There is a strange numbness that settles over a person after enough exposure to wars and propaganda. The headlines blur together, the outrage cycles repeat, and after a while it feels as though nothing has truly happened and nothing more will happen either. Life continues in its quiet loop: people fearing for their own existence, and in turn fearing whatever disturbances might threaten that existence, whether it is rising prices, shifting weather patterns, or some other looming concern. The mind grows tired of reacting, and what was once alarming slowly becomes background noise.
Climate change sits right in the middle of this fatigue. Some dismiss it as exaggeration or a hoax, while others point to scientific data and warn of consequences already underway. For many ordinary people, the debate itself feels distant, almost irrelevant, because whatever the truth turns out to be, it may not significantly alter their own lives or even the lives of their children within a timeframe that feels real to them. And yet there are small, undeniable signs: the air feels heavier, the smog lingers longer, visibility drops on certain days. Whether one calls it a hoax or a slow moving crisis, the lived experience of breathing that air does not change.
What stands out most is who actually carries the weight of these fears. It is not the governments, institutions, or policymakers who feel the daily anxiety of rising costs or worsening air quality. It is ordinary people, the ones least equipped to influence the systems responsible, who absorb the stress, adapt their habits, and quietly wonder how much worse things might get. The disconnect between those making decisions and those living with the consequences is perhaps the truest source of this numbness: not indifference to the world's problems, but exhaustion from facing them without any real sense of control.
