TICK TOCK THE CLIMATE CLOCK PART SEVEN

Jules Julien for The New York Times

“You really can’t let people’s need for hope get in the way of the telling the truth.”  Ta-Nehisi Coates, American journalist and comic book writer

“It’s the greatest fight in human history, one whose outcome will reverberate for geologic time, and it has to happen right now.”  Bill McKibben, climate activist and writer 

   

                                     Greta Thunberg at Brandenburg Gate

Psychology plays a role in people's perceptions of climate change and their ability to deal with it.  Emotional reactions, both in the individual and in society at large, can run the gamut from denial to panic.  You might say there are six stages of climate grief:   dismissal, doubt, disengagement, caution, concern, and alarm.  For those who are at the last stage, alarm, what is the appropriate action to follow their psychological reaction?  Is it panic, and if so, does panic lead to fight or flight?  Is panic a help or a hindrance to climate solutions?  Here’s a link to a New Yorker article discussing just that--climate psychology, a fascinating subject:  https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-other-kind-of-climate-denialism

Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion who staged a die-in at London’s Natural History Museum (below) come down squarely on the side of panic-to-fight as a justified and necessary response to climate change, and they are putting the rest of their bodies where their mouths are. 

American journalist David Wallace-Wells in his book, The Uninhabitable Earth, also makes the case for the utility of panic as a catalyst for fight, not flight. 

Here’s a link to his op-ed piece in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/sunday/fear-panic-climate-change-warming.html

Wallace-Wells cites these reasons why he thinks alarmism is the right psychological state to induce catastrophic thinking conductive to devising solutions to mitigate climate change.

• First, climate change is a looming catastrophe that demands an immediate, aggressive global response.   In other words, it's reasonable to be alarmed.

• Second, by more accurately defining the boundaries of what is conceivable in our future, catastrophic thinking makes it easier to see the threat of climate change clearly.

• Third, while concern about climate change is growing, complacency remains a very big political problem.  A December 2018, national survey tracking Americans’ attitudes toward climate change found that 73% said global warming was happening, but a majority were unwilling to spend even $10 a month to address it; and most drew the line at $1 a month.

• Fourth, history.  Catastrophic thinking works; it led to the banning of DDT and mutually-assured nuclear destruction, and the successful campaign against drunk driving.

• Fifth, we have to shake ourselves out of our intellectual torpor.  We are living a delusion, unable to process the fact that climate change is an existential threat.

• Finally, what creates a bigger sense of urgency than fear?

So, if we panic but fight, as Bill McKibben urges, can we win or is it too late?  Have we passed a tipping point that creates an endless, unbreakable feedback loop that will spin out of control before it stabilizes?  Or will we miraculously pull it out at the last second with some yet-to-be-discovered technology?  I don’t know.  No one does.

What I know is this.  Flight is not an available option.  We're not all going to be jumping into our spaceships and heading off to Mars anytime soon.  So our only option is to stay and fight, but we must fight collectively, in a coordinated way.  While every single one of us needs to do all that we can and NOW, individual action and conscious consumption are not enough.  What’s needed is global, collective political action.  We’re past the point of dismissal and doubt, and we cannot disengage, because the future is happening whether we acknowledge it or not.  It's too late for caution and concern.  It's time for alarm. 

New York Times photo of a book burned in a California wildfire this year

Keep it real!

Marilyn