Bill McKibben, in his must-read Eaarth from 2010, writes: “We need now to understand the world we’ve created, and consider — urgently — how to live in it. We can’t simply keep stacking boulders against the change that’s coming on every front; we’ll need to figure out what parts of our lives and our ideologies we must abandon so that we can protect the core of our societies and civilizations. There’s nothing airy or speculative about this conversation; it’s got to be uncomfortable, staccato, direct.”

If I have learned anything from the awfulness of small talk, it’s that few people have tolerance for much discomfort. It’s seemingly always too hot or too cold. Too rainy or too humid. How do you ask people to voluntarily experience discomfort when small deviations in temperature are enough to cause crankiness?

The truth is that the perceived discomfort is greater than the actual discomfort. Last week I poked fun at the idea that change is hard. The examples I gave were easy changes in that you do not need to own your house or have lots of income to participate. What it comes down to, I think, is whether or not your current not-so-great practices even spark joy in the first place.

Colin Beavan has spent a lot of time on that idea. In the embedded video, he asks if what we’re doing is even making us happy: “Are we here for sitting in traffic jams, while consoling ourselves that there’s no emissions coming out of our tailpipes?”

Your answer to that particular question might vary, but it is one that needs to be asked.

Beyond folks’ hesitance to change or try something they suspect will bring physical discomfort, there is the hurdle some have to overcome: fear of standing out. There’s palpable nervousness that arises when it is suggested that we abandon many of the characteristics that have defined the middle class for the last 50-70 years. For many, their norm is to blend in with their neighbors, with their social groups, as neatly as possible: have the average number of kids, use the standard mode of transportation, take the typical type of vacation. Don’t do anything to mark you as different, even if what we absolutely need right now are many people making dramatically different choices.

I don’t know that absolute panic is the response to climate crisis, but shallow platitudes of hope aren’t it either. Neither is inaction.

McKibben, in Eaarth, writes: “My only real fear is that the reality described in this book, and increasingly evident in the world around us, will be for some an excuse to give up. We need just the opposite — increased engagement. Some of that engagement will be local: building the kind of communities and economies that can withstand what’s coming. And some of it must be global: we must step up the fight to keep climate change from getting even more powerfully out of control, and to try to protect those people most at risk, who are almost always those who have done the least to cause the problem.”

Incremental change alone is not enough. Recycling alone is not enough. Refusing plastic straws, alone, is not enough. As McKibben suggests, this is a “yes, and…” situation.