When I tell people I’m a climate journalist, they often say, ‘wow, that must be depressing’, followed by, ‘how do you stay positive when it’s all so bleak?’

It’s a funny question because my answer is actually - why would I be more depressed than the average person? I might be reporting on it, but we’re all in the same boat.

As we saw in the LA fires last year (watching Malibu beach homes burn to a crisp ) it is now abundantly clear that no one is immune to the impacts of fossil-fuelled climate change, even the wealthiest of us.

I get to interview the people fighting to preserve our future, against all odds - and they give me hope, on a good day.

The problem is, in environmental circles, it often feels as though optimism marks you out as naive or uninformed. So I turned to Caitlin Moran, one of my favourite authors (and a fellow journalist), for some advice.

I’ve read her books - all of them as clever as they are hilarious - and over the years, she’s taught me How to be a Woman. When I heard she was publishing a handbook on How to be Hopeful (out September 17th) in a world where “everything is unceasingly awful”, I thought I better listen up.

It turns out Caitlin’s initial plan was to buy an apocalypse bunker in South Wales, just up the road from Green Man, the music festival she’s been going to for two decades, and where she feels happiest.

The idea was to hive herself off in remote Welsh countryside and escape the craziness of our current political (and meteorological) climate.

“First I wanted to run away and leave civilisation to burn itself out, on its own. There are people who have retreated and are really happy and self-sufficient and up in the mountains.”

She found the perfect cottage and had every intention of installing polytunnels, living with her family in near isolation and “hand-forging her own rakes”. The sale nearly went through.

“But my second thought was, no, I am going to stay in London,” she explains. “I do believe in humans. I love this city. I’m going to find a way to make it work for me. And it was at the point where I asked myself, ‘how do I make the 21st century work for me?’”

‘Doing positive’ vs. consumerist traps

Rather than giving in to the doomscrolling, not getting enough sleep and “feeling acid anxiety” every time she watched the news, Caitlin decided to be active instead of passive.

Happiness is a verb. “It is a thing that must be done over and over and over again. Like laundry. And sex. It’s not a thing you are - it’s a thing you do.”

What does that really mean, I ask? In my field, individual action is often mocked as a corporate distraction - a way for fossil fuel giants to shift the blame. When we buy bamboo toothbrushes or carry canvas tote bags and reusable water bottles, it all counts, but it’s still consuming.

I put this to Caitlin. She agrees it’s the systems that need to change (bring down fossil fuels!), but rejects the cynicism that dismisses local agency.

Instead of waiting for the council to clean up her littered neighbourhood, Caitlin got her own litter picker and began a real-life game of Pac-Man. In doing so, she managed to declutter her local park, encountering an “archaeology of trash” along the way, from cheap vodka bottles to the “one amazing day I found an unused, still-boxed pink dildo in a hedge.”

When she rewilded her London garden, she didn’t buy exotic plants; she decided to let native species blow in, which has since created a green oasis home to an abundance of creatures. “When you live in the city and you build yourself this wall of green, it immediately calms you down.”

Clearly, litter-picking and gardening won’t slow climate breakdown, or stop AI in its tracks. But when I press Caitlin on whether this everyday joy risks dulling our political teeth, she pushes back. Yes, we need policy, activism and changemakers who are brave enough to do the work. But for most of us living our lives, her suggestion is simply to do more things that help the world, and the people in it.

“Mentor a child. Drive an old person to the supermarket, give blood, find a local charity and start working with it, pick up litter. Go and flower bomb some wasteland.”

These aren’t empty gestures, according to Caitlin, because they all have an impact on others and have the power to transform spaces.

The news problem: rupture vs. repair

For those of us in the media, Moran levels a sharp and necessary critique. “Life is all about rupture and repair, but at the moment, we only show the rupture stories,” she tells me.

Traditional journalism operates on the premise of “if it bleeds, it leads”. Numerous deaths following a shooting or a wildfire make international headlines instantly, while the surgeon saving 38 lives in the adjoining wing of the same hospital - or the community rebuilding after a crisis - rarely crosses the news desk.

It’s why Caitlin has limited her international news intake, started reading local news too and, crucially, has come off (or at least massively reduced) time spent on social media.

By feeding audiences an unremitting diet of destruction and despair, media organisations now just seem to generate “a wall of noise”.

“In the 1990s, newsreader Martyn Lewis famously proposed that bulletins allocate 10% to 15% of their time to constructive, solution-focused reporting,” she goes on, “only to be laughed out of newsrooms by traditionalists who insisted bad news is news, even if it makes viewers want to slit their wrists.”

Decades later, with broadcast news ratings collapsing because people can’t stomach the perpetual despair, will the industry finally realise that we also desperately need to hear what’s going well?

“It is a fact that amazing things happen in this world every day,” Caitlin explains matter of factly, “and I don’t think it’s beyond the wit of humans to come up with a way to tell news stories about progress too.”

Lastly, when life gets too much, to unplug from your audio armour is to truly experience the world and feel grateful for it, says Caitlin.

It’s something she realised when she lost her headphones one fateful afternoon, and found herself sitting under a tree (“ears naked”) in the midst of a thunderstorm.

It was in that moment that she realised she hadn’t heard the sound of rain falling on the leaves in maybe…a decade. Because outdoor commutes were always accompanied by a soundtrack from the Beatles.

Away from the podcasts and Instagram posts telling her society is collapsing, Caitlin started listening to people on buses discussing “whether they were going to have sausages or chicken for tea”.

“It was actually quite profound to listen to how people in your neighbourhood talk to each other, when they’re not pressing send at the end. It allows you to fall back in love with humanity again.”

A bit like her original idea of the apocalypse bunker, when we seal ourselves off from the world through devices, we lose touch with the quiet, decent reality of daily existence.

Caitlin points to a survey recently conducted in the US, where people were asked whether they felt the year had been a terrible one for their country. 72% of Americans said yes, it had been terrible. But when they were asked whether the year had been terrible for themselves personally - 80% reported that their own years had actually been okay.

We have made it socially impolite to admit that our days are tolerable. Even, dare we admit, enjoyable sometimes? Because as Caitlin reminds us, “you can’t change the world - but you can change your days.”

Philip Larkin, her hero, famously wrote , “where can we live but days?”

“I don’t want to quit the modern world and live in some deluded bubble,” she concludes. “We can’t storm into some kind of existential HR and resign from civilisation. We just have to find a way to love it all.”

That means having a chuckle under our breaths at the teenagers gossiping about boys on the bus, getting excited about local fêtes, festivals, fun-runs and new community centres opening. And even globally, adds Caitlin, it’s not all so gloomy.

“Solar power! Gay marriage! Lime bikes! Beavers! Bacteria that eat microplastic! Medical debt relief! Rainforest protection!” she writes, the enthusiasm practically bouncing off the page.

If you make ‘a hope space’ in your life, hope appears. Flood the zone with joy - rebel.

And tell everyone about it. That’s what I learnt from Caitlin, and it’s what I needed to hear.