Kurt Hoelting

Editor's note: Wilderness guide, author, and activist Kurt Hoelting was one of the organizers of a recent Whidbey Institute conference for regional champions of climate solutions entitled "Calling the Choir To Sing." He's been writing about the conference on his blog, Inside Passages: Conversations Around the Fire, including this post with his commentary and a transcript of the talk by Sightline's Anna Fahey. Many thanks to Kurt for letting us republish it here. Anna Fahey, Sightline's Communications Strategist, gave a powerful talk on “Tapping Into Dark Optimism.” Dark optimism, she says, is a term coined by Shaun Chamberlin to describe “our capacity to face dark truths, while believing unwaveringly in our human potential.” Anna consolidates many of the core ideas that I’ve tried to highlight in my writing, in a wonderfully condensed and heartfelt way, from the perspective of a dedicated policy professional. How, for example, do we get people exactly like ‘me’ to care about climate change, if I’m not really facing the hard truth myself? How do we harness the necessary intensity within our movement that has proven so elusive? And how do we confront the difficult emotions that our climate crisis evokes in all of us, with courage and resilience rather than fear and avoidance?