news to see a fire, raging through a Californian forest.
“The West Coast has experienced its warmest temperatures on record,” said the newsreader. “We spoke earlier to Professor Rachel Cohen at the University of California, whose recent paper examines the link between forest fires and climate change.”
I listened to Cohen while the forest fire raged in a small box above her head, before we returned to the newsreader for an update on the Copenhagen Summit. I watched the United Nations’ environment minister declaring climate change to be one of the greatest challenges of the present day, and I felt a surge of adrenaline.
I’d marched in numerous demonstrations in support of marginalized people, but it was in animal rights and environmental campaigns that I had invested most of my time and support. An animal has no voice; a forest is silent. They can’t fight for themselves, and so we must fight for them. I had fought for years, but my strategy had been flawed. By dividing my time between so many small protests, I was diluting my energy.
What is the point in fighting to save one greenfield site when acres of rain forest are being destroyed every day? What use saving a children’s center from closure when those very children won’t have a planet to live on? I’d been bailing out water when all the time there’d been a hole in the bottom of the boat.
Climate change has caused deadly heat waves and raging wildfires. Hurricanes, drought, and flooding. Polluted oceans, melting ice caps. The extinction of a third of all known species of animals.
Climate change is the biggest emergency the world faces and the only one that matters.
Once you know that, you can’t cross the road, can you?
TWENTY-SEVEN
7 HOURS FROM SYDNEY | MINA
I waited for the plane to dive, for the bottles to rattle in the racks in the galley as we lurched forward. I braced myself for the screams from the passengers as we plummeted toward the ground.
Nothing happened.
And still nothing is happening.
Through the gap in the curtains, I can see a handful of passengers. Reading, sleeping, watching TV. After she left Finley, Cesca took the opportunity to walk through the plane, chatting quietly to those passengers still awake. No one’s looking at me. No one saw what I did.
I can’t make myself go back into the cabin. I’m rooted to the spot, guilt hammering in my chest, my brain imprinted with the image of Mike’s face when he realized what was happening. He’s a big guy, fit-looking. He’s not going to go down without a fight. A sob erupts from inside me, raw revulsion at what I’ve done, at what must be happening, right now, in the flight deck.
Why isn’t the plane going down? I need it to be over. I cannot take this any longer.
I picture them breaking the news to Sophia, and tears spill across my cheeks. She’s five years old. Will she even remember me? I think of the note I left on her pillow, never thinking it would be the last one I’d leave, the final physical piece connecting us both. I always knew the notes were more important to me than to her, but I wonder now if she’ll keep that hastily drawn heart. If this note, at least, will be special.
Tears stream faster. I cry for the days she will come home from school needing me, for the advice she will want and the cuddles she’s finally begun to let me have. I cry for her first day at secondary school, for her wedding day, for when she has a baby of her own.
But she will be alive, I remind myself fiercely. And she’ll have her daddy. I choke back a sob as I think of Adam—not the man of the last twelve months, who lied and cheated his way out of our marriage, but the man I fell in love with.
The man I still love.
We could still do it, he said—spend the week before Christmas together, buy presents, drink mulled wine. Spend some time together. And I’d said no. I’d arranged it