German climate activist Dieter Muller, 64, only began seriously considering his impact on the planet as he lay watching the stars on a wild camping retreat in Spain several years ago. Now, climate change worries him so much he often cannot sleep.
"Since I became aware of this, there's a lot of nights I didn't sleep through. Sometimes I wake up in the night and think about what can I do and what is going to happen," he told a virtual Climate Awakening discussion group.
But when he tries to talk to loved ones about it, they sometimes seem to be in a different world. From angry rejections to airy brush-offs, the message he gets over and over is that they don't want to hear about it.