Guide through the times of a burning planet

INFOBOX

State: Project was finished

Summary: Young Greens and the Guide Collective have published a publication as part of the Naděje je v činech (Hope is in Action) project entitled: A Guide for Young People in the Times of a Burning Planet. It is a series of essays and texts that discuss grief, crisis, and other feelings related to climate change.

Úvod

Young Greens and the Guide Collective published a publication entitled: A Guide for Young People in Times of a Burning Planet as part of the Hope is in Action project. Because more than half of young people is struggling with feelings of sadness or anxiety due to the changing climate, thus we decided to try to connect at least a few of them, both from various Czech activist groups and outside them, and create a collection of articles (professional or fiction, describing personal experience or created stories of other people) and artistic contributions (illustrations, photographs) on the topic of climate grief and its constructive processing.

"It started on a hot summer day in Ulcinj, Montenegro. I may have had a sunburn, certainly a nasopharyngitis from the air-conditioned rooms of the hotel where a meeting of green and left-wing youth organizations was taking place under the banner of CDN. That day, the idea came to make a guide. A guide to what? The times of a burning planet? How to guide young people in such complicated times as the ones we are experiencing? I probably had a sunburn, or just grief and anger from tired ecological-social resistance. But how to revive young green activists or new such people with the help of something as dead as a grant and an event built on its basis? It's hard, but we tried. A guide for young people by young people. A guide that doesn't guide, but offers perspectives that can guide, can encourage, can arouse understanding, anger, support."

The guide

We have put together a mosaic of genres that revolves in a circle and creates a picture: The polycrisis we live in, the environmental anger or grief we experience, and the actions with which (some of us) deal with it. Some people's grief is political (p.9), some have a lot of questions, some let even the wheat speak about the crisis (p.23), others get involved, organize, and thus fight against the comfort, skepticism, and indifference of others (chapter Hope is in Actions), some simply can't help but throw up their hands in the field where they remember the meadow. The book does not aim to cover the entire issue either professionally or holistically; it is more of a spark, which could ignite people like us (suffering from skepticism, rage, or sadness) for a change.

Mosaic, the result of not always simple, fun and fulfilling work, a paper guide, a real book that fits in the breast pocket of a jacket, was created because actions inspire hope and we believe that if we join forces, we have the power to influence the future of this planet.

The publication is not for sale, if you are interested in it, please write an email to josef.horvath@mladizeleni.cz.

The entire project was funded by a grant from CDNEE (Cooperation and Development Network of Eastern Europe), EYF and the Council of Europe.