Just over a year ago, after our country spent a summer proclaiming that Black Lives Matter and elected a president who promised to usher in an era of radical climate action, we were staring at what felt like a time of renewed hope. Fix asked climate and justice activists what they saw coming for 2021 after such a landmark year, and published 21 Predictions for 2021 — a project capturing the optimism of that moment.
As we began to think about seeking predictions for 2022, it felt like a very different milestone. We now know that climate change is irreversible, that it will impact all of us, and that the world’s governments remain unwilling to take the drastic actions needed to avoid the worst outcomes. And so this year, we were left wondering not, “What do we do with this moment of hope?” but rather, “What does it mean to have hope now?”
In our 22 Predictions for 2022, featuring comments from a wide array of climate and justice visionaries, there are a lot of reasons to be hopeful — a shared sense that awareness and activism is reaching the mainstream and crossing national boundaries; that cities and communities are stepping up to implement powerful solutions; and that big opportunities exist to leverage data and technology to promote sustainability and equity.
Throughout our What’s Next Issue, which explores innovations on the horizon and the issues activists are preparing to tackle, there are reasons to look forward with optimism to what’s ahead of us. You’ll read about how the longstanding campaign to restore Indigenous land stewardship is accelerating, about the groups stepping up to make sure that renewable energy is equitably distributed, and about the voices amassing against global climate walls. We also cover the ways in which climate storylines are surfacing in books, TV, and movies, and how the field of psychology is adapting to help us process our collective eco-grief, plus more features and essays that focus on what 2022 will bring.
But the most powerful answer to the question of what it means to have hope after the past year comes in a story about the people joining the climate fight — activists young and old who are newly committing themselves: Hope is action.
Hope is not something that we sit back and wait to find us, or something that does or does not exist because of external circumstances. It’s the sense of possibility that we each nurture within ourselves by doing something — anything — to preserve what we love.
That’s a powerful idea to carry into 2022, and something we at Fix will continue exploring this year in our publications, our newsletter, and our events, which we hope will be part of your journey toward action and possibility.
