Valclav Havel says hope is the “ability to work on something because it is good, not because it has a chance to succeed.”

When I took three-year-old Kai to the Great Barrier Reef in 2010, I didn’t know I had brought him to his first graveyard. He won’t remember us standing on an island of bleached and broken coral. Nor how we swam searching for color in the reef, getting too excited over dull peeks of pink. He only knows that after we left, a cyclone destroyed the island we visited, rendering it uninhabitable for living creatures.

When we left Australia, I knew I had to do something to find hope, so I took advantage of my jobs as a travel writer and took my kids along on assignments to see places that might not exist in their lifetimes. I imagined that introducing them to the world I adored would inspire them to love this planet and need to become caretakers themselves. I imagined I could show them what was worth fighting for. I hoped all was not lost.

At first it was hard to avoid the anguish of experiencing so many places directly changed because of our climate crisis. The impact of humans on our warming world cannot be ignored. Polluted shorelines of Latin America, tourists sipping glacier melt from plastic water bottles on a retreating glacier, films of sunscreen oils floating atop bleached coral reefs. I was beginning to feel more distraught than anything else.

I knew I had to do more, but what?

By chance on assignment, I met a group of Panamanian kids who had been teaching their parents about the importance of tending to their beach. These kids started a recycling program, cleaned up the plastic on their beach (and made art from it) and planted dozens of trees.

Seeing kids take on such a big problem with ease, I wondered why I thought it was my right to see all my bucket list destinations. Why didn’t I want to use the privilege of my travel writing career to locate stories of hope? So, like all good travelers, I changed course. Explorers are improvisational at heart. So instead of just powering through to see remains of a once incredible destination, I started taking only assignments to find people doing something to protect our ailing planet.

As a travel journalist focusing on the intersection of place, climate solutions and the resilience of the natural world, I realized that the one thing I could do was share stories from the places I’d witnessed. We all have a role to play in our climate emergency. And as a working mom, I wanted to find the easiest thing I could do to show my kids I was doing everything possible to protect their future. And I wanted to use my journalist platform for good.

Luckily, magazines and newspapers continued to pay me to report on these places so I could afford to take my sons along too. And once we started looking for hope, we saw it everywhere. Communities covering their retreating glacier with reflective blankets in summer, islands using regenerative agriculture, countries going carbon neutral, tourist outfitters doing coral clean up days, kids gardening coral and much more.

Meeting all these incredible planetary stewards, I saw that instead of allowing myself to feel despondent about our climate emergency, I was starting to feel hopeful. Not because I was ignoring the insane wildfires burning through my California community, the storms ravaging island communities and deadly April heat waves. Rather, it was because I balanced the negativity I was seeing in the world with glimmers of hope that reminded me that all is not lost.

One of the change-makers I interviewed as I started compiling all these journeys into a book was David Katz, creator of the Plastic Bank. Mr. Katz told me that “the work we must do as stewards for this earth are for a future we will not see.” In effect, he explained, we are trying to steward a future not just where our children have the chance to be ancestors, but also one where the planet’s wolves and banana slugs and elephants and redwoods can continue to thrive. But how?

It all starts with opening our eyes

What if we started balancing every piece of bad news we receive about the planet with something positive? What if we actively seek out solutions to specific small climate crisis related issues in our communities? What if we don’t accept that it’s only doom and gloom?

Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing with you some of the inspiring stories my family and I have found in my reporting trips. In the meantime, I challenge you to start seeking solutions in your community. What are some of the successes the local Green New Deal, Mothers Out Front, Sierra Club or 350.org have achieved in your county? What green policies has your city council implemented? Is your neighbor electrifying their house? Planting a community garden? Creating a safe space for birds?

Instead of focusing on the problems around you, I challenge you to look for one climate solution being implemented in your community every week. Feel free to share it here, post it on your socials (and share with me on Twitter or Instagram) to help other people see a solution, not just all the problems. If nothing else, it’ll bring you a glimpse of sunshine through the ash and fog hanging over us all.

Michele Bigley lives in California with her family. She teaches at UC Santa Cruz and UCLA Extension’s Writing Program. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, AFAR, Outside and many more. She is writing a book about how taking her sons to meet people stewarding fragile ecosystems taught her how to tend to her community at home.

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