In early July I escaped to the ocean for one week and for days managed to avoid the news. I needed complete rest, some ignorant bliss, and to be cradled and rocked in saltwater waves. But within days of my return I was feeding at the news trough again. I came back just in time to witness, gape-mouthed, Trump’s performance at Helsinki—followed by more craziness I can’t even remember now. I became, almost inexplicably, nearly catatonic, barely able to function. After some days I roused, got back in the game, only to be hit by something worse—my despair shifted to an abiding sense of doom, a kind of desperation and a deep anxiety.

I’ve been environmentally active and attuned my entire adult life; I’m certainly aware of what’s happening worldwide and have known the situation isn’t good. But something shifted for me this summer: I felt bone deep that things had gotten really bad, that we’re at a tipping point or already past it. Maybe it was the record-breaking wildfires everywhere—in the US West, in Scandanavia; the British Columbia fires so ravaging that great smoke billows could be seen in satellite images. Or learning that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is three times the size of France and growing. Or that Antarctica is melting three times faster than predicted. Or that we’re now at 405 parts per million CO2.

I looked around, enjoying the lovely green Vermont summer, and I thought: it may never be this good again. And my childhood, growing up in the 1960s in North Carolina, may soon become a fairy tale: when summer evenings thrummed with nocturnal creatures, thousands of full-throated peepers, katy-dids and crickets, the darkness glittering with fireflies, when a noisy morning chorus greeted dawn, uncountable songbirds vying—instead of the few morning songs I now hear and the muted evenings.

I try to be charitable to those who don’t seem to register the quake cracks under their feet. But I confess to a barely contained rage at times. Our government representatives seem delusional. Or is it me? Oh, boy, I do wish sometimes it were me, that my fears are misguided and there is nothing to be concerned about—no reason not to continue to extract every last scintilla of possible fossil fuel from the earth, to say cheers and tally-ho to all those captains of industry. I wish I could be just one more happy Nero among the millions, living my little life, fiddling away oblivious, while the world burns.

In this siloed world, where groups have staked out their identity politics turfdoms, feeding on cherry-picked information, where truth has become a fungible commodity, I find myself in love, even more, with science. Thank goodness for the scientists—though they must feel like so many Cassandras. Long ago some saw what was coming and tried to warn us. Thirty years ago, in 1988, James Hansen, former NASA scientist, gave what’s considered the first public warning about climate change and the role humans play when he told a US congressional hearing that he was 99 percent confident that a recent sharp rise in temperatures was a result of human activity.

As far back as 1977, we had the forward-thinking environmental policies of the Carter administration. President Carter boosted the budget of the EPA and established the Superfund to clean up toxic waste sites. His National Energy Policy, enacted in April 1977, stated: “America’s hope for long-term economic growth beyond the year 2000 rests on renewable and virtually inexhaustible sources of energy, such as solar and geothermal energy. The Government will promote aggressively the development of renewable resources.” Let that sink in: 41 years ago the US government was actively promoting renewable energy.

Carter also promoted simple common-sense policies, such as establishing a national speed limit of 55 mph (saving more than 8 million gallons of gas per day) and his thermostat control program, which mandated that thermostats in public buildings be set no higher than 65 degrees F in the daytime, during winter, with the temp turned down to 55 at night, a policy that saved 300,000 barrels of oil per day. He followed his own policy at the White House and famously wore a sweater during his addresses to the nation to underscore his message of energy conservation (as in, don’t crank the heat, put on a sweater). Some saw this as depressing; I considered it enlightened. But Carter was in office for only one term, followed by “morning in America” Reagan (more like mourning), who quickly reversed various environmental policies or stalled them. Imagine where we’d be now if we had kept up the momentum of Carter’s farsightedness and heeded Hansen.

I can’t believe how much time we’ve lost. Just as I can’t believe we now have a government that is doing the exact opposite of what needs to be done: unraveling important hard-fought-for environmental legislation. I sometimes feel like I’m caught in some weird parallel universe—the crazy one with bad outcomes. This is not my beautiful universe. When we should be pulling together—not just this country but the entire world—nationalist and isolationist policies are on the ascendant. It’s all some awful irony, some cruel joke.

Despair for me means that, at times, everything becomes absurd. How can I even think about making another poem or painting while the earth rocks underfoot? Painting one more pretty picture or recording the minutiae of my little life just seems ridiculous. Or for that matter—dusting a table, washing a dish, or even combing my hair. One’s inevitable death can produce this effect (something that’s on my mind daily, now that I’m in my sixth decade)—just as it can galvanize one into action. But I realize I’m mentally contending with extinction on a bigger scale here, certainly of many species and quite possibly humans. Or perhaps it’s not death that’s got me—after all, the earth itself will eventually die, eaten by a bloated sun—it’s the needless suffering we may be inflicting on ourselves and on our fellow passengers on planet Earth. Not may be—are, right now.

But while I am alive and choose to remain so, I might as well keep trying. There are so many areas of concern and so much at stake: decent wages, affordable health care, social justice for minority groups—the list goes on and on. But I really believe climate change is the most important, and we all need to get engaged, doing whatever feels right for each of us. With this issue of Vermont Woman—a miniature megaphone against the whine of millions of Nero fiddlers—we hope to bring inspiration and direction. The power of both the individual and collective is on view here. As climate-activist Bill McKibben says: “With the ice caps melting, we can’t make the math of climate change work one person at a time. Instead, the biggest thing an individual can do is become a little less of an individual.” Don’t stop the individual efforts; don’t stop consuming less, driving less, recycling more, eating less meat. But do join with others and find your passion, the place where you can do your best work—whether lobbying at the state house, organizing with others to clean a river, working to make homes more energy efficient, or becoming a wildlife rehabilitator. I plan to follow my own advice.

Kate Mueller is the Editor of Vermont Woman Newspaper