Utopia: About the Issue

To solve the climate crisis is to envision, grow, and manifest utopia. UnEarth envisages what utopia looks and feels like, proffering visions of hope and ambition at a time suffused with despair and vapidity. 

The climate crisis is not only the crisis of our times, but it is the crisis of our existence on Earth. Never before has humanity faced such a colossal, depth-defying existential predicament. It is a crisis born from both greed and ignorance. 

Fossil fuel companies chose greed, believing that their hydrocarbon profit model was more important than our collective survival. So they sowed the seeds of doubt, a sinister plot that has since manifested in societal confusion, skepticism, and denial. 

Our leaders also chose greed, abdicating the foundational duty of protecting and serving our communities for the dirty money offered by big polluters. So they jettisoned the social contract, believing that they could shield themselves from the coming storm and profiteer from global suffering. 

And this greed has imbricated mass societal ignorance. We live in a world entering the incipient phases of unmitigated global warming, where wildfires set entire continents ablaze and vicious hurricanes rage, and yet, we flip the television on and are bombarded by gas-guzzling SUV advertisements, we scroll through social media and binge cute baby videos, we fly across oceans for trivial tourism. We live in a mass delusion, both unaware of the unfolding dystopia and painfully aware of its existence, feeling hopeless by its vastness and hopeful by its imperceptibility. 

But it’s not too late. We have 10 years to shake off our blinkered realities and engender nothing short of a civilizational revolution. Oftentimes we refuse to see the climate crisis in full because we are scared by the changes it demands. Yet these changes won’t tie us down, they will let us flourish. 

To solve the climate crisis is to recalibrate our societies with nature, which is to say, more time in nature, in the garden, in the lake. 

To solve the climate crisis is to break free of our capitalist shackles, which is to say, less time at the office and more time with loved ones, free calendars filled with low-carbon passions, a sustainable social safety net typified by a universal basic income and guaranteed social services.  

To solve the climate crisis is to implement social justice, which is to say, equity for all, no matter their sex, religion, race, ethnicity, or creed. 

To solve the climate crisis is to focus on mind, body, and soul, which is to say, destressed livelihoods, self-discovery, rejuvenation.

To solve the climate crisis is to envision, grow, and manifest utopia. 

• Noah Herfort: Editor-in-Chief