What If We’ve Been Thinking About The Climate Crisis All Wrong?

What if the way we talk about climate change is making everything worse?

What If We’ve Been Thinking About the Climate Crisis All Wrong?, narrated by Chris Jordan, challenges the fear-driven narrative that dominates climate discourse today. While extreme weather events and environmental destruction are real, the constant state of panic and catastrophe we’re sold may be doing more harm than good. This video explores how fear paralyzes us, shutting down our ability to think clearly and act wisely. Instead of succumbing to despair, we must adopt a new mindset—one that invites thoughtful action, resilience, and a deeper connection with the world around us.

Rather than framing climate change as an inevitable apocalypse, this video urges us to shift our focus toward something just as powerful—beauty. Throughout history, beauty has inspired transformation, ignited passion, and deepened our love for the world. What if reconnecting with the Earth’s breathtaking complexity, rather than being consumed by fear, is the key to protecting it? By seeing the planet not as a problem to solve but as a masterpiece to cherish, we can find the strength and creativity to heal what’s broken.

This is not a call for denial or complacency but for a radical reimagining of our relationship with the world. Instead of being trapped in a cycle of doom, we can choose to make beauty our guiding force, turning despair into action and hopelessness into possibility. By changing the way we think, we can change the way we respond—shifting from fear-driven urgency to mindful, collective transformation.

What If We’ve Been Thinking About the Climate Crisis All Wrong? is an invitation to see the world differently, to move past fear, and to embrace a future rooted in love, wisdom, and beauty. It’s time to tell a new story—one that empowers rather than paralyzes. Are we ready to step into it?

“The catastrophic situation is playing out in Australia.”

“The catastrophic category 4 hurricane.”

“Stronger storms, more storms, heavier rain, our climate is changing.”

I am tired of hearing all of the bad news exaggerated because we think that is the right thing to do.

“The point of no return is fast approaching.”

I am tired of the term catastrophe – “failure to act soon will lead to a steady stream of catastrophes.”

disaster, “natural disasters surged dramatically over the past 20 years.”

and especially apocalypse.

“Australia’s apocalyptic bushfires struck with a frightening ferocity in 2020.”

Climate change is not an apocalypse. It is a serious, long-term problem that needs our deepest, wisest attention.

I am really tired of people advocating for panic.

“Billions of people are going to die.”

When we are in a state of fear, we know from neuroscience that our mind shuts down. There is never a time when panic is the appropriate response to any situation. If you wake up in the middle of the night and your house is on fire, panic is the worst possible response. The proper response in that circumstance is equanimity, full mind intelligence, backed by wisdom. That’s what we need not only if our house is burning down but to face a global problem like climate change or any environmental issue.

We’ve been stuck in a very energetically dark story about what is happening to our world for a long time. And it isn’t working. It is time to change the story.

Let’s go immerse ourselves in the transformational healing power of beauty. Who hasn’t stood in the presence of beauty and had their heart break open with joy?

Beauty and love go together. They are identical twins. Find one of them and the other one will immediately show up.

Every living being, whether it is a plant or an animal at any scale is an incomprehensibly complex and magnificent artwork created by the Universe.

Every leaf, every branch, is a magical, mysterious, spiraling, math equation emerging out of nothing. Every detail of the living world speaks to us in the sacred language of beauty.

One of the fundamental characteristics of beauty is the more you look for it, the more you see. The more you cultivate beauty, the more it appears before you.

I’m going all in on beauty. I’m all in. Of all times, why turn toward beauty right now? Because maybe the fact that we turned away from beauty is how we got ourselves in this mess in the first place.

I am not advocating living in denial of the problems. All I am advocating is we need to change our relationship to each other about those problems.

I think it is time for the whole world to let this dark storm of impending apocalypse move on through.

Let us each connect with the ocean of love that we all carry inside of us. Let us make beauty the north star that we collectively set our compass to and navigate by. Let us together step into a new beautiful, connected, loving, story of our world and our future.

Chris Jordan is a photographer and artist, best known for his projects that probe the dark underbelly of our culture of mass consumption. For many years, he has been interested in the tragedies and ironic complexities of our many forms of waste. His work has tried to edge-walk the lines between art and activism, beauty and horror, abstraction and representation, and the visible and the invisible. It feels worth it to me to face the external landscapes of the shadow side of our culture, as a way of encountering something internally about ourselves that is otherwise hard to see. His approach is less about blaming or judging, and more about honoring the complexity of these phenomena. Series made with these intentions include “Intolerable Beauty,” “Running the Numbers,” “Midway,” and “In Katrina’s Wake.” The arc of this work culminated in his film “Albatross” (2018), about birds on a remote island in the Pacific whose bodies are filled with plastic. His newer projects turn in a radically different direction: toward the transformative power of beauty. Chris has come to believe in beauty as a kind of energetic medicine to heal individual and collective trauma and remind us about what matters on a basic level. In the increasing insanity and mental chaos of our world, Chris sees the celebration of beauty not as a form of avoidance or denial, but as a compass that points back toward connection with essential parts of ourselves.

“Almost every person i meet wants to do something about it but they don’t know what and how. In my country India, if you just plant a tree outside, a cow will eat it, government workers will dig it, shop owners will not allow it, cars will crush it, somebody will stop you because in future somebody wants to build there….just one tree is impossible in a forgotten world and its forgotten beauty.”

“Love you guys! THIS is the content/message(s) I’m here for!! Sharing, now.”

 

For more from this speaker, visit his website.

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