Finding Hope in 2025

Kitesurfing (photo: Alfonso Betancourt)

I remember my last visit to this island's west coast beach in the last days of 2024; the horizon was wrapped in a mist of uncertainty. Days later, I returned from a New Year's Eve celebration in Brussels when the eternal beach's beauty pulled me back to the same familiar spot I shared with you before, where I had spent many hours watching the waves crashing on the island's wide beaches.

The silence of the mist was replaced by a roaring storm, blasting sand from the beach over the edge of the dunes. The beach was reduced to a sliver of its wide grandeur, and the sea I photographed last summer as a perfect mirror had transformed into a wild, unpredictable landscape.

New Year’s Day on the Dutch North Sea Coast (photo: Alexander Verbeek)

Three kitesurfers braved the challenge and plotted their own course while navigating the angry waves. I watched, fascinated by their bravery, and then joined the others who escaped the scene as soon as their heads appeared above the dunes. Hours later, grains of sand were still in my hair, eyes, and mouth, sandpapering my teeth.

Welcome to a stormy 2025

The return of a Trump administration has sent shockwaves through the political landscape at a time when the planet already faces unprecedented challenges, from the yearly worsening climate crisis to the widening chasm of global inequality. Geopolitics has become increasingly volatile, with tensions increasing between nations and societal fault lines deepening within our own borders.

At the start of the second quarter of the 21st century, many people will envy the few daredevils who dare to confidently kite-surf the waves of these storms; the reality is that most of us experience different levels of fear and seek shelter from the storm. Most of us are like those spectators running down the high dune I climbed on New Year's Day.

Like the increasingly hotter waters of the Gulf of Mexico fueling ever-stronger hurricanes, the chaos in American politics will reach a fever point now that an incompetent president-elect nominates a parade of equally incompetent characters to fill the essential positions of his government.

And in the last days of the year, when the misty horizon view on America's future was replaced by the first signs of a relentless storm, more elements of Trump 2.0 became clear. One of them is easily recognizable as one of the hallmarks of fascism that so far lacked in the MAGA-version: territorial expansion and a move from fighting the enemy within to an external enemy. Trump, being Trump, abstains from confrontations with the strongmen in the world he admires. So he searched for potential fights that would not upset major other powers in the world, small countries close to home, like the Panama Canal/Panama and Greenland/Denmark.

Immigration

And what is fascism without infighting between different factions within their movement? We all had a front-row seat when Musk changed the MAGA doctrine about immigration. It would have been a tour-de-force within any political party to suddenly switch to a diametrically opposite position on what is likely the most defining issue of MAGA-ism: embracing migration instead of just kicking all migrants out of the country.

But in the stormy internal politics of the MAGA cult, Trump had no problem ditching the essential and authoritative body of teachings that filled his campaign speeches and contributed substantially to his winning of the elections; he surrendered to Musk, the consistent winner, and suddenly supports H-1B visa. The chameleon president-elect now explained: "We need a lot of people coming in."

Lovers of Orwell's Animal Farm will remember the slogan "Four legs good, two legs better!" It was a key moment in the novel when the pigs entirely transformed the original revolutionary principles, effectively betraying the initial ideals of the animal rebellion. The sheep—always easily manipulated and stupid—quickly adopted this new slogan. Let's see when the MAGA cult shows up with H-1B visa banners to welcome immigrants to build Musk's Teslas.

The three pillars of this newsletter

Trump hasn't even started yet, and I have already described a new political landscape in the US that could easily lead us to despair. Yet, I plead for hope. We can navigate stormy waters as we have done so many countless times in the past. Hope is not a passive emotion; it is an active choice. Hope asks for connection, community, and a renewed appreciation for the world around us.

In The Planet newsletter, I will continue to write about the themes I described earlier. You can also find them on my 'about page' on Substack as the three pillars of this publication. It is about threats, like climate change, beauty, including nature, where we find resilience, and politics and leadership that should steer our collective ship of fortune between the cliffs and towards beauty.

The threats are disturbing: leaders worldwide largely ignore—or even deny—the climate crisis that pushes us every day a bit closer to a series of deadly cliffs. The year 2024 is now virtually certain to be the hottest ever measured. It was the year Mount Fuji was snowless in October, the year of the largest ever recorded global bleaching of coral, and the year that 20 percent of migratory species were recognized as potentially dying out.

Meanwhile, global economic inequality continues to surge, with the richest 1% now owning more wealth than the rest of humanity combined. This disparity fuels social unrest and political radicalization and threatens the fabric of our democratic institutions.

I wonder what your own experiences are, but I can't help but be worried when, for the first time in my life, I discuss with friends the possibility of large-scale conflict. If it ever came up in our discussions in the past, it was more like a theory, not like a possibility. Nor had I ever heard Americans referring to civil war as a scenario instead of history. Yet, in the past few years, I have heard it mentioned for the first time by several Americans.

I first picked up these mentions about civil war when spending time with American pilgrims on the road to Santiago de Compostela. That was even before Trump's reelection and the further erosion of democratic norms and social cohesion. I don't see such a scenario developing, but even mentioning such a possibility by several people I met in different places is a worrying sign. The polarization that has defined American politics in recent years shows no signs of abating, with social media continuing to accelerate the spread of misinformation and challenge our shared sense of truth.

But these are the first and third pillars of structural threats and bad leadership. There is another one: the pillar that I addressed as beauty. The beauty of nature inspires us, and there is beauty in resilience, innovation, communities, recognizing our interconnectedness, and drawing strength from our shared humanity. President Carter died on the eve of an unwelcome storm that will destroy much of the fabric that unites the people, communities, and states of the United States. Still, his spirit and that of millions who shared his beliefs about humanity and bridging divides lives on.

Celebrating hope and beauty

I will continue to write this year about each of these three pillars. There will be moments when I take a break from the challenges and only focus on the beauty: moments of walking in nature, appreciating the beauty that is at stake, meeting strangers and turning them into new friends, and describing history, architecture, art, or science. But when returning from nature, the reality we face will also be in your inboxes. Feel free to steer me in this balancing act.

In the past 52 days, we have looked at the 52 weeks of 2024. In the first half, I managed to write each day about the pillars I described as threats and politics. But increasingly, the focus shifted to the beauty. We found ourselves in Substack's little-used chat function, a community that shared the beauty they encountered the past year.

I found it inspiring to travel our beautiful planet that way and was honored to share a bit of all your lives by sharing so much of your personal lives. It's not doable to keep that chat going daily, and we did catch up on history by a week every day, but I will keep our community together by posting once in a while. I hope to see all of you back there and to welcome others.

With that, I wish those readers I haven't reached yet via the chat a good start to the new year.

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