Remaining optimistic

On Monday morning, I linked readers to a short Bill McKibben article on the Mother Jones website. McKibben wrote, “I've done everything I can think of, and millions of people around the world have joined us at 350.org in the most international campaign there ever was. But I just sat there thinking: It's not enough. We didn't do enough. I should have started earlier. People are dying already; people are sitting tonight in their small homes trying to figure out how they're going to make the maize meal they have stretch far enough to fill the tummies of the kids sitting there waiting for dinner. And that's with 390 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere. The latest numbers from the computer jockeys at Climate Interactive—a collaboration of Sustainability Institute, Sloan School of Management at MIT, and Ventana Systems, is that if all the national plans now on the table were adopted the planet in 2100 would have an atmosphere with 770 parts per million CO2. What then for coral, for glaciers, for corn. I didn't do enough.”

The science is looking grim, and it seems to me that we may be beyond effective and comprehensive mitigation. We are likely going to double our carbon dioxide parts-per-million (ppm) in the next 50-100 years. The signs of slowing that growth are encouraging, and there is so much momentum going towards more reductions and new green development, but we are likely going to do some significant damage to our planet by changing the atmospheric chemistry so much. (On this note, I am dumbfounded that some still argue that adding this much CO2 to the atmosphere is not going to have any effect at all. It would seem to me that doubling the concentration of any gas within the atmosphere would have some profound consequences—or at least certainly change some things. But people will start to come around as the effects come into fruition—of this I have little doubt.)

The climate may be beyond preserving in its current state—the momentum is so great. However, (and this may be hard to believe) I remain optimistic. We have a great opportunity to change our ways now, and I think this is happening all around us. Societies will stop emitting at such a high level, and as a result, our planet will stop having to deal with so much pollution. Things will recover, people and ecosystems will adapt (I hope), and we’ll figure out how to do things better. This is something that I truly believe. We, as a species, will learn from this in the end, and be better for it. I just wish that we could have avoided this situation, but maybe the problem was just created on too large a scale to truly avoid.


My host Ebbe and I had a similar conversation a few nights ago. (By the way, one of the absolute best things about this trip has been my good fortune in being hosted by this family. They are absolutely incredible.) Ebbe said that he has been thinking about how humans aren’t so different from other animals. When other species create a detrimental problem for themselves and their own well-being, they aren’t able to fix things—they simply are forced to adapt to the effects that have been caused. I think that he is very right in this. My obvious initial response was that human beings—Homo Sapiens— certainly have a better chance than any other animal before us to correct our own mistakes, given our ability to reason and think critically. But can we do it in this situation?—only time will tell, and things may be looking grim. After bringing up this point, Ebbe apologized for being a pessimist and making me sad. I laughed and told him not to worry—I am often a cynic. However, I think that I am able to effectively balance my cynicism with hope and optimism most of the time, otherwise I wouldn’t be so active as an environmentalist. Maybe I am not always good at this, but I hope that I am always improving and gaining a more mature, productive outlook on things. Plus, what could be more liberating than fighting for something that may very well be doomed for failure?—to love something enough to do that is a very beautiful thing (in my opinion), and certainly no waste of time.