Climate change can often feel "out there" as something we are all a part of, but that is usually affecting someone else a thousand miles away. In fact, all you may think you've experienced of climate change, unless you have family, friends or property in the midlands or across the South West coast, is that London has been hotter than ever before, which means more picnics on Hampstead Heath and even though it is really sad for the poor polar bears, it's not really all that bad is it? 

I'm here to tell you that one - yes it is that bad, and two - yes we are all a big actively complicit part of the death of thousands of human animal and plant species not only across the globe but also right here in the UK. But that's not the end of the story, the point of acknowledging that isn't just to sit down and feel really bad, or cry whilst watching Oxfam adverts, or commit especially hard to never putting beer bottles in the wrong recycling bin. It's about changing the way we view ourselves as a part of the global ecosystem, and that's a really exciting thing. It's a breathtaking opportunity to re-think all those uncomfortable things you've been told about humans being inherently power-hungry and violent, unable to live with as opposed to living on top of. It's making a choice not to go and see all the Armageddon movies and think, well that's it - we're all done for, but at least not in my life time! It's about saying, you hold all the cards - not BP - not Theresa May - not the big companies behind TTIP or the Dakota Access Pipeline, you. Which means you also have all the choices, choices about what kind of future you want to build and who gets to live there. 
 

Ama Josephine Budge is a London/Accra - based writer, curator and artist whose work navigates explorations of race, gender, diaspora and feminism. Her work challenges neo-liberal feminisms, working to activate and catalyse movements that emphasize human rights, ecological revolutions and de-gendered identities. Ama was a writer, curator and co-editor-in-Cheif for HYSTERIA feminist collective from August 2014 - June 2016. She has worked with Autograph ABP with the Missing Chapter Collective from 2015-17. Ama has also been interviewed by Vice and Dazed Digital, written for The Independent and RoadFemme amongst other subversive publications, and has spoken internationally on climate change and feminism, queer practices of resistance, and black LGBTQI+ resistance. Ama is currently completing an MA in Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy at Goldsmiths University and is about to complete her thesis on Queer Modes of Encounter with Climate Colonialism and Pleasure as Resistance.