Doug Sheridan’s Take
Simon Kuper writes in the FT, the climate scientist Michael Mann says, “Urgency without agency just leads us towards despair and defeatism.”
Doug Sheridan’s Take
Simon Kuper writes in the FT, the climate scientist Michael Mann says, “Urgency without agency just leads us towards despair and defeatism.” That produces an attitude of, “We’re doomed, so let’s just keep partying.
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People could acquire the necessary sense of agency by shrinking their own carbon footprints. But this risks being a diversion. Even a billion humans cutting their emissions wouldn’t achieve anything significant, with seven billion others getting richer and emitting more.
Obsessing about personal footprints also plays into the strategy of fossil-fuel producers, which love to cast climate change as an individual moral responsibility. In reality, we can reach Net Zero only by transforming collective energy, and industrial and agricultural systems.
But, argues Wolfgang Blau, head of the global climate hub at the consultancy Brunswick, if people cut their own emissions, they can use their newfound sense of agency as citizens to elect parties that will execute a green transition now. When infrastructure changes and people can choose everyday greener alternatives such as cycling and electric cars, their sense of agency will grow.
What’s the model message to encourage collective action? Try Churchill’s speeches in spring 1940. He’s realistic, promising Britons only “blood, toil, tears and sweat.” He offers agency: “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills.” Churchill also admits the possibility of failure: “If this long island story of ours is to end, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.”
To Sum It Up: If the comparison between facing peak Hitler and climate change sounds melodramatic, that’s just your denial kicking in.
Our Take 1: This piece was likely meant to influence delegates to the upcoming COP28 to take drastic steps to push the priorities of a small number extremists on a world population that places climate change well down its list of priorities.
Our Take 2: Note the clear connection between politics and climate change. You see, if only the world would be willing to elect the right people... persons able to peer into the future to see the real world that today's youth will inhabit... the argument goes, the "correct" decisions and sacrifices could be made.
Our Take 3: Credit Kupor for acknowledging some level of sacrifice will be necessary to achieve the vision of the non-deniers. But his willingness to detail the consequences of not acting with urgency—cities going under water, uninhabitable nations, etc—stands in stark contrast to the lack of specifics he offers concerning the likely costs. Might that be because they are so astronomically high that virtually no one would support them if revealed?