Earth Calling: Nathalie Kelley's Climate Column

Attention all ravers, club hotties, playboys, super-yacht owners, new-age healers and hippies of yore…. I have one very important question to ask: How do we keep the party going in this era of climate catastrophe?  

That will be the main focus of my new monthly column for L’OFFICIEL IBIZA. Yes, even in our beautiful bubble of Balearic bliss we are not insulated from the outside world.  Whether Ibiza is your holiday home or spiritual home, the changing climate and its impacts will affect us all. Climate change is the ultimate buzzkill, showing up in your life when you least expect or desire it. Much like when the police come and cut the sound and turn the lights on, letting you know that the party is over.  You know it’s time to sober up and find your way home.

That moment happened very suddenly for me in December 2019. I was back in my hometown of Sydney Australia, where many of my Ibiza party crew had flown in to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Expecting the party of the century, we instead found ourselves smack in the middle of the worst wildfires in Australian history. Our normally blue and sunny skies were black with smoke and our world class fireworks were barely visible. The morbidity of clinking champagne to ring in the New Year while trying to ignore the smell of one billion animals burning was the ultimate catalyst for me: the moment that this party girl said ‘enough’. I couldn’t keep pretending that climate change wouldn’t affect me. It was literally at my doorstep and as much as I wanted to dance and forget the pain, my conscience could not turn a blind eye to the loss and devastation around me.  

Talk about a rude awakening.

It’s not fun or sexy to imagine the outcomes of global warming beyond 1.5 degrees, I know this because of the blank looks I receive when I try to bring up this topic on the dance floor of DC-10.  ‘But this will affect everyone!’  I shout over the bass.  More blank looks ensue. I have since learned that there is a time and a place for this particular discussion and I am so grateful that L’OFFICIEL IBIZA has given me this time and space to do so.

Like a true friend, I will use this column to be honest about our reality. I will give it to you straight. But also like a true friend, I will sprinkle the truth with hope, humour and dare I say, joy?  Because I truly believe that this crisis is humanity’s opportunity for evolution, and what could be more empowering than realising we have all been destined to incarnate at this critical time in human history? We are living in the decade in which the decisions we make will decide humanity’s fate on this planet. It’s big. And urgent. No wonder so many of us try to distract ourselves from the enormity of this responsibility. But I believe that a new and evolved consciousness is on the beautiful Balearic horizon.

According to the Huni Kuin tribe of the Brazilian Amazon, Ibiza is the throat chakra of the Earth.  A place of enormous creativity and influence, where people come from all over the world to receive healing and inspiration. What happens on this island has a ripple effect across the entire world - the Huni Kuin know that, so they chose to come to the island with their message of urgency; ‘Wake up!’, they said.  ‘We are all interconnected in the web of life.’  This means we can no longer pretend our actions only affect us.  In fact, those of us in the Global North are responsible for 92 percent of global carbon emissions. Whoops! Our entire lives and Iifestyles have been constructed on borrowed resources and the ecological debt has been piling up for decades, if not centuries. Sadly, the ones who are paying for it are in the Global South, despite these countries doing the least to contribute to global carbon emissions.  

We need to take responsibility and take care of business if we want to keep this party going. And the only way we can pay back some of this ecological debt is by regenerating the resources we have plundered. And it just so happens that Ibiza, despite its reputation for hedonism and decadence, is fast becoming known as a leader in the new regenerative movement.   

I know this from personal experience because I spent my last summer in Ibiza learning about biochar at Terra Masia; local seeds and organic farming with Ibiza Produce and discussing regenerative communities and producer’s markets with Juntos.  A new wave of consciousness is sweeping the island, hopefully leading us in the direction of improved soil health and food sovereignty. If a reformed party girl like me can find as much joy turning a compost pile as dancing in the DJ booth, then I think there’s hope for everyone.

This will be the space where I unpack some of the brilliant ideas and creative opportunities that locals, guests and lovers of this beautiful island can get behind - the projects and solutions worth investing your time and money into. And because this column will point to human consciousness as the root of cause of the ecological crisis - I will also be delicately delving into the topics of ethics, spirituality, capitalism and drugs vs medicines - and where and how these might all intersect. 

Saving the Earth will require rescuing our humanity and this is one party that you are all invited to. If you, like me don’t want the party to end, then we need to act now, before the sound is cut and the lights come on. Except this time we won’t have a liveable planet to go home to go to.