How can we truly change our relationship with the environment and climate if we have not yet learned to recognise how our own thoughts, habits and assumptions shape the way we see the world?

The world is changing, are we paying attention...

This is not simply a question about recycling, reducing consumption or choosing the right kind of transport. Those things matter. But perhaps there is another question underneath them:

How did we come to live as though we are separate from the natural world in the first place?

In 2026, it is becoming increasingly difficult to look away. The World Meteorological Organisation reports that the eleven years from 2015 to 2025 were the eleven warmest years on record. The Earth’s energy imbalance has reached the highest level in the observational record, while oceans continue to absorb enormous amounts of excess heat.

We know this. And yet knowing something intellectually does not necessarily change how we live.

We can understand that something is happening and still behave as though it is not happening. We can read about rising temperatures in the morning and spend the afternoon caught up in an entirely different set of concerns. We can feel overwhelmed by the scale of the problem and, quite naturally, turn away from it.

The mind has its ways of protecting itself. It narrows its attention. It seeks what is familiar. It prefers the immediate reward to the distant consequence. It creates stories about who we  are, what we need and what is possible. And once these stories become habitual, we can mistake them for reality.

Perhaps this is where awareness becomes important.

Mindfulness is not about thinking positively about climate change. Nor is it about becoming perfectly conscious consumers, endlessly monitoring every choice we make.

It is, first of all, about seeing clearly.

Can we notice the impulse to consume before we consume?

Can we notice the discomfort that arises when we consider changing something familiar?

Can we notice the stories we tell ourselves... I am only one person. It is too late. Someone else will solve it. Nothing I do will make a difference.

And can we simply see these thoughts as thoughts? This distinction matters. A thought can be compelling without being true. A habit can feel necessary simply because we have repeated it for a long time. A way of living can appear normal when, from another perspective, it is anything but.

The climate crisis asks something of humanity that is both difficult and very simple: the willingness to see what is happening without turning away. Not to become paralysed by fear or consumed by guilt. And not to pretend that individual actions alone can solve a profoundly systemic problem. Rather, to become sufficiently awake to respond.

There is a difference between acting from fear and acting from care.

Fear tends to narrow our world. Care can widen it.

When we begin to recognise our interconnectedness, the environment is no longer something “out there” that needs protecting. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we grow and the ecosystems that sustain us are not separate from our lives. We are participants in the same living system.

This recognition changes the question. Instead of asking only, What can I do to save the planet?, perhaps we can ask:

What kind of relationship do I want to have with the world that sustains me?

That question is less about perfection and more about attention. It invites us to pause before automatically following old patterns. To become curious about what we consume, what we value and what we have come to regard as “enough”. It invites us to notice the distance between what we say we care about and how we actually live.

And perhaps, most importantly, it reminds us that change does not begin with certainty.

It begins with seeing.

The climate crisis is a physical crisis, a political crisis and an economic crisis. But perhaps it is also, in part, a crisis of attention. We have become remarkably skilled at directing our attention towards what is immediate, profitable, entertaining and convenient. One of the most important things we can learn now is how to pay attention to what is easily overlooked, including the consequences of our own choices and the stories that keep us from seeing them clearly.

We do not need to have all the answers. But we do need to be willing to look. Because what we pay attention to shapes what we value. What we value shapes how we live. And how we live, collectively, shapes the world we leave behind. Perhaps this is where a different future begins: not with having the perfect answer, but with becoming a little more awake to the question.

If our thoughts are shaping our choices without our awareness, are we really choosing at all?

Climate Week NYC 2026 | 21–27 September

A week to come together, pay attention, and consider the choices that shape the future of our planet.