there is no reason to limit the use of fossil fuels or make the societal-level transformations necessary to achieve a zero-carbon economy. Likewise, if it’s already too late to make change or we’re past the point of no return, as those expressing climate doom say, then there’s no point to policy reform or for the largest emitters to change their ways. In a 2019 interview for the Guardian, Mann says that propagating frightening environmental narratives “leads people down a path of despair and hopelessness and finally inaction, which actually leads us to the same place as outright climate-change denialism.”22
Dire predictions and apocalyptic claims from the past are also being used to undermine the need for urgent climate action now. President Trump did just that when he dismissed environmental activists as fearmongering “prophets of doom” in his 2020 speech to the World Economic Forum: “They predicted an overpopulation crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the 70s, and an end of oil in the 1990s,” he said. “These alarmists always demand the same thing: absolute power to dominate, transform, and control every aspect of our lives. We will never let radical socialists destroy our economy, wreck our country or eradicate our liberty.”23 It’s a clear example of how alarmist rhetoric can backfire and give ammunition to deniers.
WHEN YOU CHOOSE to reject doom and gloom you are caring for your own well-being—and standing up for badly needed changes. As we’ll see in the next chapter, hope is not complacent. It is a powerful political act.
3
HOPE IS CONTAGIOUS
My daughter, Esmé, was my last good egg.To my utter surprise, I went into menopause immediately following her birth.
On Midway Atoll Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, is over sixty years old. She continues to lay one good egg, each year, from a nest amid the plastic of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Against all odds, good things come from good eggs.
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