Where does a climate writer find hope?

Science and climate writer Rebecca Priestley’s latest book is End Times (Te Herenga Waka University Press, RRP $35), which explores her end of world/ climate change anxieties while on a road trip with her childhood best friend.

This feels like a really unique memoir! When did you decide to write it?

About a year into the pandemic I started noticing news of people who were opposed to the Covid-19 vaccine, or who doubted the reality of the virus. Some of them talked about... an international conspiracy for One World Government. It sounded kooky but also familiar … it reminded me of things I was hearing back in the 1980s.

I unearthed my journals from 1983-1986, when my best friend Maz and I were at high school. One of our social highlights was going to “crusades” to hear from evangelists who talked about plans for One World Government, with one leader, one religion, one currency, all signs of the End Times that would herald the Second Coming of Jesus. I’d always thought it would be too cringey to read about my years as a born again Christian, but now it seemed relevant.

I started at the Kapiti Writers Retreat in 2021... A few months later, Maz and I went on a West Coast road trip, where we visited the Stockton coal mine. I interviewed a climate-change denying mayor, we caught up with an old school friend and visited towns where our great-great-grandparents lived. The two narratives – one from the 1980s and one from 2021 – grew to become this book.

You've been writing about science and the environment for a long time - how do you keep your writing fresh?

There’s no shortage of things happening in the world – floods and fires, dying penguins and pandemics – to keep things topical. As for keeping readers engaged, I used to write a weekly science column for the Listener, but 600 words a week wasn’t enough to include scientists’ concerns about the issues I was writing about, their – and my – fears, anxieties and hopes for the future. Now, by writing more wideranging and personal essays and books, I hope to reach people who might not have been attracted to a column with the word “science” prominent at the top of the page.

Your book asks, where can we find hope? Do you have an answer?

My students give me hope. My children give me hope. And local things – like tree planting or wetlands restoration projects – give me hope. The fact that New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are dropping gives me hope! Globally, we’ve made slow progress on climate change but it is progress. We’re not heading towards the worst-case future scenario, but we’re also not heading toward our Paris Agreement targets. Climateactiontracker.org shows that current policies and actions will take us to around a 2.7 degree Celsius increase by 2100. The more we can do to bring temperatures down, the better. I’m hopeful that with collective action and strong leadership – from government and business – we can work towards a future that’s better for everyone.