Climate Optimism: Week of July 15, 2019
Someone on Facebook commented on a Jacobin story about the Green New Deal with this comment:
“We’re standing in a burning house. AOC is proposing a fire hose. People are calling her unrealistic while fighting over whether we should use a glass of water or whether the whole fire is made up.”
Someone should nominate this comment for the Pulitzer. It speaks volumes.
For years, the political debate on climate change has been between maybe doing something that might have a little impact and denying that the climate crisis even exists. Now, some former deniers agree that sure, they believe climate change is happening. But maybe they don’t believe it’s caused by humans. Or maybe they’re not that worried. Or maybe they think the climate crisis will actually help us out.
All of these stances are denial. But I haven’t even gotten to the more climate-accepting folks.
Some prominent politicians and talking heads talk a big game about climate change. About how we need to curb emissions. How we need to get back in the Paris Agreement. How we need to build a more sustainable infrastructure.
Yes. All of the above.
But that’s not enough. And not putting forth any ideas beyond that is also denial.
Climate denial isn’t only ignoring the problem entirely. Climate denial is ignoring the urgency of the crisis. If we do not completely change our methods of producing energy, traveling and eating right now, global temperatures will rise more than 2ºC above normal. If we do not prevent these global temperature rises, we will start to see the collapse of human civilization. Not within the century. Within two, three, four decades.
The options are either a radical restructuring of our relationship with the planet or a decline into a Mad Max-style future.
Lucky for us, we have the start of a plan. It’s called the Green New Deal. It is nowhere close to fleshed out. It is nowhere close to enough. But it is the best start we have. And it will put us on a path towards saving ourselves.
The Green New Deal isn’t a gun in a knife fight. It’s a fire hose in a house fire.
I’m going to embed this video from Vox because it does a great, succinct job explaining the Green New Deal. (I may also be one of the few writers on the left citing Jacobin and Vox in one article, so take that as you will.)
One day I’ll have the Facebook comment skills to write something so profound in so few words. But until then, I’ll keep writing this column, trying to say something new every week.
The quote of the week:
“We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
We may have done well for ourselves already. But there’s always more ways to go. Funny to be reminded of this by a man who spent a long time not going much of anywhere.
