2025: Stories & Strains

This year has seen some big projects and big ideas become reality. It’s also seen new collaborations and plenty of opportunities for learning and evolution. But it’s also been a turbulent year globally, personally and professionally. Here’s a quick run down of where I’ve been focussing my energy, what’s been difficult and what I’ll take from this year into next. 



The Projects

One highlight was launching our book ‘Scientists on Survival’, which coincided with touring the UK with screenings of the film Plan Z. Both the book and the film communicate the stories behind our actions as scientist-activists, sharing our personal responses rather than depending on facts, figures and graphs alone to convey the enormity and urgency of the crises facing life on Earth. 

Having stepped away from research science last year, I’ve been re-engaging with the academic world via workshops, talks and panels at universities from Edinburgh to Exeter. These have drawn on many of the themes and ideas woven into the book and film, challenging different audiences with the question of how scientists respond effectively in, as the Global Tipping Points conference described it, “a post 1.5℃, post-truth era”. 

In parallel, I’ve continued to explore the much less familiar grounds of corporate sustainability, primarily by working with AimHi Earth on updating and re-invigorating their training content. I’ve also taken on some paid campaigning roles for the first time, bringing scientific communication expertise to a range of grassroots and more professionalised organisations that aim to inform policy, activate people and empower communities. Fresh in my mind as I write this is perhaps the most consequential of those roles, collaborating and advising on the National Emergency Briefing on the climate and nature crisis. 

Amidst all these different strands of work, one constant has been my Fridays with York Community Energy, where we have been gearing up to establish our first community-owned renewable energy projects in 2026. 

Want to know more? Some of this year’s major “outputs” include...

The Challenges

Watch any news bulletin or your social media feed and you may well feel like I do - that hope is harder and harder to hold on to. Throughout this year especially I’ve struggled to make sense of a world that’s lurched further into denial instead of embracing transformations we know are needed for our own survival. And I’m terrified to see so much power in the hands of a dangerously self-serving or misguided few whilst freedoms, rights and safety are ripped away from pretty much everyone else. When we desperately need action, inspiration, compassion, community and solidarity, we’re getting yet more delay, deception, disillusionment, division and despair. Against this backdrop, it's no wonder that climate work has been more challenging than ever. These are some of the aspects I’ve been grappling with for the first time in 2025:

1) Shifting demands. Last year (2024) most of my work was sharply focussed on delivering complex information about climate and Nature in clear, accessible, engaging and (hopefully!) motivating ways. I’ve written before about why this is still so vital to do: a necessary precursor to effective actions being taken. It’s also the niche where I feel I can apply my own skills and experience most effectively. However, I find demand for this kind of work evaporating, fast. Climate and Nature have plummeted down the political agenda, sustainability is no longer seen as a priority for most businesses, and drawing proportionate media attention to the most pressing issues of our existence? Like getting blood from a stone. Where doors have been left ajar rather than closed completely, I’ve felt under increasing pressure to “tell a nicer story” or to fast forward to recommending actions - usually simple, measurable, immediate, non-transformative actions - rather than facilitating the learning that would allow organisations and leaders to make well-informed decisions and deeper, systemic shifts that will ultimately benefit them (as well as everybody else!). 

2) Precarity and power dynamics in freelance work. Without the protections of formal employment, nor the security of knowing you’ll be offered ongoing work, pushing back things like these shifting demands or raising any other concerns can feel difficult and dangerous… because it is. Being perceived as critical, negative, demanding, idealistic or emotional (all of which are something of an occupational hazard when you’re tasked with delivering uncomfortable information or campaigning for change) can end working relationships abruptly. Add to this that it’s easy, and perhaps convenient, to undervalue freelancers/contractors, with pay being just one salient aspect of this. Once you factor in all the costs, time and accountability clients pass on by not employing someone formally - think holiday and sickness allowances, pensions, insurance, equipment, software, workspace etc - paying a freelancer equivalent to an annual salary at UK living wage would mean offering a day rate of at least £300 - something that is incredibly rare to come across in climate communication.* I don’t know of anybody who does this kind of work for the money nor for an easy life - we do it because we care deeply about it. But as a consequence, I recognise I have accepted or tolerated conditions and behaviours that have undermined the foundations of my ability to do good work. This runs far deeper than the financial precarity I knew was a risk; I was not prepared for the impacts on my self-confidence, trust and safety in relationships, and physical & mental health. 

* See (for example) the methodology, calculations and guidance from the Creators Rights Alliance Freelance Day Rate Guide. In 2025, I’ve worked two single days for rates higher than £250. For a variety of reasons almost half of the work I have done this year has ended up being unpaid.

3) Generative AI. To summarise my personal resistance to embracing generative AI, I (legitimately!) fear that it’s enabling and turbocharging so many of our most destructive activities and behaviors. Naively, I hadn’t anticipated that my own work would be particularly impacted by it. But this year I have been surprised by how readily and how rapidly tools like chatGPT have been normalised, even within environmental communication and activism.* I have lost creative work to AI. I’m aware that my words have been fed to LLMs that have then been used to write like me… yet say things I wouldn’t. However ‘good’ AI models appear to be, they can’t reliably nor critically evaluate whether they’re serving up the best-available information, nor can they draw on the uniquely human experiences that allow you to carefully consider specific audiences and the nuances of what is (and isn’t) likely to resonate with them. Precisely because of how LLMs are built and trained, they’re extremely prone to reinforcing already-dominant ideas, which is a particular problem for anyone seeking to challenge those often-harmful norms and pave the way for us to create better ones together. It has felt surreal and quite demoralising to have had to advocate for the value that real humans bring to climate communication. I know that this will be something we will have to keep responding and rising to. 

* I could accidentally turn this into a long dissection of the issues around generative AI and the specific harms I am most concerned about, but for now here are just some of the environmental and ethical reasons to bear in mind when considering using it. Also, to be clear it is not my intention to judge others for using it, especially in situations where I know there has been careful consideration of whether and how to do so.

4) Communication and conflict in spaces where exhaustion, burnout and financial pressures are rife. I get to work closely with committed, caring, talented people, which is an enormous privilege and joy; almost all of my colleagues, collaborators and clients quickly become people I hold a lot of respect for, trust in and would consider friends. At the same time as being incredibly valuable, this raises the stakes when stresses or conflicts flare up. I've seen multiple once-positive relationships break down lately, some catastrophically, often without a clear reason. Where I’ve been directly involved or affected, it’s felt painful and confusing. My best explanation is that the strains of this work and of the times we live in are really starting to show themselves. The work we do can be distressing, enraging, unforgiving, isolating. Many of us have experienced repeated defeat and personal attacks in the course doing our (imperfect!) best in pursuit of a safer, fairer world… yet so many of us (myself absolutely included) have been slow to acknowledge and attend to the toll this takes. When worn-down people are trying to do difficult work together, it can create conditions for a ‘perfect storm’ (by which I mean an extremely crap storm): we place ourselves in intense, often stressful environments that demand we communicate clearly and that we take time to properly listen to and support one another… all whilst our capacity for either is compromised. Experiencing how this can play out has forced me to take stock and start to be more intentional about finding a sustainable balance between action, rest and recovery.



The Learning

It’s been a tough year. But without meaning to sound clichéd I’m grateful for all I’ve learned from it. A few things I will be taking forward with me are:

• Choosing projects carefully, prioritising balance instead of pushing further beyond my limits, seeking and contributing to supportive working environments and relationships.  
• Courage to advocate more assertively both for the value of my own work and for conditions that make continuing to do this work sustainable. 
• Remembering the power in honesty and vulnerability. Communicating through personal stories, despite initially feeling intimidating, has unlocked better, kinder conversations with a broader range of people this year.

Without meaning to sound even more clichéd I’m hugely thankful for all the people who have made this learning possible, for their wisdom, experience, support, care and love. This year I’d like to specifically acknowledge how much I’ve appreciated Caroline, Emma, Viola, Shana, Susi, Sophie, Jen, Lynn, Aaron, Rich, Kirsten, Sophia, Simon, Nick, Amy, Dom, Curly, Molly, Pete & Rob. 

Signing off for 2025 🥼💚