What Can I Do? : My Path from Climate Despair to Action

A call to action from Jane Fonda, one of the most inspiring activists of our time, urging us to wake up to the looming disaster of climate change and equipping us with the tools we need to join her in protest

"This is the last possible moment in history when changing course can mean saving lives and species on an unimaginable scale. It's too late for moderation."

In the fall of 2019, frustrated with the obvious inaction of politicians and inspired by Greta Thunberg, Naomi Klein, and student climate strikers, Jane Fonda moved to Washington, DC to lead weekly climate change demonstrations on Capitol Hill. On October 11, she launched Fire Drill Fridays (FDF), and has since led thousands of people in non-violent civil disobedience, risking arrest to protest for action. In her new book, Fonda weaves her deeply personal journey as an activist alongside conversations with leading climate scientists, and discussions of specific issues, such as water, migration, and human rights, to emphasize what is at stake. Most significantly, Fonda provides concrete solutions, and things the average person can do to combat the climate crisis in their community.

No stranger to protest, Fonda's life has been famously shaped by activism. And now, she is once again galvanizing the public to take to the streets. Too many of us understand that our climate is in a crisis, and realize that a moral responsibility rests on our shoulders. 2019 saw atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases hit the highest level ever recorded in human history, and our window of opportunity to avoid disaster is quickly closing. We are facing a climate crisis, but we're also facing an empathy crisis, an inequality crisis. It isn't only earth's life-support systems that are unraveling. So too is our social fabric. This is going to take an all-out war on drilling and fracking and deregulation and racism and misogyny and colonialism and despair all at the same time.

As Annie Leonard, Executive Director of Greenpeace US and Fonda's partner in developing FDF, has declared, "Change is inevitable; by design, or by disaster." Together, we can commandeer change for the positive but it will require collective actions taken by social movements on an unprecedented scale. The problems we face now require every one of us to join the fight. The fight for not only our immediate future, but for the future of generations to come.

100% of the author's net proceeds from What Can I Do? will go to Greenpeace