“Along with the rest of the environmental movement, I used the expression 'climate emergency', but over the past year of elm-watching, I've realised emergencies are events that require immediate, drastic, high-paced intervention, designed to bring the situation to an end. Climate action just isn't like that and I no longer believe the emergency metaphor is helpful: it implies that the problem will be short-lived, that experts will be able to handle it and that we should be in a state of heightened emotion, in 'fight-or-flight' mode, until help arrives. It makes many people so upset that they're understandably immobilised or frozen with fear, or too distressed to be rational. In reality we all need to engage deeply and long term, in cool, life-affirming ways. I believe recovery or healing is a better way of thinking about the issue: getting off our fossil fuel addiction, restoring our damaged relationship with the rest of the natural world and trasforming to healthier ways of being.”