The most important part of “How to Let Go of the World and Love All The Things Climate Can’t Change” for me was that the film framed the people most affected by climate change, the people in the low-lying areas being ravaged by environmental disasters, as the people who cared the most about the issue. I can’t tell you why, but this wasn’t always obvious to me. I knew that these people were the biggest victims of this whole situation, but I was thinking of them as victims, which this film strongly argues against. I didn’t know that there were local people trudging and canoeing through miles and miles of Amazon every day to protest the mismanagement of the oil systems decimating the ecosystem (and if I did know about them, I would expect that they were at least getting paid). I didn’t know that in Namibia, there was a man that was generating ideas that had the potential to improve a wide range of issues spanning from drought to the AIDS epidemic. I didn’t know that in China, there was a seven-year old girl who was aware of the PM 2.5 level of the air she was breathing. I thought these people were victims. I thought these people were hopeless and defeated. I thought this because how could they not be?
I’m not sure I’m alone in thinking of these people as victims. And the fact that they’re not who I thought they were matters. It becomes inherently more difficult to ask that the affluent support a group of people who need help, when these people appear to have no will to helping themselves. It’s tough to start from ground zero and make a difference. It becomes a lot easier when you build upon work already being done.