The Balance of Fear and Optimism:
In the past 100 years the environmental narrative has shifted, with this has come a wave on activism and hope for our future with prosperous sustainable societies now that everyone has seen the effects and are coming to terms with a future of climate change. While this hope and innovation driving it are what’s necessary for a cultural revolution there does come a point when optimism shadows either new problems arising, the unequal distribution of change leaving communities behind, or the blinding issue that innovation can’t change like overconsumption and an exploding global population or break some of the most detrimental attitudes and economic driven activity like throw away structured lives and economies designed with infinite growth that are degrading our environment now. Students at the University of Kentucky conducted immune system and nervous system responses with and without optimism and found that optimism doesn’t always equip people for long-term stresses but instead gives them false and unrealistic expectations.
We need optimism. Although optimism can cause oversight, “The New Climate Optimists: Can we be rationally hopeful about the environment?” by Alice Wells states an important sentiment. David Timms states in an interview that we’ve moved on from a binary dispute over whether doom or hope will motivate people that dominated environmental activism focus for too long. He continues that despite the optimism budded out of desperation, “I (Timms) don’t think people can sustain themselves in long-term political struggles without some sense that we are going to win eventually”. James Murray of Business Green and advocate of New Environmentalism believes “just as pessimism about climate is evidence-based, we may have evidence-based optimism too”. Discussions of climate change action should be balanced and focus on opportunities for the environment and economy as well as changing societal attitudes with a new aggressive awareness of the external costs of the coming innovation.
The Problems Can’t be Minimized. Record heat that has skyrockets over the last decade is melting sea ice at an alarming rate, increasing the threat of vector-borne disease trapped in ice layers while droughts, floods, wildfires, and continuous “once a century” hurricanes and other forms of extreme weather rock nations around the world. Climate change will continue to cost countries hundreds of billions of dollars each year and more than five million people will die this year because of air pollution. As a society, we have driven a divide so deep that we continuously disagree about the validity and level of threat from scientific findings slowing and diminishing progress. But as Paul Gilding states in “Great Disruption. “It is true that the crisis coming will almost certainly see great conflict among nations over resources and refugees, mass suffering, and some difficult situations emerge as fear and nationalism rear their ugly heads. We need to plan for all this. However, we will also see the best humanity can offer, great compassion, extraordinary innovation, and millions of people digging deep and finding their capacity for brilliance and innovation. This is because scientists, researchers, business leaders, community organizers, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and youth are all out there now, building the future we need. They just need our permission and support to take their work to a mass scale".
An article entitled “The Trouble With Optimism” by Phycology Today gives five constructive tips for dealing with stress successfully and not being overcome with optimism:
Don’t throw away hope- but try to be realistic.
Learn to gauge the changeability of a situation.
Find sources of social support.
Don’t be discouraged by frustration.
Take care of your immune system in times of high stress.
We do have the greatest innovators in the world building technology to face and defeat some of the world’s most complex issues and lead us into the future, but we have to remember what got us here in the first place and why reshaping our economies is the moral, just and safe choice to make. President Obama once said speaking to the action and goals we should be seeking in America “When Americans are called on to innovate, that’s what we do — whether it’s making more fuel-efficient cars or more fuel-efficient appliances, or making sure that we are putting in place the kinds of equipment that prevents harm to the ozone layer and eliminates acid rain. At every one of these steps, there have been folks who have said it can’t be done. There have been naysayers who said this is going to destroy jobs and destroy industry. And it doesn’t happen because once we have a clear target to meet, we typically meet it. And we find the best ways to do it.” We need to avoid a future of eco-tragedy and ensure that a regression like the environment has endured never happens again in human history with a cultural revolution.
Attached I included a piece of writing from a college dean who came back from a trip to Thailand with newfound optimism for the future. IN addition I attached a link to a video from Vice's series "Our Rising Oceans" where VICE founder Shane Smith travels to the bottom of the world to investigate the instability of the West Antarctic ice sheet and to see first hand how the continent is melting. Antarctica holds 90% of the world’s ice and 70% of its freshwater, so if even a small fraction of the ice sheet in Antarctica melts, the resulting sea level rise will completely remap the world as we know it – and it is already happening. In the last decade, some of the most significant glaciers here have tripled their melt rate. VICE follows the rising oceans to Bangladesh for a glimpse into the world's underwater future. From the UN Climate conference to the People's Climate March to the forces that deny the science of global climate change, this special extended episode covers all sides of the issue and all corners of the globe, ending with a special interview with Vice President Joe Biden.
Thanks for reading!