It’s time for radical courage
As climate collapse deepens, genocide unfolds in plain sight, and governments double down on oil and violence, millions are beginning to realise that now is the time for radical courage.
Do you feel it? The air? Thick with something more than smoke? A reckoning is coming. Activists say that they feel it in the streets, in the forests, on the picket lines, in the chants that refuse to die out. The old world is cracking open. And with every flood, every bombing, every hungry child and dying reef, more of us are waking up to a truth that can no longer be contained: business as usual is not broken. It is working exactly as designed. And it is killing us.
Capitalism, colonialism, militarism - the great engines of extraction, are not separate from the climate crisis. They are its root. We are not simply facing rising emissions or poor policy decisions. We are facing a global system that treats the living world as fuel, and human lives as collateral. A system that was never built for justice, but for control. For profit. For power.
This system cannot be reformed. It must be dismantled. And in its place, we must build something entirely different.
That is why Greta Thunberg’s latest act of courage matters so deeply. Not because she is a perfect hero, no one is, but because she refuses to play the game designed by the powerful. While world leaders negotiate climate targets with one hand and sign weapons and oil deals with the other, Greta is standing exactly where she should be: on the frontlines, risking her safety, speaking truth, putting her body between empire and its victims.
It would have been easier to stay quiet. Safer to stick to basic environmental messaging. But Greta understands what so many still resist: there is no climate justice without justice for all. No ecological peace while genocide rages. No sustainable future built on stolen land, under occupation, or behind border walls. Her solidarity with Gaza is not a detour from climate activism. It is its fulfilment.
This is what courage looks like now. Not clever branding or corporate partnerships. Not polite petitions or compromise with fossil fuel executives. Courage today means defiance. It means clarity. It means choosing the side of life, again and again, even when it costs you.
And it is spreading.
Around the world, people are rising in defiance of the systems killing them. Farmers in India resisting land grabs. Indigenous protectors defending lands and waters. Students walking out of classrooms to demand a liveable planet. Unions striking for green jobs and fair wages. Mothers and grandmothers blocking roads. Scientists chaining themselves to banks. Movements once separated by geography or issue are beginning to see themselves as part of a common struggle.
Because this is not just about climate change. It never was. This is about the survival of truth, of democracy, of dignity, of life itself. We are fighting not only for lower emissions, but for a world without billionaires hoarding wealth while children go without food and clean water. A world where land is returned, reparations are paid, and people have power over the decisions that shape their lives.
We are not just resisting the end of the world. We are building the beginning of a new one.
And that means we must get more radical. Not in the sense of being extreme, but in the truest sense of the word - going to the root. We must reject the logic of endless growth on a finite planet. We must break up the fossil fuel industry, defund the war machine, democratise the economy, decolonise our institutions, and rewild our land and our hearts. We must remember how to live with the Earth, not above it.
This is not naïve. What is naïve is believing we can solve ecological collapse with green consumerism and corporate pledges. What is utopian is thinking capitalism will save us from the disasters it created. What is dangerous is pretending neutrality is possible in the face of genocide or planetary breakdown.
So let us abandon the centre. Let us leave behind the empty consensus of politicians and corporate elites who fly to climate conferences in private jets while approving new gas fields. Let us stop begging for scraps and start demanding everything we need: clean air, free public transport, restored ecosystems, homes for all, food sovereignty, peace.
But let us also build it ourselves.
Because the revolution will not be delivered in a press release. It will be composted, constructed, woven in community gardens and union halls, in radical classrooms and First Nations land councils, in liberated zones and slow-growing forests. It will be built by people like you and me, people who know something better is possible and are willing to fight for it, to dedicate their lives to it.
Courage now means deepening our alliances. Climate and environment movements must stand with the people of Gaza. We must also stand in solidarity with those resisting oppression in Sudan, where brutal military coups threaten democracy; with the people of Ukraine, fighting for sovereignty amid war and invasion; with Indigenous communities in the Amazon defending their land from deforestation and violence; with refugees fleeing conflict and climate disaster in Syria and Yemen; with workers demanding justice amid economic exploitation everywhere. Our struggles are intertwined, and only through unity can we confront the systems that perpetuate violence and destruction. And we must encourage solidarity across ideologies. Labour movements must stand with forest defenders. Animal liberationists must stand with renters and refugees. We do not have the luxury of single-issue struggles. The ruling class is united. So we must be too.
They have the media. They have the police. They have the banks and the courts and the bombs. But we have each other, and that might just be enough.
Already we are seeing glimpses of the world that could be. Schools turned into climate hubs. Neighbourhoods run by consensus. Fossil fuel projects halted by people power. Solidarity economies emerging in the ruins of neoliberalism. These are not isolated experiments. They are seeds.
Greta’s actions, along with the brave activists she is with, in their journey to Gaza are a powerful reminder that those seeds must be watered with courage. Not performance. Not perfection. But a willingness to act when it matters, and to stand where it is hardest. To refuse to separate ecological truth from political truth. To link arms across every line they try to draw between us.
This is not the end. This is the moment before the turning.
We do not know how long we have. The scientists are clear: the window is closing. But it has not yet closed, and so we have a choice. We can keep waiting, keep hoping that someone else will fix it, keep asking nicely.
Or we can rise. Not as lone heroes, but as a movement so broad, so bold, so ungovernable that no system can contain it. A movement that defends life, protects truth, and does not stop until justice is done - for the living world, for the oppressed people everywhere, for future generations not yet born.
We are not powerless, we are the power.
So let us be clear-eyed and open-hearted. Let us be radical and tender. Let us grieve and organise and sing. Let us stare down empire with the full force of our love. The old world is dying, but the new one is not guaranteed. It must be built. It must be defended.
And that will take radical courage.
Love this "Because the revolution will not be delivered in a press release. It will be composted, constructed, woven in community gardens and union halls, in radical classrooms and First Nations land councils, in liberated zones and slow-growing forests."
This is a wonderful article. Thank you for speaking the truth. ❤️