A couple of weeks ago I started writing a blog post trying to articulate some of my feelings about a pair of pieces published in the Tyee that ruined my whole damn day. (Honestly, maybe don't even read them, they might ruin your day too).
A good chunk of my feelings were actually covered by a rebuttal piece called OK Doomer, from which I will quote liberally.
On being realistic:
We need to switch from being “realistic,” implying the need to accept defeat, to being ambitious, bringing a determination to do whatever it takes. We need to stop spreading the fear that the energy descent needed to tackle the climate emergency will wreck people’s comfortable lives, or that it is something “for which our civilization doesn’t have an ethos or a vocabulary.”
This bit echos some of my own thoughts
Item six calls for retraining the workforce for constructive employment in “the new survival economy.” Retraining, absolutely. We need to provide income security to every fossil-fuel worker during the transition. But “the new survival economy”? That suggests training in how to light a fire in a cave, not how to build a Passive House.
When we frame our thoughts around the negative language of “energy descent” and “deliberate contraction,” we confirm people’s fear that solutions to the climate and ecological emergencies will wreck their comfortable lives. This is so harmful. It’s like a sports coach telling her athlete that winning a medal will ruin her family life, and besides, it’s impossible. Is this really the message we want to deliver to the millions of young climate strikers who are packing the streets demanding urgent climate action?
In my first post in my Climate Change category I said this:
Climate Change scares the shit out of me. It should scare the shit out of you too. But, sometimes I spot some good news stories that help me keep the hope up.
I want to expand on this a bit.
I am scared by climate change. More than anything, I'm terrified that I did a disservice to my daughter by bringing her into this world. I am scared that I have resigned her to a life that will be so much worse than my own. Beyond my own family, I'm also scared that it will be climate induced pressures that will bring great violence back to the world.
I'm scared that we'll all have to watch the world fall to pieces, in the name of "our economy". I'm scared that capitalism cannot be harnessed for good in the final throes of an ecological challenge, and that all we will be able to do is watch as our political and economic systems drive us over the cliff, paralyzed by those who will profit in the short term by our fall.
I'm scared that no amount of work I could do on this issue can change the course of the juggernaught that rolls towards us daily.
I'm horrified that because my family has a reasonably high income, living in a first world nation, fairly far north, far from coastal shores, there is a good chance that we will be able to dodge the worst outcomes. We live a climate privileged life.
Despite all this fear though: I wonder about the value of our media's obsession with doom. I don't want a propagandistic media that puts yellow smiley faces on the front page every day and says "All is Well". Yet, surely we needn't live in a world where all we read is "We are totally fucked!".
In my darkest moments, where I feel least sure we can fix the world, I feel a powerful urge to go forth and ruin it more. To really dive into international travel; do some doom-tourism. See the places in the world that will be lost as the seas rise. I'll bet I'm not alone in this. We need people to see the world as continuing past their own lives, past their children's lives, and getting better.
I really wish we could figure out how to tell a hopeful story, without falling down to the level of mere propaganda.
