You can be optimistic without being uncritically positive. This doesn’t mean you don’t allow yourself to think about the range of real climate possibilities that are terrifying. I have those moments. I have those days and weeks. And, well, years. But I have learned to manage my climate grief with a framework that is equal parts optimism and action. Doom and Myopic Hope is a false binary. Optimism laced with truth and anger is simply the operational mindset for a world that requires us to assimilate so much climate tragedy while simultaneously working to prevent so much more.

My friend Rebecca recently elbowed me into reading Lydia Millet’s A Children’s Bible, a novel that perfectly conveys diverging generational responses to the climate crisis. I’ve written before about how much I cower from climate fiction. The reality of the crisis is so much to bear that, at the end of the day, I just want to dunk my head in a Sally Rooney novel, where the drama plays out in a space no wider than a pint of Guinness. Reading A Children’s Bible took all the strength I had.

In the book, the parents are hollowed-out creatures, unable to live in a world that requires massive adaptation. The kids take the reins.

It’s not that the children are optimistic. It’s that they have no choice but to plow forth, with angry optimism and courage and steadfastness.

Read the full article about climate fiction by Sarah Lazarovic at YES! Magazine.