What can be done?

You can be forgiven if you think this all feels like some great tipping point.

Australia’s record-breaking brush fires are only part of it; the deaths, property damage and near-unfathomable volume of dead wildlife — an estimated half-billion birds, reptiles and mammals — seem almost apocalyptic.

There’s plastic in the oceans to an extent we’ve never seen before, and even microplastics in the air; the Canadian Arctic is thawing as temperatures rise at higher rates than global norms; permafrost isn’t “perma” anymore, and the list goes on.

Many of the plants we use for food depend in greater or less amounts on bees and other pollinating insects that are in sharp decline.

Meanwhile, our neighbours to the south, it seems, are being led by a president who clearly acts first and thinks about consequences later; scant days after New Year’s Eve, social media was trending with discussion of the potential for World War III over U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to have a senior Iranian military leader killed. (Trump says there were pressing reasons for the assassination, including secret evidence about imminent attacks on Americans, but given the number of obvious and outright lies Trump has been comfortable spewing during his presidency, it’s simply hard to believe the latest statement.)

Is it any wonder there are now millennials among us who feel depressed, powerless and downright fatalistic about the future? That there are high school students who believe, on its current course, that humanity has 15 years or less before forestalling catastrophe is impossible?

It’s hardly surprising — the future hangs heavy, and the now-regular parade of record-breaking weather and temperature events is undeniable.

So what should we do about it? The simple answer is: everything we can.

Faced with profit-seeking, government-lobbying multinationals, with governments that seem unwilling to move beyond delivering bread-and-circus shortterm solutions — “We’ll cut your taxes! We’ll keep fuel prices down!” — it might seem like individual Atlantic Canadians have only a small voice and even less power. Four provinces that are like a bump on the edge of larger neighbours, four provinces with little federal political clout, and whose residents are most often portrayed as folksy, funny characters, if they are portrayed as anything at all?

The truth is we can be much more if we put our minds to it — our hearts, our minds, our voices, our votes and, most of all, our spending power.

Start paying attention — to the news, to where your food comes from, to how your provincial and federal governments make choices about things like disposable plastic and industries like oil and gas.

Be loud. You don’t want to be the ones telling your children you sat firmly on your own hands.

“So what should we do about it? The simple answer is: everything we can.”