I'm going to wager that the majority of comments here will be along the lines of, "ok, doomer." That's where we are now. More than forty years of denialism and

I'm going to wager that the majority of comments here will be along the lines of, "ok, doomer." That's where we are now. More than forty years of denialism and anti-science political pandering brought us here. With all of the calamities happening in the world right now, many people "just want to go back to normal." Unfortunately what was normal sucked. Normal is advertising, marketing, and campaigning to ensure people feel personally responsible for the climate crisis. Normal is articles and helpful guides on how you can reduce your, "carbon footprint." Normal is green-washing products so that you continue along consuming as much as possible without having to feel like there is anything wrong with it. Normal is paying lobbyists to prevent any action on climate change from impeding any industry from reaping profits off exploiting the environment. Normal is making sure that coal plants continue to burn, oil continues to be extracted and traded. Normal is making sure people feel like they ought to take several vacations around the world every year. That they ought to have more than one car, live in a neighbourhood that requires it, that driving to work for an hour and a half each way five days a week is a totally normal thing to do. Normal is making sure nobody notices how weird it is that we bottle water in plastic and sell it. Normal is making sure nobody notices that big corporations set up these operations on stolen land and avoid persecution for endangering the lives of the people that live there and the environment they operate in. There's so much more about, "let's get back to normal," that is just gross. Why do we want to get back to that? Is it even each of us, individually, that want this or is it someone else? Who benefits the most from, "going back to normal?" If the pandemic has taught us something it should be that we can radically and quickly alter social structures when we need to. I try not to let all of the anti-mask/vaxx pressure from a vocal minority make me cynical. But I haven't forgotten the wild fires, floods, hurricanes, heat waves, record ice sheet loss, missing glaciers, and the thousands of species going extinct and into decline. Going back to normal is going back into the past. That sucked. I think we should be looking to the future. Make a new normal that sucks a bit less.