Optimism vs pessimism vis à vis the climate emergency
In his recent interviews, Kim Stanley Robinson has been saying that the 3 or 4 years that have passed since he wrote Ministry of the Future have given him more room for optimism that we will successfully address climate change. On the other hand, Amitav Ghosh another novelist who has been doing some non-fiction writing on climate change, looks at the same period and finds reason to be pessimistic. Probably both writers would qualify such categorical statements, but that’s the drift. Others like Yanis Varafoukis, Noam Chomsky, Miguel Fuentes and (ultimate pessimist) Guy McPherson have been weighing in on the subject.
None of these are climate change experts. They are, like all of us, following the accumulating studies and news reports, while trying to understand and figure out how to address the changes that are unfolding. What we individually bring to the picture is the life experience that contributes to our perspective and to our tendency towards positive or negative thinking.
My own life experience comes from observing the Israeli – Palestinian conflict while living in a small Jewish – Arab community. There have been moments of great optimism and of pessimism. The optimism at the moment of the Oslo accords and the pessimism at the breakdown and second intifada of 2001, and everything since. As a community we haven’t given up. In talks to groups of visitors, I have often said that a source of optimism is the knowledge that the two peoples are stuck together, clinging to the same bit of land. Since neither side can rid itself of the other, the only choice is to determine how to live together. They can either keep fighting or find a way to make peace, and my assumption is that common sense will eventually prevail.
But it’s only an assumption. They might conceivably go on fighting forever, or until one side grinds down the other and wins. The balance of power is not equal, but it never has been. History favors first one warring faction then the other.
A further insight is that peace is never a static position that, once achieved, can be taken for granted. It’s part of an ever-changing continuum. Even if and when peace is attained, there needs to be a constant struggle to maintain it.
Within the larger reality of peace or the lack of it, there is our individual life and our responsibility to do the best that we can: to live life in conformity with our vision, to give our children an education that is conducive to that vision, etc. It isn’t necessary, and is not advisable, to wait for geo-political peace in order to live according to our vision of peace.
So, when I look at climate change, it’s this experience that I bring to it. A knowledge that, like the Jewish – Palestinian conflict, it’s a process whose resolution I will not see in my lifetime. I may see an accumulation of changes; some that are negative, maybe devastating; adaptations that bring cause for optimism. But whatever I live to see, it won’t be the end. The only thing that’s irreversible for us, as a species, is human extinction.
If I want humanity to reduce its carbon emissions and to live in greater harmony with nature, I can start by doing so personally, to the extent that individual choices can be made. Much of what we do is governed by large systems that are beyond our control, such as the sources of the energy we use. However other areas, such as diet and the purchase of goods, are subject to personal choice. And usually, what is good and healthy for the individual turns out to be what’s good for humanity and the biosphere.
Much of the discussion on climate change revolves around the psychological conundrum of whether it is advisable to issue dire warnings of the coming apocalypse, or whether this will only lead to defeatism. That’s not for me to say. I’m not in the business of trying to influence anybody; why should anyone listen? So I don’t care; can afford to be honest.
Consideration of the future may invite optimism or pessimism. But whether humanity will eventually prevail does not need to influence our current decisions. We already know enough in order to make informed, healthy choices about how to live, individually and collectively. The closer we align with the objective of reducing our negative impact upon the planet, the greater will be the chances of our survival.
Monbiot gives a perspective on the current situation of protest in the UK:
In 2018, Theresa May’s government oversaw the erection of a statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, which holds a banner saying “Courage calls to courage everywhere”, because a century is a safe distance from which to celebrate radical action. Since then, the Conservatives have introduced viciously repressive laws to stifle the voice of courage. Between the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act that the former home secretary Priti Patel rushed through parliament, and the public order bill over which Cruella Braverman presides, the government is carefully criminalising every effective means of protest in England and Wales, leaving us with nothing but authorised processions conducted in near silence and letters to our MPs, which are universally ignored by both media and legislators.
The public order bill is the kind of legislation you might expect to see in Russia, Iran or Egypt. Illegal protest is defined by the bill as acts causing “serious disruption to two or more individuals, or to an organisation”. Given that the Police Act redefined “serious disruption” to include noise, this means, in effect, all meaningful protest.
For locking or glueing yourself to another protester, or to the railings or any other object, you can be sentenced to 51 weeks in prison – in other words, twice the maximum sentence for common assault. Sitting in the road, or obstructing fracking machinery, pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure, airports or printing presses (Rupert says thanks) can get you a year. For digging a tunnel as part of a protest, you can be sent down for three years.
Even more sinister are the “serious disruption prevention orders” in the bill. Anyone who has taken part in a protest in England or Wales in the previous five years, whether or not they have been convicted of an offence, can be served with a two-year order forbidding them from attending further protests. Like prisoners on probation, they may be required to report to “a particular person at a particular place at … particular times on particular days”, “to remain at a particular place for particular periods” and to submit to wearing an electronic tag. They may not associate “with particular persons”, enter “particular areas” or use the internet to encourage other people to protest. If you break these terms, you face up to 51 weeks in prison. So much for “civilised” and “democratic”.
