Recharge Your Passion for Climate Crisis Action

Public concern about climate change dropped 14 points in 2024. It may be that in a world beset by crises, there are only so many we can focus on at any one time. There’s a term for that: the “exhausted majority.”

Yet climate change hasn’t magically gone away. With communities from coast to coast to coast experiencing floods, fires and devastation on an annual basis, climate inaction is costing everyday families in insurance risks, heat effects, community safety and health costs (not to mention anxiety and trauma).

Last year saw $8.5 billion worth of insured losses in Canada as a result of severe weather. By the end of this year, climate change impacts will have struck an estimated $25 billion off GDP in the last decade. Now is not the time to fail to act decisively. Now is not the time to pull back from the fray.

Or, as Pulitzer-finalist and bestselling Fire Weather author, John Vaillant, explains: “I would argue that we have to keep time and space for climate because that’s the big umbrella under which everything else happens.”

And so, fellow members of the exhausted majority, we have to ask ourselves: how are we going to rouse ourselves out of our enervation and fatigue? How do we overcome a collective sense of hopelessness and alienation? How do we recharge, recommit, and reorganize our thoughts and actions towards positive outcomes not just for ourselves, but for generations to come? How do we act better?

It’s these questions and more that led us to launch a readers’ retreat we are hosting at the Hollyhock Leadership Learning Centre on Cortes Island from May 21 to 25. Register soon to secure your spot.

This might sound like a glorified multi-day book club, or an indulgent few days devouring book after book in a beautiful setting. But, while there will be elements of that, what we’re really offering is the time, structure and some healthy emotional camaraderie to support you in making sense of the cascade of information you’re exposed to daily, and deepen our shared understandings of how to use and share information in our lives and actions moving forward.

We don’t pretend that we are going to “solve” the climate crisis, or even get close, but we do hope to discover and share new perspectives about what to do about it with people who are keen to put their position and good fortune to use. We’ll delve into topics such as…

Disconnection and denial. (What are the ways in which we each create barriers to doing more?)

Hope. (How do we define hope and how important is it, really, in our future work?)

Class and politics. (What are the inherent assumptions we make about others, and how do we begin to have discussions with others outside of our social “bubbles”?)

Storytelling. (What are methods and ideas from award-winning journalists and communications experts that can support us in turning these answers into practice?)

Building the future. (What’s stopping you from deepening your work or impact — and what comes next?)

As writers, strategists and now workshop creators, we see our role as helping people wrangle with some of the core questions we face as people seeking to create a positive impact in the world. Ultimately, we all need to take a step back every now and then, to take stock of where our leverage is, to honestly confront what’s stopping us from truly using our influence, and to strive to increase our agency and impact.

We’ve each spent most of our careers thinking about these questions: Ian producing award-winning stories and documentaries about climate and people across Australia and Canada before founding and scaling a major environmental NGO that marries environment and economic prosperity; and Zoe developing strategies and master-minding effective advocacy campaigns and communications for NGOs, municipalities and Indigenous Nations, all aimed at achieving bold climate and social policies through a social justice lens.

We are honoured to be joined by two exceptional minds to help expand the dialogue.

John Vaillant is a master storyteller who first came to the attention of Canadian readers as author of The Golden Spruce, and who has more recently achieved international acclaim with his brilliant best-selling book, Fire Weather. He’s a globally sought-after speaker and thinker on climate change, and a tireless advocate for truth-telling not just about the devastating causes and consequences of wildfires, but of the distortions of misinformation, perverted science and poor public policy. At our retreat, John will give a keynote address and participate in daily sessions on key topics.

“I feel that we are in extraordinary times right now,” John says. “Times that have the risk of alienating us, that are definitely dividing us. We need to reaffirm our connection to each other, our commitment to the things that we love and feel strongly about. [The retreat] is really an opportunity to learn from each other, but also about ourselves.”

'Cúagilákv Jess Housty will also speak to us virtually from their Híɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) homelands on the concept of “right relations” and the role of Indigenous knowledge in relation to climate work. What does it mean to be in right relations with each other, and the planet? How or should non-Indigenous citizens collaborate with Indigenous communities for positive impacts?

Jess is an exceptional community organizer who brings wisdom, clarity, kindness and — importantly — zero tolerance for BS to their work as co-founder of the Right Relations Collaborative; Executive Director of the Qqs Projects Society; and as an award-winning poet and author of Crushed Wild Mint. They will challenge our assumptions, and inspire us to think and read well outside our comfort zones.

For us, the Climate Readers’ Retreat is just one expression of a core idea that informs our work, including as co-founders of our non-profit literary arts society, Upstart & Crow: the idea that stories matter, and that through telling and sharing better stories, we can unlock the power of literature to inspire people to action, to let go of old orthodoxies, and to feed and feel the surge of renewal that is this generation’s greatest challenge to bring into being.

One challenge to ourselves, to our community and to people we hope will join us at the Climate Readers’ Retreat, is well captured something in John said to us:

“How do we want to be remembered? That's low on the list of urgencies, but it's still something to consider, especially in pivotal historical moments like this.”

Come join us in wrestling with some of the thorniest issues we face as a species. Our hope is that we will all come away from Hollyhock enlivened, more informed, invigorated and better equipped to help shape the communities we want to live in, and the future we want for our world.