Photo courtesy of Elle Rood.
MHCJC member Lindsey Sciacca offers words to the attendees during the slideshow segment of the round table.
By Sarah Grinnell
Science and Environment Editor ’26
With the clock ticking down on the threshold to prevent irreversible climate damage, it is easy for the climate crisis to feel like an insurmountable obstacle entirely out of the hands of average citizens, The Guardian reported. For many, hope in the face of the climate crisis can be impossible to pick out of the nihilistic tangle of political inaction and daunting news headlines.
This attitude is exactly what the Mount Holyoke Climate Justice Coalition set out to correct with its Round Table on Climate Hope, hosted on Feb. 15 in the Blanchard Hall Great Room. Opening the panel with words by event runners and MHCJC members Elle Rood ’27 and Lindsey Sciacca ’26, attendees followed along with a slideshow presentation before breaking into small group dialogue. With desserts provided and conversation with strangers encouraged, the event enabled students to find a moment of joy and community amidst the typical maelstrom of apocalyptic climate dread.
In an email interview with the Mount Holyoke News, Sciacca defined climate hope as the understanding that “even though there are so many problems in the world, we are not helpless. Change can and will happen as long as we choose to keep fighting, pushing for change and educating ourselves and others.” Sciacca also “saw this as an opportunity to not only see the positives going on, but also as a place to vent and see that you are not alone in the exasperation of our planet being destroyed and feeling too helpless to stop it.”
The event kicked off with a slideshow highlighting positive developments in sustainability and climate conversation. These developments included accelerating the transition to solar and wind power, political initiatives such as the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program — which has been dubbed “the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history,” according to the presenters.
Presenters also shared intensified agendas to protect the Amazon rainforest and government tax incentives to encourage private companies to switch to sustainable practices, Sciacca and Rood underlined that there are myriad reasons to feel optimistic about the state of the climate crisis that can be found in every sector of our lives, if only we choose to look for them.
According to Sciacca, hope is a crucial weapon for environmental activism, which is so often shrouded in doom and gloom. Activism “does increase the risk of burn-out when all you see are how many things need to change and how small we are compared to them,” she explained. However, “hope allows us to see that even baby steps are still steps in the right direction. This allows us to resist the burn-out caused by all the negative headlines and continue to use our energy to fight for change.”
However, with so much negativity in the coverage of the climate crisis, “I would be lying if I said that this event and all the research I put into it wasn’t just as much for me as it was for the attendees. I am not immune to falling into a pit of hopelessness when confronted with depressing statistics on the regular,” Sciacca said.
“Many climate activists are great at measuring where we fall short of our goals, but we have to be honest and open about our successes, too,” Rood, who is the treasurer for MHCJC Treasurer co-ran the event explained in an email interview to Mount Holyoke News.
Instead of approaching the climate crisis with rose-colored glasses, Rood defined climate hope as the choice to see that “so much good work is happening in the climate space, and we need to recognize and sustain that work while also pushing for more.”
While it is important to hold politicians and institutions accountable for their shortcomings, both Rood and Sciacca’s comments emphasize the defeatist attitude that fixation on the negative can create. By shining a light on the positive strides and policies, the two drew out the hope that so often slips between the cracks of the media’s pessimism; hope, which Rood described as “the most sustainable and effective way” to then generate action and change.
Later on in the event, attendees split into small groups to rotate through three questions written on pieces of poster paper: “What makes you feel hopeful for the future of our planet,” “What does not make you feel hopeful for the future of the planet” and “How can we convert the energy of hope into action?” Attendees then engaged in generative discussions of their answers.
Reflecting on the event, Rood said, “I was excited to see how engaged all of our event participants were, and I think we generated some really great discussion.”
This collaborative aspect of the event was one that both Rood and Sciacca emphasized, naming community as a crucial source of climate hope. According to Rood, “the goals for the event emerged from that desire to create community conversations around climate change and hope in activism.”
Sciacca similarly emphasized the power of hope through community, saying, “getting someone else’s opinion and seeing something from a new perspective, stopping all of the completely valid feelings of despair from piling up in your head, or educating someone about issues they were unaware of are all vital things that can really only happen when you choose to talk about them.”
The event fittingly ended with all the groups sharing final takeaways and collaborating to form action steps on what individuals can do to lead more sustainable lives. From reducing plastic waste by creating “eco-bricks” — plastic water bottles stuffed full of plastic wrappers, forming a solid “brick” that can then be repurposed to build structures — to thrifting or intentionally searching for positive climate news instead of getting lost in the negativity, it became clear that as soon as individuals made the active choice to find the light, many creative solutions emerged.
“There is such a stigma about talking about climate change and how it makes you feel, but climate anxiety is a real thing that you cannot and should not try to deal with alone,” Sciacca explained. Through open dialogue and community building, the MHCJC’s inspiring round table showed that there are things we can do to make a difference, so long as we believe and maintain the hope that change is possible.