Jane Fonda - What Can I do? My Path from Climate Despair to Action

During Labor Day weekend in 2019, I was in Big Sur with my pals Catherine Keener and Rosanna Arquette. I have a history with Big Sur dating back to 1961, when I first ventured there by myself in search of Henry Miller. I had just read a pamphlet he wrote, To Paint Is to Love Again, and I wanted to meet him and talk. He wasnt there, but I ended up spending a week at the hot springs (later to become Esalen), and it was transformative.

Now here I was once again in need of transformation. Ive been an environmental activist since the 1970s, installing a windmill at my ranch in 1978 and solar heating and electricity in my Santa Monica home in 1981, speaking at rallies, attending Greenpeace marches in both the United States and Canada, and later getting an electric car, stopping my use of single-use plastic, recycling, and cutting back on red meat. But I was still ill at ease. Existential angst? I had just learned that there are 2.9 billion fewer birds in North America than there were in 1970; I knew that sea turtles are strangling from tumors caused by pollution in the oceans; whales are found dead with fifty pounds of plastic in their bellies; polar bears are starving; 93 percent of children worldwide are breathing polluted air that is endangering their health; and untold numbers of people were living in the midst of oil wells and refineries that were causing them major health problems. But I hadnt really focused on what the scientists were saying. I knew we needed to reduce fossil fuel use and invest in clean energy alternatives, fast, but these things remained a disturbing reality sitting out there somewhere, removed from me. I hadnt taken it in and metabolized it. Instead, I would wonder if perhaps humankind deserved the fate it had created. I remembered what E. O. Wilson said decades ago, which I paraphrase: God granted the gift of intelligence to the wrong species. It should have gone to non-meat-eating creatures with no thumbs such as whales and dolphins. I agreed. Just get rid of us Homo sapiens ASAP and things will restore themselves.

But all the while, I knew this fatalist thinking was a cop-out, and I didnt like myself for it. Id be reminded of the recent birth of my grandson, and my two older grandkids, and the many people out there fighting for a better planet. No, fatalism couldnt be for me. Yet I was compartmentalizing my grief rather than letting it into my heart.

Catherine Keener reminded me recently how, on the five-hour drive to Big Sur, she would go on an hourly rant: What can I do? Tell me what to do! Where are the leaders? I need someone to tell me what to do! I felt impotent, angry with myself for my inability to give her the answers she needed because I felt the same way. What can I do?

The very morning we left for Big Sur, Id received an advance copy of Naomi Kleins new book, On Fire: The(Burning) Case for a Green New Deal. All my life, the exact book I needed without even knowing it had come to me at the perfect time and changed my trajectory. Here it was again. I began reading it the next day, and a quarter of the way through I was shaking with intensity.

Over time, Ive asked myself what it was about Naomis book that so affected me. One was the way she wrote about Greta Thunberg, the sixteen-year-old Swedish activist who, in 2018, started a movement called Fridays for Future that had inspired school strikes for climate action around the world, involving millions of students. I knew about Greta. A lot had been written about her, including that she was on the autism spectrum. But until Naomi, I hadnt understood what that had to do with the power of her connection to the climate crisis and the way she communicated about it. Naomi explained that unlike the rest of us, people with Aspergers dont look around and take cues about how to behave and feel from the people they see. They receive information pure and direct. If they study the science of climate change as Greta, a self-described science nerd, did, they arent able to read the stark facts, feel scared for a while, and then go about business as usual. When Greta, with her unfiltered focus, her inability to compartmentalize or cope with cognitive dissonance, read the science showing disaster was looming, she didnt believe it at first. It cant be true, because, if it were, nobody would be speaking of anything else. All people would be doing is trying to figure out how to fix it. But when she realized the science was true and nobody was behaving as they should in a crisis, she became traumatized. She stopped speaking and eating.