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I see people who don’t fight climate change because they’re hopeless and despairing and I see people who don’t fight climate change because they underestimate the danger and urgency.
(Talking to Czege about this yesterday and he misunderstood me as
saying it was only those two kinds of people. No, no, I see
plenty of people actively doing their best, keep it up, that’s
great.)
I see plenty of both of these two problems, but I see—anecdata alert—far, far more of the second category.
Here in Sweden there is a little bit of outright denialism, and that definitively counts as “underestimating the danger and urgency”, but there’s a lot of greenwashing. “Buy this burger, it’s 1% less harmful for the climate!” There’s a “we’ve got this” vibe that is not without its pros but it’s a double-edged sword if it leads to not doing enough.
Used to be I decided to think “I’ll kid myself into thinking we’ve got a 15% chance (no matter what the real odds are)—that’s low enough to motivate me to keep it in mind and keep fighting, but high enough that I won’t give up outright”. As I’ve grown my emotional toolbox I’ve become better able to handle a more pessimistic version while still keeping up the fight. Ultimately there’s got to be some room for the truth in our climate discourse.
Greenwashers are doing some good but also a lot of harm especially when the “solutions” they are pushing is doing outright damage.