“Severe weather” on my weather widget yet again – is there any other weather any more?

Supposedly green companies celebrate today’s #EarthDay by releasing green chatbots, powered by resource-hungry LLMs. LinkedIn invites me to try writing and rewriting posts with AI, as if my original human thoughts are no longer to be trusted. We keep pretending that doing more of the same but slapping a green or AI label on it is going to make a difference in a world running out of oil, amidst the sixth mass extinction, as we keep crossing known and unknown planetary boundaries. How do we expect to last a day on Mars if we can’t figure out how to keep our home planet habitable?

I know you’re exhausted, I know you’re overworked. I know you’re worried about everything getting expensive. I know the algorithms will probably bury this post because I am not excited or sharing productivity tips or growth hacks.

Still, if you’ve managed to read so far against all odds, I’d like to invite you to honour our wonderful planet Earth, the home we share with so many others, by slowing down. Doing less. Hugging more living beings. Start now by taking a deep breath in… and out. Let this breath remind you of your humanity. You are human, not a machine. You are nature. And nature isn’t always on, always performing. Nature isn’t always growing. There is no growth without rest.

So, dare to have a nap. Take some time off. Go somewhere where you can look at the stars. Look at the full moon as it rises tomorrow. You are a human being, not a human doing. You’re not a machine to be optimized, you don’t need to justify your existence, you are not lazy. You are enough.

And when you feel a bit more rested and not distracted by dozens of notifications, I invite you to read what the climate scientists are really saying. With their throats sore from shouting from the rooftops. You can start by following people like Rachel Donald and Erin Remblance, who are helping make the science easy to understand even when you feel you’re short on time.

I know, I know, you’re busy, so, so very busy. So many things to do, things to build… But none of it will matter in five, ten years unless we truly understand there are no promotions, no achievements, nothing to celebrate without a liveable Earth.

We don’t need more climate chatbots to tell us what we need to do. We know what needs to be done: we need to stop sprinting towards the cliff of our own demise. And spend more time with each other, building communities, and giving ourselves the time and space to dream of preferable futures that put life rather than GDP first.