Enough of the Climate Doomerism!

Another challenge is the feeling some people have that all is lost.  We’ve past the point of no return and we are doomed.  That kind of thinking makes people less likely to make change and to avoid taking the steps that will help address climate change.  In We May Not Stop The Climate Crisis. That Doesn’t Mean We Shouldn’t Try, by Brian Kateman (Link) the author says we have more reason for hope now and we need to dispel the doomsayers. Kateman says, “If your personal anxiety about the climate has softened a bit in recent times, you’re not alone. After decades of increasingly alarming reporting on climate change and the environment, fatalistic headlines are beginning to give way to ones that express a different kind of feeling, one that many of us haven’t felt in a long time: hope.”

“The recent shift in the media narrative has been shaped by two ongoing conversations,” says Kateman. “First, scientists and reporters are trying to fine-tune a message that most accurately represents the evidence. Second, some reporters are wondering about the impact of their message on public attitudes towards change. Luckily, it seems to me that the most realistic interpretation of the evidence and the optimal message to motivate change are one and the same: We can make a difference, but there’s a significant chance that we won’t.”

He says, “To observe the shifting media narrative, take last month’s report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for example: Some outlets reported on it in the usual, panic-stricken way; The Guardian, for example, titled its article, ‘Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late.’ But Time Magazine took a more positive tone: ‘The New U.N. Climate Report Has Arrived. Resist the Urge to Despair.’ The author describes his own newfound hope. “’Like many scientists,’ he writes, ‘was disheartened for decades, but today’s report makes me feel more inspired than ever.’”

“Indeed, there’s been a rising tide of ‘climate optimism’ as journalists attempt to walk back some of the most alarmist warnings from recent decades” says Kateman. “In an opinion piece for CNN, Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln relays the success story of how ‘humanity and all life on Earth dodged a bullet’ by phasing out chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting substances with the UN’s Montreal Protocol passed in 1987.”

“As a result of the Montreal Protocol, Lincoln reports, the ozone layer is now ‘on track to recover in the coming decades.’ This, he says, offers hope that society may be able to intervene in some of the other causes of climate change. More recently, Reuters published an op-ed by strategists Johan Falk and Owen Gaffney of the Exponential Roadmap Initiative. They describe the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the same one The Guardian called a ‘final warning’ — as ‘remarkably positive’ because it indicates that it’s still technically possible for global society to stabilize the rise in climate at 1.5oC, despite the caveat that governments are ‘way, way off target’ in their efforts to meet this goal. Writing for Vox’s ‘Against Doomerism’ project, Hannah Ritchie carefully advocates for a certain kind of climate optimism, one that leads to action rather than complacency,” says Kateman.

“’Climate optimism’ is a notable shift, and it may be a sensible response to the wave of climate ‘doomerism’ we’ve been experiencing in recent years,” says Kateman. “As environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert pointed out in an extensive feature for New York Magazine late last year, ‘a diet of bad news leads to paralysis, which yields yet more bad news.’ She’s not wrong; many self-identified climate doomers lament that activism feels futile in the face of certain catastrophe. If we truly don’t believe there’s anything we can do, either as individuals or collectively, we’re unlikely to try.”

Kateman warns, “Of course, optimism carries its own set of risks. By this point it’s clear that denying global warming altogether, or even downplaying its severity, has only allowed the problem to grow. Meanwhile, we’ve seen climate denying politicians elected to the highest offices as planet-threatening human activities continue to expand. An overly positive outlook, just like an overly negative one, could halt our progress.”

“In addition to reducing our much-needed sense of urgency, an over-optimistic view could lead us to make some pretty dangerous gambles, all because we gravely misunderstood the odds. In addition to avoiding both over-optimistic complacency and over-pessimistic defeatism, we need to be realistic. Accurately understanding the most likely future of our planet is essential for both institutional and individual decision-making. Should we, as Elon Musk believes, have lots of children to avoid a purported ‘underpopulation crisis?’ It seems to me that this hinges on whether there will be a planet for them and others to comfortably live on in fifty years.”

Kateman points out, “Unwarranted, unqualified optimism feels like a form of toxic positivity. Scary feelings are met with empty assurances, rather than addressing the problem directly. In my work, I often speak to food and environmental advocates who feel like they’re surrounded by cheerleaders while the world literally burns around them. They’re told to keep a positive outlook, sometimes by the very same governments that are actively making choices that endanger the planet. This unrelenting feel-goodism denies reality and undermines the importance and urgency of their work. Unrealistic positivity about the state of the climate, as some have pointed out, is essentially a form of gaslighting.”

“The fight against climate change isn’t an all-or-nothing battle. There are at least some ways we can make meaningful changes that positively affect the lives of humans and other animals,” says Kateman. “Some progress is always better than none, and if we can delay or reduce coming disasters, we absolutely should. We can’t give up, but we don’t need to kid ourselves into believing we’ve already won. Few activists have ever proclaimed that their respective causes—racism, sexism, and so on—would ever completely resolve. But even problems that initially seem overwhelming and insurmountable may be able to be managed until better solutions emerge.”

Kateman ends with this observation. “An estimated 3,664,292 babies were born in the U.S. in 2021 alone. We owe it to them to do everything in our power to keep the planet comfortably habitable for the duration of their natural lives, at the very least. Humans and many other species may eventually go extinct as a result of industrial activity. But that’s no excuse not to do everything we can to make life a little more livable for future generations. No matter what happens, we will be glad that we tried.”