I’ve become increasingly pessimistic about the future of humanity in the last few years, not just because of climate change, but political and social developments in general. I do what I can (consumption and mobility choices, donating, voting, etc.), but without a sense of hope that my individual actions will make much of a difference. It is maybe more in the sense of Camus’s Sisyphus who keeps rolling that rock up the hill and finds meaning in the task itself even though he knows that the rock will fall back to the bottom again and he will never reach the top.
One major reason iNat has become important to me is because it feels like a way of bearing witness. Someone posted a link to this article a while ago which helped me articulate some of my own thoughts:
https://www.wildculture.com/article/solitary-executioner-clownfrog-wants-you-know-she-exists/1862
Maybe I can’t do much to affect the big problems we are facing today, but I can go out with my camera and document the life thriving in the pavement cracks and empty lots, the plants that are blooming in spite of drought and pollution, the insects that are visiting those plants and simply going about their lives oblivious to all the terrible things happening in the human world. The photos are a way to say: each of these beautiful, amazing organism exists, they matter, they’re still here.