What is the role of optimism? I’ve been wondering this a lot lately, not least since I find pessimism is my natural disposition. It’s that saying by Gramsci – we should have pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will. At least I can manage one half of this. I’ve been wondering lately if hope is the same as optimism. I can see people might think it is, but I’m not quite convinced. I feel I can hope people will start behaving in ways that show that they take climate change seriously without being optimistic that will be the case. Hope expresses quite well my lack of faith, where optimism feels like it needs a leap of faith that I just cannot justify. So, when the author here speaks of her optimism and how it transformed her so that she could actually go back to working towards changing the world – well, as John Lennon said, we all want to change the world.
She starts this by saying that the thing that changed her life was watching a TedTalk by Hans Rosling. I don’t particularly think very much of Rosling’s work – and am concerned he presents only positive data, while ignoring anything negative. I’ve criticised his work in my review of The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions. Sometimes this amounts to disinformation – literally what he says he is seeking to correct. Rather than being optimistic, his work becomes virtually the equivalent of positive psychology. This book is also highly praised by Bill Gates.
I’ve become very concerned with the problem of knowing what is true and what isn’t. I read quite a lot, but I also know that there are so many things that one needs to know, that it’s impossible to become an expert (or even very well informed) on very many topics. I’ve read quite a few books on climate change. There is this one, which says that things are a bit bad, but all of the problems facing us are very much manageable and are probably likely to be fixed soon enough. No room for complacency, but things are getting better and better and, in all likelihood, rumours of the end of the world have been somewhat exaggerated.
Then there is The Uninhabitable Earth – an interesting little book that essentially argues that things are actually really quite bad, but that sooner or later people are going to realise time is running out and will force governments to do something to fix things. The longer this takes, the worse things will be – but sooner or later denial will no longer be an option and action will become inevitable.
Then there is Breaking Together: A freedom-loving response to collapse. Which basically argues that it is too damn late to fix anything and we had better get ready for the total collapse of the social structures we are used to, because they will no longer be fit for purpose very, very soon.
So, who is right? They can’t really all be right. They all seem to have lots of data to support the case they mount. So, which is it? Or do we just get to choose the outcome that best suits our prejudices?
This book is probably worth reading for all of the positive stats she give about things we probably should know more about. Like the fact that some of the things we do to save the world don’t really matter nearly as much as we think they do. Her example is paper straws – which are, let’s face it, next to useless. Since most plastic straws go to landfill, using paper straws probably isn’t really saving the world. And, since most plastic waste in the oceans, the reason we use paper straws that don’t work in the first place, isn’t really from the plastics people use, but rather from fishing nets that are dumped at sea, we are addressing a problem in a way that makes literally no sense – my drinking from a paper straw will do nothing to stop fishing companies dumping fishing nets into the ocean. We need to find other ways to do that.
She also makes the case for not banning palm oil – since it requires less land to produce than alternatives, and since we will continue to need to use something for oil, all other alternatives will be environmentally worse options. Is this true? No idea. Seemed to make sense when she said it. She also says we need to electrify everything and other books I’ve read say much the same thing. She also advises we should eat less beef and drink any type of milk other than that from cows. So, she certainly isn’t saying that we can just go on as we are and all will be well with the world. But she does say that things have gotten infinitely better, and continue to do so – so, despair isn’t warranted.
I’ve looked at a few criticisms of her book. Nothing extensive by another expert, but criticisms all the same. One point made is that most of the things she says will get better due to cost incentives misses the point that so much of this is based on political decisions in a system where oil companies dominate our politicians, so, to just say there will be a shift once things are cheaper seems crazy to me. I live in Australia, the only nation on earth to have had a price on carbon, that was reducing emissions, that was then defined as a ‘carbon tax’ and then repealed. Carbon emissions have grown ever since. To say, as she does in an interview, that she didn’t want to write a political book… well, maybe she should have written on another topic, because it isn’t at all clear to me how climate change can be non-political.
There are odd silences in this book too. I was very curious to hear how she might say fresh water was getting better all the time, but she says nothing about this. As far as I can see, we are in deep trouble with fresh water and that the Arab Spring was in part at least a consequence of a lack of access to fresh water. She says that we are likely to pass 1.5 degrees centigrade, and probably also 2 degrees. She isn’t particularly concerned with this – says it would be nice if we didn’t, but not the end of the world if we do. The problem is that she mentions tipping points (only once in the introduction) as potentially making climate change much, much worse. Every other time she uses the term it is the tipping points that make something bad – killing off animals, using coal, etc – wonderfully good. I believe many scientists are currently saying that we may have already surpassed many tipping points likely to push us into chaos. But again, who am I to believe?
Hans Rosling would point to improvements in poverty reduction and infant mortality and so on and say, everything you think you know about the world is wrong. The Divide shows why this is an overstatement of the facts. The last I read we are not on track to meet any of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Like I said at the start, optimism is all well and good, but while she started her book by saying pessimism kills action, after I finished reading this I felt there was little point me taking action at all. Again, pessimism and optimism might simply be the wrong paradigm to view this problem from. Anger and hope might actually be more productive emotions. Anger at the bastards who are making a fortune out of killing our planet, and hope that eventually people will shift from outrage to rage and demand change. Hoping price mechanisms will fix the planet while hiding the total absolute increases in problems (like during coal) by shifting to per capita figures is not sustainable.
Things would be much better if she was right – I just wish I could believe her.