In his article “What if we stopped pretending” the American journalist Jonathan Franzen refers to the looming climate “apocalypse”, arguing that, to prepare for it, we need to reconsider what it means to have hope.
His message is inspiring in spite of what you would expect based on the headlines:
What if we stopped pretending?
His message is inspiring in spite of what you would expect based on the headlines:
What if we stopped pretending?
The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it we need to admit that we can´t prevent it.
Here is the conclusion:
"Keep doing the right thing for the planet, yes, but also keep trying to save what you love specifically—a community, an institution, a wild place, a species that’s in trouble—and take heart in your small successes. Any good thing you do now is arguably a hedge against the hotter future, but the really meaningful thing is that it’s good today. As long as you have something to love, you have something to hope for.”
I have chosen a few more quotes:
“If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it.”
“If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.”
“ … even if we can no longer hope to be saved from two degrees of warming, there’s still a strong practical and ethical case for reducing carbon emissions. In the long run, it probably makes no difference how badly we overshoot two degrees; once the point of no return is passed, the world will become self-transforming. In the shorter term, however, half measures are better than no measures. Halfway cutting our emissions would make the immediate effects of warming somewhat less severe, and it would somewhat postpone the point of no return. The most terrifying thing about climate change is the speed at which it’s advancing, the almost monthly shattering of temperature records. If collective action resulted in just one fewer devastating hurricane, just a few extra years of relative stability, it would be a goal worth pursuing.”
“I can respect the planet, and care about the people with whom I share it, without believing that it will save me.”
“More than that, a false hope of salvation can be actively harmful. If you persist in believing that catastrophe can be averted, you commit yourself to tackling a problem so immense that it needs to be everyone’s overriding priority forever. One result, weirdly, is a kind of complacency: by voting for green candidates, riding a bicycle to work, avoiding air travel, you might feel that you’ve done everything you can for the only thing worth doing. Whereas, if you accept the reality that the planet will soon overheat to the point of threatening civilisation, there’s a whole lot more you should be doing.”
“All-out war on climate change made sense only as long as it was winnable. Once you accept that we’ve lost it, other kinds of action take on greater meaning. Preparing for fires and floods and refugees is a directly pertinent example. But the impending catastrophe heightens the urgency of almost any world-improving action. In times of increasing chaos, people seek protection in tribalism and armed force, rather than in the rule of law, and our best defense against this kind of dystopia is to maintain functioning democracies, functioning legal systems, functioning communities. In this respect, any movement toward a more just and civil society can now be considered a meaningful climate action. Securing fair elections is a climate action. Combatting extreme wealth inequality is a climate action. Shutting down the hate machines on social media is a climate action. Instituting humane immigration policy, advocating for racial and gender equality, promoting respect for laws and their enforcement, supporting a free and independent press, ridding the country of assault weapons—these are all meaningful climate actions. To survive rising temperatures, every system, whether of the natural world or of the human world, will need to be as strong and healthy as we can make it.”
“And then there’s the matter of hope. If your hope for the future depends on a wildly optimistic scenario, what will you do ten years from now, when the scenario becomes unworkable even in theory? Give up on the planet entirely?”
“To borrow from the advice of financial planners, I might suggest a more balanced portfolio of hopes, some of them longer-term, most of them shorter. It’s fine to struggle against the constraints of human nature, hoping to mitigate the worst of what’s to come, but it’s just as important to fight smaller, more local battles that you have some realistic hope of winning. Keep doing the right thing for the planet, yes, but also keep trying to save what you love specifically—a community, an institution, a wild place, a species that’s in trouble—and take heart in your small successes. Any good thing you do now is arguably a hedge against the hotter future, but the really meaningful thing is that it’s good today. As long as you have something to love, you have something to hope for.”
“In Santa Cruz, where I live, there’s an organization called the Homeless Garden Project. On a small working farm at the west end of town, it offers employment, training, support, and a sense of community to members of the city’s homeless population. It can’t “solve” the problem of homelessness, but it’s been changing lives, one at a time, for nearly thirty years. Supporting itself in part by selling organic produce, it contributes more broadly to a revolution in how we think about people in need, the land we depend on, and the natural world around us. In the summer, as a member of its C.S.A. program, I enjoy its kale and strawberries, and in the fall, because the soil is alive and uncontaminated, small migratory birds find sustenance in its furrows.”
“There may come a time, sooner than any of us likes to think, when the systems of industrial agriculture and global trade break down and homeless people outnumber people with homes. At that point, traditional local farming and strong communities will no longer just be liberal buzzwords. Kindness to neighbors and respect for the land—nurturing healthy soil, wisely managing water, caring for pollinators—will be essential in a crisis and in whatever society survives it. A project like the Homeless Garden offers me the hope that the future, while undoubtedly worse than the present, might also, in some ways, be better. Most of all, though, it gives me hope for today.”
I recommend to read the whole article.
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The article has caused a lot of criticism as well as praise. Here are 2 examples, you may easily find more on the Internet:
Example 1.
Scientists blast Jonathan Franzen's 'climate doomist' opinion column as 'the worst piece on climate change', September 2019.
Link: https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-blast-jonathan-franzens-climate-doomist-new-yorker-op-ed-2019-9?r=US&IR=T
Example from this article:
Example 2:
Why Jonathan Franzen was right about how we should approach the climate crisis.
Prologue (Quote from the article mentioned above):
“The key message for me was not one of defeat, but of hope, despite the vulnerability of the situation …
A consistent message shines through:
face the reality but know it can be changed.
Be pragmatic – don’t pretend the climate emergency is anything less than an emergency, but remain optimistic and proactive.
Take part in civil actions such as the Climate Strike. Lobby politicians.
Make little changes in how you live and shop and get about.
Talk about it with your children, friends, neighbours, colleagues.
And be encouraged that by taking whatever actions are necessary, humanity can avert the worst-case scenario and revert to a sustainable way of living.”
Resources mentioned in the articles above:
- Elizabeth Colbert (2019): Climate Change and the New Age of Extinction.People easily forget “last of” stories about individual species, but the loss of nature also threatens our existence. Link: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/climate-change-and-the-new-age-of-extinction
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.
”The IPCC prepares comprehensive Assessment Reports about the state of scientific, technical and socio-economic knowledge on climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for reducing the rate at which climate change is taking place.” Link: https://www.ipcc.ch
Teach GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP Newsletter no. 34
Everyone, who is engaged in developing global citizenship, is welcome to receive these thematic introductions & curated learning possibilities.
October 2019, Copenhagen, Denmark
Egon Hedegaard
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