It is September 20, 2022. 

I wonder when you will be reading this. 

Because much of what I might write today about climate change and the destruction of the environment is likely going to be old news by next year, maybe even next month. Because by the time that you read this, you will already, in the very near future, be reading about even more ominous events unfolding around our planet.

The scientific evidence on climate change has been available for decades, and yet it is only recently, after so many years of being barely present in the news, that many media outlets are finally reporting only the most consequential news unfolding in all of human history.

Humans have been here before—before media existed to spread the word. Over the centuries, entire civilizations have collapsed due to environmental degradation, civilizations that imposed too much burden on their surrounding natural world. But in those times, centuries ago, the societal collapse was localized. 

But now, with so vastly many more of us, it’s not just a region that is destroyed. If there is not a major dramatic shift in our relationship with the earth, the destruction will mushroom into an ecological—and civilizational—collapse of our entire planet. 

This time . . . this time, the collapse will be global. 

***

This book is the second part of a global series portraying both people and animals that have been impacted by environmental degradation and destruction. Tragically, of course, there are no shortage of subjects around the planet—both human and animal—for The Day May Break. The first chapter was photographed in Kenya and Zimbabwe, this chapter in Bolivia. There’s a common link: these countries are among those least responsible for climate breakdown. Their global carbon emissions have been tiny compared to industrial nations. Yet, like so many other poorer countries in the world, they are disproportionately exposed to and harmed by its effects. The grim irony is that many rural people in these countries are the most vulnerable to the calamitous consequences of the industrial world’s ways. 

The people in this series of photos have all been badly affected by climate change. From floods to droughts that destroyed their homes and farms, their lives have been dramatically impacted in ways from which it is hard to recover. Nevertheless, they are alive. They are here. 

They now seek sanctuary, but in this world of growing environmental chaos, we—both human and animal—will all be looking for sanctuary.

This leads me to Senda Verde. This is the wonderful animal sanctuary in Bolivia where all the 

photographs in this chapter of The Day May Break were taken. The animals there are all rescues, as a result of everything from habitat destruction to wildlife trafficking. They can never be released back into the wild, where they would not now survive. As a result, most of them have become habituated to humans, and so it was safe for strangers to be close to them, photographed together in the same frame. (However, for safety, Tarkus the Andean bear was separated from the people by an electrified wire, and Hernak the jaguar and Nayra the puma were separated from the people by a large sheet of glass.) 

The fog, created by fog machines on location, is the unifying visual, symbolic of a once-recognizable natural world rapidly fading from view. It is also, of course, an echo of the smoke from the wildfires, intensified by climate change, devastating so much of the planet. 

The humans and animals in the fog are both together—in the same frame—and yet disconnected, never making physical or eye contact. But they are there together. In this series, I have tried to show that for me, humans and animals exist on an equal footing—that animals are just as worthy and deserving of life as us. As Campbell McGrath writes in his poem “Jane Goodall”:

All lives are consequential,

there is no hierarchy of consciousness or intellect.

***

I didn’t know this before I went to Bolivia, but for now it’s one of the fifteen most biodiverse countries on the planet. Even though it is land-locked, the country has a huge diversity of landscape due to its dramatic variations in altitude, from Andean glaciers and bone-dry salt deserts to steaming Amazonian rainforest. 

However—these days there is always a “however”—the annual forest fires in Bolivia have dramatically intensified in recent years. Most were started by uncontrolled burning to prepare land for agriculture, but the speed and intensity and size of these fires is like nothing before. Climate change—with rising temperatures and prolonged periods of drought—is making forests much drier and hotter. This has meant that in the last few years giant apocalyptic wildfires have swept through Bolivia and surrounding countries, annihilating countless wild animals. Just in 2019, nearly 150,000 square kilometers of land was burned across Bolivia, and in 2020, 40,000 square kilometers. 

In the forest regions, it’s not just the impact of higher temperatures. The nighttime temperatures during the winters have often dropped far below normal. In the last few years at Senda Verde, because of the unexpected cold, they have lost many animals to hypothermia, from howler monkeys to parrots and anteaters.

If that is happening at Senda Verde, where they are coming up with solutions to protect the animals in their care, one can only imagine just how many countless unknown animals are dying from excessively cold nights in the forests.

Meanwhile, high in the Andean mountains, due to climate breakdown, Bolivia’s glaciers are rapidly shrinking and melting, as they are all around the world. This threatens the water supply of millions of people, of agriculture, hydropower, and the region’s immense biodiversity. Without that life-giving supply of water, life for all will become much, much harder. We only need to look at how much harder life has become for the people photographed in these pages. They are the tip of the proverbial iceberg (or melting glacier).

***

These last few years, when I look at imagery of many places of natural beauty on the planet, it’s with a bittersweet feeling. I find myself wondering, how long will those places remain unspoiled, given the speed of environmental degradation? How long before scorching wildfires claim them? And will they recover from these mega-fires? So many forests—damaged by wildfires and extreme droughts—are not recovering or are just a pale shadow of their former glorious incarnation.

As the natural world we knew rapidly disappears before our eyes, we yearn, we ache, for what was. I’m stating the obvious, but, apparently, it needs to be repeated: in destroying nature, we will also destroy ourselves.

As writer Terry Tempest Williams asks, is it possible to live with this grief in the midst of so much loss. “How do we find the strength to not look away from all that is breaking our hearts?” 

There needs to be a fundamental reset in the way humans live their lives on this earth. There needs to be a true stewardship. We need to all become good ancestors. We need to adopt a way of life that reduces the environmental impact our actions will have on those billions of unborn yet to come. Can we show that we care about the humans and animals and trees that we will never live to see? 

We increasingly talk of the need for environmental justice. There are currently over one billion people who do not have enough food to eat and are living precarious lives, but now they face a kind of climate apartheid, an ecological reckoning with profound disruption and conflict.

***

Today, September 20, 2022, it is now too late to stop climate breakdown. This is evident from the speed with which climate disasters around the world are already unfolding, more grimly ahead of schedule than even climate scientists’ most alarming projections.

However, that should not for one second stop us from doing everything possible to minimize the harm. We can still help protect critical ecosystems and save countless lives. 

The costs of continuing to keep our heads in the sand, or denying altogether, are unacceptable on so many levels: environmentally and ethically of course, but also in purely pragmatic terms, financially, because of course the costs now will be nothing compared to paying for the apocalyptic damage in the decades to come. Which brings me to . . .

Ecocide. Eco·cide.

The dictionary definition is unmistakably clear: “Destruction of the natural environment by deliberate or negligent human action.” Ecocide is derived from the Greek oikos, meaning house or home, and the Latin caedere meaning strike down, slaughter, murder. So, ecocide literally translates to murdering planet Earth, our home.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lists four crimes: Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes, Crimes of Aggression.

Aside from the obvious fact that if you’re a national leader willfully ignoring climate change, you are surely already committing a Crime Against Humanity, the Statute should be amended to include a fifth crime: Ecocide. This would make those governments and corporations, or their leaders—that are responsible for funding, permitting, or causing severe environmental harm—liable to criminal prosecution.

I think it is safe to say that many politicians and corporations around the world would instantly qualify for prosecution. In whatever year you are reading this, you will know some of their names. Their opposition to critical environmental actions, and endless disinformation, is allowing, and will allow many billions of animals and people to suffer and die, the impact lasting for centuries to come. Jeopardizing the future of the planet for the sake of short-term political gain and profit is, in my opinion, a crime like no other in the history of humanity. 

In the meantime, these emotionally hollow men and women were mostly democratically elected. So, we must vote out of office such politicians who would create a death sentence for the world. Instead, we must vote for those who are committed to environmental causes, who will stand up to industrial lobbyists whose only belief system seems to be the almighty bottom line. 

There is so much we can still do to turn around our planetary ship. The list of solutions is long, from a rapid transition to renewable energy to assigning full environmental protection to a significant percentage of the world’s surface.

We can all do something. It doesn’t have to be on an international level. Millions of small actions accumulate in significance. From what we eat (go local, organic, plant-based), to what we wear (no fast fashion), to what we drive, to cutting out single-use plastic—every little bit helps. (By the way, this project is carbon neutral.)

Two words: Greta Thunberg. 

If one young girl sitting alone with a placard on a street in Stockholm can achieve in a few years what she has, inspiring and motivating millions of schoolchildren around the world, well, come on, let’s get going.

It’s likely that you, the reader, are reading this because you already feel and think the same. Perhaps I am preaching mainly to the converted. Regardless, I hope that my work can still be a cog in the wheel of (more than) incremental change. And that thought makes me all the more determined to continue as long as I am able.

This is why I come back to the line that I use endlessly: it is better to be angry and active than angry and passive. Once we become active, the despair feels less overwhelming. Our actions, no matter how small, can energize and focus us.

Those of us who care must continue to do our damnedest to minimize the damage as best we can. To keep on fighting for all in the here and now, and for those beings that come after us.

In closing, I once again return to the people and animals photographed in this series. In spite of their loss, they are survivors. And in that—in their survival through such extreme hardships—lies hope and possibility.

So, the day may break, and the world may shatter. Or perhaps, the day may break, and the dawn still come.

Humanity’s choice. Our choice.