Why we need climate stoicism to overcome climate despair
The phenomenon of climate despair is on the rise. Among the young, educated, and climate-concerned folks that society hopes will "be the change," many have become overwhelmed and immobilized by anxiety. The climate-despairing view global warming as a fundamentally unstoppable force that will ultimately render the Earth uninhabitable, believing that any change is too little, too late. For some, it might be easy to dismiss this response as dramatic or unproductive, but as a longtime student of climate change, I empathize with the inclination to despair. Climate despair is just the natural result of two increasingly pervasive ideas: first, if society doesn't decarbonize in the next 30 years, we'll be staring down the barrel of a global environmental cataclysm; and second, there's no way we're going to decarbonize in time. Neither idea is entirely wrong, but both are drastic oversimplifications, and when carelessly combined, they demotivate in a moment when...