Hope and Climate Change
March 25, 2021 2:03 AM   Subscribe

Is it wrong to be hopeful about climate change? In the dark movie theatre, I felt a new bond with the scientists carrying baby corals and the filmmakers chasing after them. We are, indeed, losing this battle. They understand that, I believe, but in a tropical gulf thousands of miles away from where diplomats and politicians decide our carbon policies and international accords, a group of stubborn biologists and documentarists were refusing to give up. They were earning their own hope, one coral at a time.

When discussing her new book on how to fight climate change as an individual, Kimberly Nicholas answered the following question:

Are you someone who is generally hopeful or pessimistic about the future?


I think all climate scientists have a complicated relationship with hope. I think people ask this question a lot as a proxy for, “Are we screwed, are we too late, can I give up?” and the answer to that is no, it’s not too late, we can stabilize the climate and avoid catastrophic climate change.

Science gives us reasons for hope, because we know what we need to do, we know what works to get it done, and it kind of comes down to what you believe about human nature and what you do to make that possible in your sphere of influence. I think it’s a mistake to feel that you need hope before you do that.


Bonus video: Emily Atkin ranting about "objectivity" in climate journalism.
posted by Alex404 (13 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
Emily Atkin is the climate journalist we’ve needed for decades. If you care about this stuff and haven’t already, subscribe to Heated. I’ve found it informative, current and balanced in the right ways. It makes clear that not everything is figured out, not all activists have cookie cutter views, while avoiding the disinformation smoke screens.

I’ve been engaging with these topics for over thirty years and there have always been those who see it all as hopeless, just as there are those who say no problem here. They are, and will always be, just as wrong. No matter how bad it gets, there will still be tomorrow and choices will still impact how much better or worse tomorrow is. The unwillingness to act based on what we know to have a better tomorrow just because our knowledge isn’t perfect is perpetually frustrating, but we can still get up each day and do our best.
posted by meinvt at 4:43 AM on March 25, 2021 [10 favorites]


Emily Atkin is the climate journalist we’ve needed for decades.

She's up there with Mary-Annaïse Heglar (& Amy Westervelt), Eric Holthaus and Bob Berwyn, for me.
posted by progosk at 5:22 AM on March 25, 2021 [4 favorites]


from the article:

Real, good, useful hope has nothing to do with positive news. Instead, it is profoundly linked with action: both ours and that of others alongside us. It’s a sentiment that resonates with me. There’s only one way to earn hope, and that’s rolling up our sleeves.

I've just weathered a long difficult phase in my life. Some may call it a crisis. The thing I figured out early (picked up from how I'd seen my mother act previously) was to stop worrying about the Worst Possible Outcome -- stop giving it my time and energy. I had to respect it obviously, because it was real insofar as any probable outcome is ever real (ie: very likely but not here yet, palpably invading the now).

The question then became, What can I do? And it turns out, there was a lot I could do. The Worst Possible Outcome -- that didn't need me, that would take care of itself in time. Or not. And that "or not" is really important here. Because that Worst, even though it did happen, wasn't as bad as I'd imagined, in large part, I suspect, because I found a way to keep creative, stay effective, keep my sleeves rolled up, not just curl up in a corner and get crushed. And part of what came out of this staying creative-effective -- that's what made the Worst not so bad ...

if that makes sense.

So much of what annoys me when we get to these climate change discussions is how much the doomsayers (however fact based their positions may be) end up feeling like the black dogs of classic depression. I end up having to not just weather the realities of what's going on out there on and around the planet, but also "in there", all of these depressed minds resigned to catastrophe, arguing (without realizing it) for inaction, catatonia.

The future isn't written. Don't stop writing.
posted by philip-random at 8:47 AM on March 25, 2021 [17 favorites]




Interview with Climatologist Michael E Mann:
Another new front in the new climate war is what you call “doomism”. What do you mean by that?
Doom-mongering has overtaken denial as a threat and as a tactic. Inactivists know that if people believe there is nothing you can do, they are led down a path of disengagement. They unwittingly do the bidding of fossil fuel interests by giving up.

What is so pernicious about this is that it seeks to weaponise environmental progressives who would otherwise be on the frontline demanding change. These are folk of good intentions and good will, but they become disillusioned or depressed and they fall into despair. But “too late” narratives are invariably based on a misunderstanding of science.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 10:09 AM on March 25, 2021 [12 favorites]


YESSSSSSS
posted by aniola at 10:52 AM on March 25, 2021


That interview is really good...
posted by subdee at 2:00 PM on March 25, 2021


Speaking of divisions, these two articles popped up recently on my social media feed:

Vice

Scientific American

They're both about broadening the makeup of climate activist groups, and making sure they're more diverse and more global, since we're all on this planet together but it'll be the minority, indigenous, global south, etc people who'll suffer the worst consequences of climate change, while people living in countries where the biggest polluters are headquartered will just close the borders and cover their ears.
posted by subdee at 2:05 PM on March 25, 2021 [3 favorites]


Is it wrong to be hopeful about climate change?

Judging by the 100+ responses over in doomfilter, with respect to the <10 currently in here: right or wrong, it sure is the minority take...
posted by progosk at 2:01 AM on March 26, 2021 [4 favorites]


Judging by the 100+ responses over in doomfilter, with respect to the 10 currently in here: right or wrong, it sure is the minority take...

I created this post as something of a response to the other one. To the extent that this post isn't driven by extended digressions on terraforming, I'm comforting myself with the belief that the signal-to-noise ratio here is higher. Oh well.

I tried to show more than tell, but now I'll take the opportunity to summarize what was motivating this post:

i) Most climate scientists are not responding with despair.
ii) We don't know if we can win this fight, but we know we haven't lost.
iii) Whether you despair or hope in the face of that is not about "a rational response to climate change", but how you emotionally process existential threats.
iv) People like Emily Atkin are both inspirational and hilarious.

I also think population control is a pernicious distraction when discussing climate change, and it's unsurprising that a post driven by the thinking of Paul Ehrlich fell into doomism. Population is already being controlled through positive ethical means like education, health care, and equality. We should be discussing how to expand those means rather than how to undermine one of the most fundamental of human rights.

I also really appreciate subdee's linked articles, which I think provide a much deeper understanding of the intersection of racism and climate change than the previous post.
posted by Alex404 at 5:13 AM on March 26, 2021 [7 favorites]


a lot of my thinking (and hopefully related action) on the problem of global catastrophe is informed by a rather simple moment from years ago. It was the mid-1980s, the Cold War was blazing, worldwide nuclear catastrophe was feeling ever more likely. I was listening to a local call-in radio show where the topic was "How Should We Talk To Our Children About Nuclear War" and somebody quoted a little kid who'd recently said, "I'm not worried about nuclear war because my mommy and daddy are going to meetings to stop it."

What the the child meant was that their parents, rather than be silent about the threat or sitting around bemoaning it, had joined a peace organization, were going on marches. They were acting. This spoke of hope and hope, like despair, is contagious.

I completely understand that everyday people taking everyday stands against the profound threat of doom we're all facing must look pointless to many -- THE MONSTROUS FACTS just can't help but crush these tiny glimmers of hope. But you don't have dig too deep into the history books to find evidence that, in times of war certainly, the difference between victory and defeat often has more to do with measures of hope vs despair than armaments or standing armies. Britain during WW2 comes quickly to mind. Hitler's Blitzkrieg demolished their armies from the the get-go, drove what was left of them back to their tiny island, and then the air raids began. To conclude that doom was inevitable was hardly an illogical jump. But things didn't go that way, did they? In large part because rather than kneel down and surrender, Britain collectively got busy in all manner of effective and inventive ways. It wasn't that there was a clear path to victory visible for anyone (there emphatically wasn't). But there was a hope (backed up by a resilience) that in attending to what could be done, in keeping purposefully busy, time could be bought, circumstances might change, the enemy might be encouraged to stumble.

A popular analog for it would be Tolkien's hobbits in Lord of the Rings (written for the most part as WW2 was playing out). The point is made time and again that they can't really see a way to defeat their enemy, yet they nevertheless keep resiliently at it, keep playing their tiny parts while hoping/praying others are doing the same in what amounts to an almost incomprehensibly vast struggle.
posted by philip-random at 8:39 AM on March 26, 2021 [4 favorites]


I love this thread. Thank you for making it, Alex
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:03 AM on March 26, 2021 [2 favorites]


The anguish over the state of the biosphere is good in the sense that it denotes the growth of global consciousness. For the past century or so, mankind's thinking has been dominated by the motifs of individualism and exploitation. We now have a clear picture of the negative consequences of taking these motifs to their limit, and many now seek to expand the reach of social solidarity and caring stewardship over the biosphere. Is it too late? Well, like any good drama, a little tension is part of the package.
posted by No Robots at 2:51 PM on March 26, 2021


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