Category Climate

What it takes to “fix” climate change

Two questions for you: How close do you think we are to successfully managing the climate crisis? And how long do you estimate we still have to try to do so? I suspect there are no correct nor definitive answers to these, and whoever you ask will have a different perspective informing their answers (don’t…

Climate book club, an invitation

If you know me in real life, you might know that I read a lot. At the same time, I don’t often make reading a social activity. I leave my book reviews and takeaways here and there on the Internet, but I rarely seek out a space to consistently read alongside others or nurture conversations…

UNESCO Zero Waste Campaign

This is a submission to the UNESCO Vietnam Office for a communications (& design) intern position. I didn’t get hired in the end but still quite like these graphics that I made. So why not keep them here? 🙂 A Sight to Lose Have you seen an image of plastic waste in the ocean, or…

What’s one to do about climate change? (Part 2)

Previously I have gone over why it’s tempting to feel like one individual cannot do much to make a change in the climate crisis, and why I personally believe otherwise. It is difficult and perhaps futile to measure one’s efforts against the insurmountable demand for large-scale, effective climate action. For that reason, I believe that…

What’s one to do about climate change? (Part 1)

Amidst the greenwashing from corporations and the desperate outcries from activists for collective action, a single individual wanting to do something on their part to counter climate change may feel as if their only options alternate between sliding down the consumerist chasm (which is by definition counterproductive, mind you) and experiencing a sense of insignificance…

An inconvenient myth

The film An Inconvenient Truth was released 15 years ago. It triggered a monumental shift in the media and public awareness regarding climate change (then recognized more widely as global warming), both in the US and internationally. The film also immortalized an illusion that the politics and economics of climate change have come to embody.…

How climate solutions are anthropocentric, and why that is okay

I recently read the book Under A White Sky (2021) by the science journalist Elizabeth Kolbert. Through snippets of her trips to various locations around the world to report on strategies of combating environmental destruction, Kolbert introduces in this book a whole new dimension to what we typically refer to as the Anthropocene. Her previous Pulitzer-winning volume The Sixth…

Climate “inactivism” and the risks of inflicting guilt in environmental politics

Earlier this year, Michael E. Mann, who is widely recognized as one of the creators of the famous “hockey stick” graph depicting historical increase in global temperature, published a book titled “The New Climate War”. Despite being written by a renowned climate scientist, the book is fully politicized in its argument against climate “inactivism”, broadly defined as…

Are we Disobedient?

At first glance, a climate change documentary titled Disobedience already seems to promise tenacity of a message. Created by a company that goes by the name Disobedient Productions, the relatively short documentary fulfills my initial expectation of its being a stronghold of creative space. What is even more remarkable about this film, however, is its…