YouTube’s climate deniers turn into climate doomers — A new report documents a sharp rise in arguments that clean energy and climate policies won’t work::A new report documents a shift away from climate denial and a sharp rise in arguments that clean energy and climate policies won’t work.
The amount of Doomers on Lemmy and Reddit is depressingly large as well. It’s du jour to act like any talk of climate positivity is naive, change is impossible and collapse is inevitable. Just look at the popularity of whole subs dedicated to Collapse and Doomer material. It’s exhausting trying to challenge the position of some of these users, yet we must try. Hope is an important part of tackling the climate challenges we’re facing, and the glamorisation of defeatism isn’t going to help foster that.
Mindless optimism isn’t the answer either. We need real change immediately, the window to slam on the brakes as a species is already behind us arguably. The only answer is to be both realistic AND ambitious.
No one said anything about mindless optimism. You are correct, change is needed and fast, but relentless pessimism achieves nothing except foster defeat. I’m advocating for a realistic approach to how we look at climate change mitigation. Part of being realistic is understanding that things may not be as hopeless as parts of the Internet would like you to believe.
I’m not saying we need to write everything off as hopeless, I’m saying we need to recognize that a lot of current efforts amount to greenwashing and ARE hopeless or even pointless (carbon credits for one are a good scam that comes to mind). The best work is being done by people chaining themselves to trees and sabotaging oil pipelines, not those writing policy with pockets full of cash… and this honestly comes off as apologetic for the latter and more than a little naive to me.
Then I think we’re talking at cross purposes. Believe me, I understand the scale of the task and I understand that performative action can be just as damaging as doing nothing at all. However my point is that by only and exclusively focusing on the negative you risk giving the impression that any action is pointless. Those people that you mention chaining themselves to trees etc do so because they believe that it is the only way to achieve the change that is required, but they do believe that change is possible, otherwise why bother? Marinate those same people in a exclusive culture of “we’re all doomed, change is pointless because it’s too late and it’s naive to think otherwise” and soon enough you won’t have anyone chaining themselves to anything because you’ve managed to convince them, wrongly, that it’s a waste of time.
There’s a psychological aspect to fighting climate change that I think people forget. You need motivation and determination and I belive you get that by staying informed of both the bad and the good work that is being done. Celebrating the little wins so we can continue to push for the big ones. I hope that makes my point a bit clearer? Maybe these articles will do a better job of explaining what I mean, lol:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/26/we-cant-afford-to-be-climate-doomers
Well obviously hope and optimism and nuance are important here, I can’t entirely disagree with that I’m just saying we need to support illegalist climate action uncritically (except in the case of complicated, shady organizations like PETA) and we can’t expect those in power to act sensibly as a general rule.
Agreed! :) I’m not sure where you are in the world but, if you can, you might be interested in this:
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/chris-packham-is-it-time-to-break-the-law
DuJour means friendship!
Thanks, Poindexter.
I love that movie
so, we’ve moved from “ots not real” through past “maybe its real, but its not.human caused” all the way to “its real and we can’t do anything about it”/“its too late to do anything about ot”
I doubt it’s a natural evolution.
Climate change denial was the product of oil companies and worked on idiots. The “it’s too late anyway” is likely also the work of oil companies and works on people who think they’re smarter than the idiots.
I think if we found an organism that drives hundreds of other species to extinction a day, we’d do our damndest to eradicate it.
Unfortunately that organism is us. Human exceptionalism is gross. We deserve to go extinct.
It’s sad that you think that way
No, the sad thing is that he is right. We could coexist with other species, but instead we choose to exploit the natural environment to its limits.
I was referring to the “we should go extinct” part, I agree that what we’re doing to nature is horrible but I don’t think collectively dying is the answer. Honestly it would speak wonders for human exceptionalism if we actually managed to get this under control.
Just curious what you think it says about us if we don’t manage to get it under control?
Our societies and technologies evolved faster than our instincts and minds could
Couldn’t have said it better myself
I was referring to the same words…
I’m sad for the natural world that we are taking down with us. 70% of all species. 150 different species permanently erased every day.
Nobody listened when they kept telling us we were reaching Peak Oil back in the early '00s and now look at us. Completely out of oil. We need to listen to the climate scare ppl for suresies!!
