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Its Hopeless
and Ill Give It My All
Rows and floes of angel hair
and ice-cream castles in the air,
Ive looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its clouds illusions I recall
I really dont know clouds at all
JONI MITCHELL, BOTH SIDES NOW
Hope is such a muddled word: We must have hope! There is light at the
end of the tunnel! Why do climate books and speeches have to end on a
note of hope?
Ive asked the question Are you hopeful? to a series of climate
communication researchers. Everyone I ask starts off with a laugh or smile,
since they can neither answer yes nor no. One answered, Cautiously
optimistic. Another said, That depends on the season; this spring I was
severely negative, now Im more hopeful.
You cant find a politician, however, in or running for office, who is a
pessimist. They all say they were born die-hard optimists. As if positive
thoughts are wired into their genetic code, they are all brim-full of hope.
They tell us there will be progress on every front and more jobs for all.
Provided they get elected, of course. They are acutely aware that hell doesnt
sell. Votes are not won by spreading gloom. Gloom is only helpful if it can
be blamed on their opponents policies. So optimistic hope has to win the
day. At least on the surface of things.
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But optimism by itself may easily become overblown and spill over
into wishful thinking. Insisting on positive thinking, simple solutions, and
bright futures may devolve into a type of denial by itself.
I have filled up part 2, Doing, with positive strategies, since these
connect better to human needs for glow and flow. Yet sticking only with
the glossy view despite better knowledge can lead to self-deception, and
the deception of others. History is strewn with failed rosy visions and
crushed dreams. A classic tragic case of hopes slippery slope can be found
in former British prime minister Neville Chamberlains Peace for Our
Time statement, in which he relayed his positive feelings that peace could
be brokered across all of Europe. He spoke those words less than a year
before Europe plunged into World War II. Hope also failed those who tried
to take on an optimistic outlook from within the Warsaw Ghetto during
the Nazi occupation of Poland.
On the other hand, from the scientific and academic camps, pessimism comes in bucket loads. We hear from them that Time is running
out to meet the two-degrees target. And: Vast glaciers in West Antarctica
seem to be locked in an irreversible thaw linked to global warming that
may push up sea levels for centuries.1 Exact but depressive analyses are in
excessive oversupply, far outweighing the demand for them.
It is true that most megatrends for the natural world point in the wrong
directions: climate gas emissions, water and food use, forest cover, ocean
acidity, ecosystem biodiversity. It is easy to point out that our societies
respond too slowly to counteract the escalating problems, and that the
fossil infrastructure and reserves already in the pipeline to be extracted
doom us to shoot far over the safe limits of global warming, into the realm
of weird, dangerous, and utterly unknown effects. Clever, intelligent pessimists seem to have all the best data on their side.
One of the things I learned during my almost two decades of strategic
scenario consulting and teaching is that both pure optimism and pure
pessimism make very poor scenarios. They have very little to do with
any real future. If you think that everything will be bright, or everything
will be dark, you are guaranteed to get the future wrong. Such optimism
and pessimism do not by themselves make complete stories of futures.
Rather they are psychological perspectives, simplifying stances, which
should be inherently mixed into all futures thinking. Thus, all plausible
long-term scenarios should be fundamentally different and each should
include both positive and negative elements, different shades of light and
shadow. Otherwise were back to one of the most fundamentalist stories in
our culture: the monotheistic outcomes of either heaven or hell, absolute
optimism or absolute pessimism, salvation or damnation. Which dooms
us to the too-common manic-depressive cycles of activism.
Ive also learned that since the long-term future is fundamentally
uncertain, the future really must be thought about in the plural form: as
futures. We simply do not know how it will play out toward the end of the
century. Therefore we need multiple stories, at least three or four at a time
that are all equally plausible though deeply different in many ways. Even if
most of the long-term futures look grim, like a muddling-through at best,
we still dont know enough to be cocksure. Sometimes, things turn out
differently and even better than hardly anybody can predict.
Therefore Im not a pessimist or an optimist. Neither am I a realist, as if
the gray middle between the two is the most plausible outcome. Optimism
and pessimism are tools we can apply when considering the wildly different futures lurking beyond the horizon. And they are best used in parallel,
like the left and right eye. Its not an eitheror, but a bothand. The optimism of part 2 on Doing is needed, but so too is the feeling of despair and
game-over for the stable climate and the many fellow species that we used
to know. Part 2 is incomplete without part 3 on Being. Thoughtless hope
clings to optimism to repress despair and avoid the hard, no-frills look at
the factual disgrace. Thoughtful pessimism only comes up with ever more
reasons why our outlook is grim and harsh.
At a seminar, poet Gary Snyder was once asked, Why bother to save
the planet? He replied with a grin: Because its a matter of character and
a matter of style!2 What I really like about his answer is that it doesnt
attempt to found our actions on some plausibility calculation of success or
failure, or on a dualistic ethicsthe good fight against evil. Rather Snyder
points to our calling and to aesthetics, both realms of the soul, of being who
we are.3 This grounds our long-term actions in something more substantial
than the expectations of a quick and successful outcome of our efforts. For
sure, early wins and successes are welcome and wanted. We just cant make
our long-term efforts dependent on them.
We humans are not necessarily destined by our genes to self-destruct
by short-termism. Theres a cultural layer on top of it. What parts I and II
have shown is in summary the following: If we believe that other people
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dont care about this distant climate issue, if it is framed as cost and sacrifice, if its expensive and inconvenient to act green, if we think inside the
story of economic efficiency and growth, and, finally, if all signals show
that were heading toward hell, then many of us will shut off our minds and
act short term.
But at the same time, if we believe that others really do care and the
climate is framed as insurance and health for ourselves, its easy and simple
to act green, and we share stories of opportunities for jobs and the good
life. And, finally, if we can see that society is making steps in the right
directionif some or all of these solutions are shaping the situations
around usthen most humans will act for the long term. There are thus
grounds for hope, but we must separate hope from bland optimism, and
distinguish among the different varieties of hope.
Varieties of Hope
When the massive destruction of land, ocean, air, and livelihoods is documented, many start feeling hopeless and helpless. Others insist that we
must keep up the hope, and that the only thing to fear is fear itself. But
what do we actually mean when we use the word hope?
One version of hope is based on passive optimism: Oh, things will turn
out well. Technology will fix it for us. Nature has made climate change
before. As a personal life-stance, optimism may have much that speaks for
it: Dont worry, be happy. Most of my worries never materialized. Maybe a
little bit of nature is dying, but it will take care of itself. Ill call this type of
hope Pollyanna hope or passive hope. It is an outlook whereif you only
think positivelyall is sweetness and light. Since the world turns out well
anyway, there is no reason to worry and work; we can wait for rewards to
ripple down our way.
Another type of hope is much more actively optimistic: The best way
to predict the future is to invent it. Well make it happen. There is no end to
human creativity and ingenuity; where there is a will, there will be a way.
This is also a Yes we can! and Just do it! attitude. This type of optimism
says that the likelihood of a good outcome depends on the magnitude and
acumen of our effort. It may be a fight, but one were going to win: Were
strong and going to do what it takes... This type is a heroic hope.
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a goal. In this view we are all rational actors, improving our situation by
making choice after choice. It takes willpower and muscle to enforce the
decisions of the thinking I onto the world. This I, this Western ego, sees
itself as an isolated entity even if related to other individuals. It must draw
nourishment for change from its own innerbut brittledetermination.
The previous chapter elaborated a different view of the humanworld
relationone where we act in concert with the wider world around us,
in ways we may not entirely understand and that remove the boundaries
among ourselves and the air we breathe. In this view, we dont act on behalf
of our air or on behalf of our ecology. We act with them because we are part
of them and they are part of us. So, when taking action for more well-being
with less destruction, we act in-spired by the air. Thus we re-spire and take
part in the earth caring for itself. Theres nothing supernatural in this. It is
just breathing, seen from a broader view.
Breathing is more than an exchange of chemical elements between
two separate entities. It is a sensual immersion. Pay attention, and we can
notice how our breathing connects us to a larger being, inside which our
lives play themselves out. Noticing our breathingsomething meditative
practices from all over the world have endorsed for millenniabrings
our awareness more in touch with this expanded awareness. The meditative traditions have so far focused a lot on our own breathing, but much
less on the air.
The old, worn adage of Save the planet can now be reframed. It is no
longer just us working to save a planet that is out there. The planet itself
is at workthe larger biota and air rebalancing itself, through a little help
from you and me.
There is a grounding, hopeful message here: Ecosystems are working
together with us to protect life. The air is bringing its disrupted state and
inevitable responses unmistakably to our attention. The earth has hosted
life for billions of years, delicately balancing conditions so that life has
survived. Who knows what tricks the deep ocean has in store? Who truly
knows what the clouds are up to?
The earth has experienced dramatic shifts in greenhouse gas concentrations before, from methane burps to giant volcanic eruptions. For some
colossal, prehistoric events, the bounceback has come in geologic time, not
the lifetime that you and I are hoping to see change within. But on smaller
time scales, the earths self-restorative capabilities are on display daily. It
is time for humanity to heal from its self-imposed separation and fully
participate in the earths self-healing processes.5
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faceless force is threatening to wipe out all of them with brutal suffering.
Ethics philosopher Clive Hamilton sees a strong parallel between Camuss
plot and the climate fight. Hamilton points to Dr. Rieux as an example
of how one should start to move forward, in the dark, feeling ones way
and trying to do good.6 Similar to what I called grounded hope above, his
is an amalgamation of hardheaded pessimism with a die-hard optimism.
Not a bright, heroic fight, but a firm refusal to capitulate and a steadfast
commitment to keep going, despite hopeless odds.
Yet even Albert Camus is not consistently absurdist. Toward of the end
The Plague, Dr. Rieux and his friend Tarrou, in a key scene, sit on the terrace
of a house and gaze over the sea far into the horizon. They decide to go for a
swim in the ocean, which they had long been locked out from. The sea was
deep-piled velvet, supple and sleek as a creature of the wild.7 Just before
Rieux enters the water, he is possessed by a strange happiness, a feeling that
is shared by Tarrou. There is a soothing image of Rieux floating motionless
on his back in the sea, gazing up at the sky. The air opens up to reveal the
stars and the moon. He draws a deep breath. When Tarrou joins him, the
friends swim side by side. After this participation in the air and the sea, they
are renewed and can return to the city for the final stages of the plague.
Rieux and Tarrou are not just recharging their batteries by having a
picnic. Camus is drawing on deeper archetypes, consciously or not, and
his scene is a superb depiction of our lived participation in the worldthe
coming into presence with sea and air and moon that sustains us. The
plague didnt kill them all.
We are not separate from the climate. We are intimately inside the
living air. That is the ground of the grounded hope. Every breath holds
the potential to re-mind us of it, nourish us in the endless struggle against
failing odds. But for too long we have not noticed what sustains us. We
forgot wind, the morphing clouds, the rooted ones, and the deep seas. We
thought we were self-contained and could only understand the air from a
place somehow outside of it; we thought we would have to draw all motivation from inside ourselves. But climate disruptions open the portal to
remembering the wonder of being-here, of being held and inspired by the
living earth. There is an opportunity for trust and rest in its flowlike an
owl hanging silently in the night sky, or an eagle lifted effortlessly above a
mountain, or two friends floating in the sea under the starsbefore harder
strokes are needed again.
There are too many good reasons why we humans resist the many sad
facts of climate disruption, the global weirding. It finally boils down to
the question, Why bother? That one question reveals a simple fact: The
most fundamental obstacles to averting dangerous climate disruption are
not mainly physical or technological or even institutional; they have to do
with how we align our thinking and doing with our being. This missing
alignment shows clearly in the current lack of courage, determination,
and imagination to carry through the necessary actions. But these human
capacities are, luckily, as renewable as the wind and the sunshine are. By
coming into presence, opening our chest and belly, the air fills us anew.