Impossible: Climate Change Despair Shouldn’t Replace Action
[A note: All quotations in this article can be attributed to Greta Thunberg]
Hopelessness about the impacts of man-made climate change are everywhere.
Maybe you watched teenage climate activist Greta Thunburg’s emotional appeal to the United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019, close to tears - maybe tears of rage, or fear, or both - as she holds world leaders accountable for the harm caused to the Earth and all those who will live on in it the years and centuries to come.
"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
Greta speaks for a generation of young people - and not-so-young people - who grew up knowing the future certainty of climate change impacts, from drought and extreme weather events, to food and water shortages, to ecosystem decimation: generations of young people who know the future that awaits them is terrifying.
But this despair doesn't hold only young peoples’ futures hostage; hopelessness is normal for droves of now 20- and 30-somethings who saw this coming as children. They grew up with the internet, and access to science and information, but as children they were wholly dismissed by mostly google-illiterate, climate-change-denying adults whose only source of information was (and in many cases, still is) fossil fuel controlled media and entertainment companies.
The graph below shows global average temperatures as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The blue line shows what we should see, if there were only natural temperature-changing sources such as volcanoes and sunlight. The red line shows what we would expect to see with natural sources, plus greenhouse gasses. And the black line is what we've actually observed.
Slowly, public knowledge has shifted, but not fast enough. As of 2018, only about 60 percent of Americans surveyed said they believe climate change is real and accelerated by human actions. Meanwhile, 97 percent of actively publishing scientists agree that human actions are the cause of the accelerating climate crisis. The remaining 3 percent are likely beholden to the fossil fuel industry, which pays for research to be twisted to support its interests. You may say, “well, we should consider their opinion.” But, this is not a conversation with equal sides. A super majority of 97 percent of scientists are publishing evidence, peer-reviewed evidence, that show climate change is human-caused and happening now. Just 3 percent are making claims otherwise.
You may be shocked to learn that 1 percent of scientists deny that gravity exists. But, we do we give them a second thought? No. The consensus among the majority of scientists is that gravity is real, just like human-accelerated climate change. Climate change should not be up for debate on any legitimate news source at this point.
Part of why I love science is that it encourages thoughtful skepticism. However, when a majority of scientists agree on something like gravity or climate change, there is no reason to cling to misplaced skepticism.
Putting climate deniers on the same level as 97 percent of scientists, is just like saying we should consider gravity deniers on the same level. It's not an argument that needs to happen, because the evidence is clear. It's 2019, and debating whether or not a fact is real is just a waste of time. We don't have a lot of time left to waste when it comes to climate change.
"You must unite behind the science. You must take action. You must do the impossible. Because giving up can never ever be an option."
When climate change comes up in conversation, how often do middle-aged and older folks say “someone will come up with a solution, I have hope that the younger generations will be smart enough to solve this”? Greta said it perfectly, when she missed some school to speak in front of the United Nations:
"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!”
As adults, we should have more experience, and thus more capacity to withstand hopelessness, and to continue trying despite the odds. Yet, adults usually put this responsibility, this huge burden of changing the world, on children. We are causing lifelong trauma by expecting children to solve a longstanding crisis that wasn't caused by them, but will devastate their lives. Adults shouldn't put hope on children to solve this, we should put hope in ourselves and our own action.
Hopelessness has worn us down. We may feel like there’s nothing that can be done, but this response is unacceptable. It’s selfish and irresponsible at best. It’s our responsibility, together, to act with hope, no matter how hopeless we may feel. Every one of us, but especially adults.
As a teenager with access to the internet, I remember what it felt like when I learned about climate change and what it meant for me and my possible children. I felt like the world was ending - because it was. I felt an urgency for people around me to understand it the way I did. I remember having impassioned arguments with family members that often ended in me being so full of desperation that I would cry. My tears and rage were often taken as me "just being an emotional teen." But really, I felt the crushing reality of the climate crisis, and none of the adults around me seemed to care. Why weren't they angry? Why weren't they scared? Why did they act like it was a joke?
"I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is."
This isn’t the time to wallow in hopelessness. If we do that, we give up; we accept a fate so terrible that few of us can understand.
But how can we have hope, when politicians ignore the pleas of scientists and constituents? How can we have hope when fossil fuel industry is allowed to continued unfettered by regulation? Hopelessness, rage, fear... these are all logical responses to this overwhelming problem. Those in power show no signs of changing their behavior to avert this crisis, so it would seem there is little reason for hope.
But in this sea of hopelessness, there can be hope - not a hope placed on children to save us from our predecessors' transgressions, but hope in our own ability, and the opportunity for world leaders to make a difference.
This may seem like a fairy tale, the idea of world leaders uniting behind a shared goal to better Planet Earth for people across borders and in the distant future, but it has happened before, and in the not-so-distant past.
CFCs, or chlorofluorocarbons, use to be a standard chemical used in household appliances (like refrigerators) and things like hairspray. Produced by corporations like DuPont (selling $600 million in CFCs annually), it was said to be harmless. Two scientists accidentally found out during an unrelated experiment that CFCs posed a major risk of ozone damage, and warned the public. As would be expected, DuPont took out ads claiming CFCs were safe, hired a few scientists who were willing to deny the danger of CFCs, and testified to congress that there wasn't any real risk to the ozone from their CFCs (Sound familiar?). Of course, this was false.
CFCs caused terrible damage to the Earth's thin ozone layer. Without ozone to protect us from the majority of the sun's UV light, plants and animals would die. This was a major worldwide crisis, discovered by scientists who warned us beginning in 1950. It was caused by a product that seemed necessary to our way of life, and the corporations that produced it led campaigns to discredit the majority of scientists - to produce CFC-deniers - to allow for the corporations' continued profit.
Despite the deniers (mostly the offending corporations, conservative politicians, and their constituents), in 1987 the world came together at The Montreal Conference to discuss the danger of CFCs and decide how to handle the issue. Out of that meeting came the Montreal Protocol, which called for the phasing out of ozone-depleting chemicals. The protocols were ratified (agreed to) by 196 countries and the European Union, and have since led to the ozone layer rebounding and slowly beginning to repair itself.
Just 32 years ago (as of 2019), world leaders came together to solve a worldwide crisis. They put regulations on the corporations responsible for damaging CFCs, and stood behind scientific consensus of the threat. Like climate change, CFCs posed a deadly threat to the planet and all life. And also like climate change, the problem seemed insurmountable for decades.
The idea of the world coming together again isn't naive, it's realistic.
Although, unlike CFCs (which take hundreds of years to leave the atmosphere and stop causing damage), greenhouse gasses that cause climate change can take thousands of years to stop causing harm. CFCs posed a major risk to life on Earth, but climate change poses an even worse, more lasting risk. So, while this real story about CFCs can be cause for hope, it shouldn't become reason for complacency.
Not only should we expect and push politicians and world leaders to act, we can also support the scientists and engineers coming up with ways to help mitigate the damage already done by climate change. In the past few years, scientists have begun research on a new bacteria found deep in the ocean that eats methane, one of the worst greenhouse gasses contributing to climate change. Scientists are also looking at options to slow the impacts of climate change, buying us a little more time for policy to catch up to the crisis. Things like renewable energy (solar, wind, thermal, etc.), blocking sunlight to help cool the Earth temporarily, or creating large facilities to suck CO2 out of the air, are just a few of the climate innovations that scientists are working on.
This research and development is expensive. We can't expect corporations to spend money on countering climate change or self-regulate their own emissions, because that would be acting against their own profit interests. Maybe a fee on corporations for greenhouse emissions could be levied, and distributed to scientists and engineers to develop technologies to counter climate change.
By voting for politicians who will support funding climate change research, and who will support policies to regulate greenhouse-emitting industry, we stand a chance of having a future.
Climate change may feel like an impossible crisis, but there is hope in action.
Hopelessness about the impacts of man-made climate change are everywhere.
Maybe you watched teenage climate activist Greta Thunburg’s emotional appeal to the United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019, close to tears - maybe tears of rage, or fear, or both - as she holds world leaders accountable for the harm caused to the Earth and all those who will live on in it the years and centuries to come.
"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
Greta speaks for a generation of young people - and not-so-young people - who grew up knowing the future certainty of climate change impacts, from drought and extreme weather events, to food and water shortages, to ecosystem decimation: generations of young people who know the future that awaits them is terrifying.
But this despair doesn't hold only young peoples’ futures hostage; hopelessness is normal for droves of now 20- and 30-somethings who saw this coming as children. They grew up with the internet, and access to science and information, but as children they were wholly dismissed by mostly google-illiterate, climate-change-denying adults whose only source of information was (and in many cases, still is) fossil fuel controlled media and entertainment companies.
The graph below shows global average temperatures as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The blue line shows what we should see, if there were only natural temperature-changing sources such as volcanoes and sunlight. The red line shows what we would expect to see with natural sources, plus greenhouse gasses. And the black line is what we've actually observed.
Slowly, public knowledge has shifted, but not fast enough. As of 2018, only about 60 percent of Americans surveyed said they believe climate change is real and accelerated by human actions. Meanwhile, 97 percent of actively publishing scientists agree that human actions are the cause of the accelerating climate crisis. The remaining 3 percent are likely beholden to the fossil fuel industry, which pays for research to be twisted to support its interests. You may say, “well, we should consider their opinion.” But, this is not a conversation with equal sides. A super majority of 97 percent of scientists are publishing evidence, peer-reviewed evidence, that show climate change is human-caused and happening now. Just 3 percent are making claims otherwise.
You may be shocked to learn that 1 percent of scientists deny that gravity exists. But, we do we give them a second thought? No. The consensus among the majority of scientists is that gravity is real, just like human-accelerated climate change. Climate change should not be up for debate on any legitimate news source at this point.
Part of why I love science is that it encourages thoughtful skepticism. However, when a majority of scientists agree on something like gravity or climate change, there is no reason to cling to misplaced skepticism.
Putting climate deniers on the same level as 97 percent of scientists, is just like saying we should consider gravity deniers on the same level. It's not an argument that needs to happen, because the evidence is clear. It's 2019, and debating whether or not a fact is real is just a waste of time. We don't have a lot of time left to waste when it comes to climate change.
"You must unite behind the science. You must take action. You must do the impossible. Because giving up can never ever be an option."
When climate change comes up in conversation, how often do middle-aged and older folks say “someone will come up with a solution, I have hope that the younger generations will be smart enough to solve this”? Greta said it perfectly, when she missed some school to speak in front of the United Nations:
"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!”
As adults, we should have more experience, and thus more capacity to withstand hopelessness, and to continue trying despite the odds. Yet, adults usually put this responsibility, this huge burden of changing the world, on children. We are causing lifelong trauma by expecting children to solve a longstanding crisis that wasn't caused by them, but will devastate their lives. Adults shouldn't put hope on children to solve this, we should put hope in ourselves and our own action.
Hopelessness has worn us down. We may feel like there’s nothing that can be done, but this response is unacceptable. It’s selfish and irresponsible at best. It’s our responsibility, together, to act with hope, no matter how hopeless we may feel. Every one of us, but especially adults.
As a teenager with access to the internet, I remember what it felt like when I learned about climate change and what it meant for me and my possible children. I felt like the world was ending - because it was. I felt an urgency for people around me to understand it the way I did. I remember having impassioned arguments with family members that often ended in me being so full of desperation that I would cry. My tears and rage were often taken as me "just being an emotional teen." But really, I felt the crushing reality of the climate crisis, and none of the adults around me seemed to care. Why weren't they angry? Why weren't they scared? Why did they act like it was a joke?
"I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is."
This isn’t the time to wallow in hopelessness. If we do that, we give up; we accept a fate so terrible that few of us can understand.
But how can we have hope, when politicians ignore the pleas of scientists and constituents? How can we have hope when fossil fuel industry is allowed to continued unfettered by regulation? Hopelessness, rage, fear... these are all logical responses to this overwhelming problem. Those in power show no signs of changing their behavior to avert this crisis, so it would seem there is little reason for hope.
But in this sea of hopelessness, there can be hope - not a hope placed on children to save us from our predecessors' transgressions, but hope in our own ability, and the opportunity for world leaders to make a difference.
This may seem like a fairy tale, the idea of world leaders uniting behind a shared goal to better Planet Earth for people across borders and in the distant future, but it has happened before, and in the not-so-distant past.
CFCs, or chlorofluorocarbons, use to be a standard chemical used in household appliances (like refrigerators) and things like hairspray. Produced by corporations like DuPont (selling $600 million in CFCs annually), it was said to be harmless. Two scientists accidentally found out during an unrelated experiment that CFCs posed a major risk of ozone damage, and warned the public. As would be expected, DuPont took out ads claiming CFCs were safe, hired a few scientists who were willing to deny the danger of CFCs, and testified to congress that there wasn't any real risk to the ozone from their CFCs (Sound familiar?). Of course, this was false.
CFCs caused terrible damage to the Earth's thin ozone layer. Without ozone to protect us from the majority of the sun's UV light, plants and animals would die. This was a major worldwide crisis, discovered by scientists who warned us beginning in 1950. It was caused by a product that seemed necessary to our way of life, and the corporations that produced it led campaigns to discredit the majority of scientists - to produce CFC-deniers - to allow for the corporations' continued profit.
Despite the deniers (mostly the offending corporations, conservative politicians, and their constituents), in 1987 the world came together at The Montreal Conference to discuss the danger of CFCs and decide how to handle the issue. Out of that meeting came the Montreal Protocol, which called for the phasing out of ozone-depleting chemicals. The protocols were ratified (agreed to) by 196 countries and the European Union, and have since led to the ozone layer rebounding and slowly beginning to repair itself.
Just 32 years ago (as of 2019), world leaders came together to solve a worldwide crisis. They put regulations on the corporations responsible for damaging CFCs, and stood behind scientific consensus of the threat. Like climate change, CFCs posed a deadly threat to the planet and all life. And also like climate change, the problem seemed insurmountable for decades.
The idea of the world coming together again isn't naive, it's realistic.
Although, unlike CFCs (which take hundreds of years to leave the atmosphere and stop causing damage), greenhouse gasses that cause climate change can take thousands of years to stop causing harm. CFCs posed a major risk to life on Earth, but climate change poses an even worse, more lasting risk. So, while this real story about CFCs can be cause for hope, it shouldn't become reason for complacency.
Not only should we expect and push politicians and world leaders to act, we can also support the scientists and engineers coming up with ways to help mitigate the damage already done by climate change. In the past few years, scientists have begun research on a new bacteria found deep in the ocean that eats methane, one of the worst greenhouse gasses contributing to climate change. Scientists are also looking at options to slow the impacts of climate change, buying us a little more time for policy to catch up to the crisis. Things like renewable energy (solar, wind, thermal, etc.), blocking sunlight to help cool the Earth temporarily, or creating large facilities to suck CO2 out of the air, are just a few of the climate innovations that scientists are working on.
This research and development is expensive. We can't expect corporations to spend money on countering climate change or self-regulate their own emissions, because that would be acting against their own profit interests. Maybe a fee on corporations for greenhouse emissions could be levied, and distributed to scientists and engineers to develop technologies to counter climate change.
By voting for politicians who will support funding climate change research, and who will support policies to regulate greenhouse-emitting industry, we stand a chance of having a future.
Climate change may feel like an impossible crisis, but there is hope in action.
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