Activists, scientists, and politicians tread a fine line between the need to alarm and the need to inspire the public. Exclusive and relentless gloom and doom messages cause us to cower in fear and overwhelm. But at one point it’s also time to get our heads out of the sand and decide what future we want to create for our children and grandchildren.

Climate change is no longer drowning the far away Seychelles, it is now violently banging us over the head in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and Middle Europe. Will we get the message in time to avoid our own demise?

Perhaps we have been asking the wrong questions all along because we have been approaching climate change from the perspective of our culture of lack. It is not so much a question of what we need to less of or what we should deprive ourselves of. Rather, the issue has to do with reverence, appreciation, respect and cooperation. We must relearn to appreciate nature for our living environment, we must thank nature for the beautiful foods we are able to grow in cooperation with it, we need to redirect our gaze to its majesty and beauty, we have to recognize the abundance nature is showing us all around. Only when we come from a place of reverence and gratitude, of wanting to work together with nature, not against it, will the answers reveal themselves easily.

Recently this beautifully inspiring short film that attempts to dislodge us from our collective climate change action inertia popped up in my social media feed. Perhaps it’ll inspire you, to shift from lack to abundance, from inertia to urgency and action.