Confession you already know: I haven’t paid much mind to the news for the last two years. Reality is scary. We live in a terrifying place full of horrible people doing awful things and a universe governed by chance that doesn’t know me from a rock from an electron from Ursa Major.
I don’t like spending my time in tears, so I checked out. My sanity depended on it. It’s a first world privilege to plug your ears with your fingers while humming loudly, to pretend everything isn’t on fire. I avoid the news because I don’t like feeling afraid, and since I’m not one of our planet’s most vulnerable citizens, I could make this choice.
But that can’t be the right attitude, can it? Bad things happen because good people do nothing. What do you do if you don’t have power?
A few weeks ago, I ended my news drought and drenched myself in it. I don’t like to talk about politics here because someone inevitably yells at me in the comments, but in the United States, the midterm election is a few Tuesdays away.
The power I have is my vote. I’m brown and a woman and a non-landowner and I would not have had this power in different centuries, so I love voting.
Personally, I want people in charge who believe in science and will lead to prevent the almost inevitable climate change nightmare humanity faces. We have roughly a decade to mitigate impending disaster. I don’t want civilization to end. It would be bad for my VTSAX and my mental health.
Here’s my updated Worry List.
Current Worry List
- Climate change
- Our political inability to address climate change
- Mass migration due to climate change
- Mass starvation due to climate change
- Dying alone
- Climate change
- Horse race politics
- Judge Judy retiring
- The realization I should stop flying to further minimize my contribution to climate change
With my news strike on temporary hiatus, I wake up with a deep sense of dread and some anger and a lot of sadness thrown in for good measure.
I grew tired of those feelings pretty quickly, so I started thinking about my axis of control. What can I do?
My solution so far: each minute I spend reading the news and feeling helpless, I spend a minute volunteering and encouraging people to vote. Now I read less garbage news and I’m doing something to counteract the anger. It makes me feel slightly, slightly better.
I have really atrocious handwriting.
I volunteer because that’s the power I have. I’m writing letters to people, calling people, and texting people asking them to vote on Tuesday, November 6, 2018.
If you’re a United States citizen and if you can, please vote. That’s your voice and your power.
The same applies to other countries as well……many educated people don’t vote….they think any candidate is same so there is no point in voting…..not a good practice…
Ah yes… climate change. The big boogeyman. Be calm. Change happens. For the good and the bad. It’s called life on planet earth. You’ll be fine.
Comments like these are why I’m so worried. If people don’t even see climate change as a problem, how can we fix it? If thousands of scientists and thousands of scientific studies aren’t convincing, I don’t have any idea what would be.
Hey ThriftyGal. First, let me say thanks for being civil in your response. It’s so rare now a days.
Allow me to throw some thoughts out at ya. Please look at the history of “scientific” prognostications about our demise. History is littered with them.
No one is saying that change doesn’t happen. Of course it happens. One volcano can do more harm to global temps than 100 years of industrial progress.
Have you wondered why climate doomsdayers never mention the benefit that can come from a global temperature rise? How about dry areas that get rain? How about places that can start to be farmed along with areas that have to stop? Just because change happens doesn’t mean we should sacrifice our global financial future to mitigate the damage to one or 100 isolated areas. The system is too complicated to do that.
We should act locally to be responsible (of course) but let’s not get too worked about years from now because mankind is pretty adept at figuring stuff out.
30 years ago, scientist predicted that we’d already be out of oil. Oops! 40 years ago, scientist predicted we wouldn’t be able to feed the world by now. Oops! The fact is that 80% of the world population that lived under the poverty line in 1970 no longer lives under the poverty line. Don’t get me started on the predictions of an ice age in the early 1970s. Oops!
This can be applied to other things, too. Net Neutrality… a year ago, the electronic world was going to end if we didn’t allow the government to regulate our interwebs. And here we are, interwebbing just fine.
Here’s my philosophy… be kind, be responsible, work towards good in your community and in the sphere of your own influence. But don’t worry about the “earth” at large. It’s been here for 4 Billions years and humans have been on it for 200,000 or so. We’ll be on it for generations and generations to come. If change happens, we’ll adapt. We’ll fix. We’ll create opportunities out of thin air. We’ll be okay. It’s what we do.
Cheers!
Hi Dan,
Thanks for laying out some of your thoughts.
Climate does change. Historically it has often takes thousands of years for it to slowly reach a tipping point higher or lower. Discussions of a rapid shift happening over the course of decades is not natural.
Volcanoes do spit huge amounts of particulates into the air. Big eruptions can cause a measurable change in global temperature for a year or two. But those particulates are heavy and fall to the earth, undoing the temporary temperature shift. The reason scientists don’t pay as much attention to the volcano argument as you have laid it out is that it isn’t applicable in a positive-feedback loop system where carbon dioxide will stay in the atmosphere for centuries.
You are right, some places (think cold places now) will be more open to farming. But you are incorrect that lots of dry areas (I’m referring to deserts like in southwest US, middle east, etc) are expecting more rain. What the scientists say is that wet areas can expect more rain, dry areas can expect less. Think of it as an emphasizing of each area’s current environment.
You are clearly correct that the world has not run out of oil. But you left out the reason. If you look into oil production, it was beginning to level out prior to the invention of fracking in the United States. Fracking opened up enormous amounts of previously inaccessible oil. This didn’t mean that the previous models were wrong (quite the opposite, they were shown to be correct given known information), only that they need to be updated to include the positive and negative results of fracking.
There are large parts of the world where topsoil erosion is a major issue. Large parts of agricultural China have been farmed to uselessness. In the United States, we have avoided this by using fossil fuel fertilizers to keep it going past the point it would be able to naturally. I’m not making a judgment on this either way, only addressing your statement.
You are right about the incorrect predictions of an ice age in the early 1970s. That was because, at the time, most scientists believed your example of volcanoes. If a volcanic eruption causes a temporary drop in temperatures, then projecting forward an increase in water vapor in the atmosphere (resulting from increasing temperatures from the increased CO2 staying in the atmosphere for centuries, etc) would cause a longer term drop in temperature i.e. ice age. 40+ years of science has clearly dismantled the ice age/volcano argument rather thoroughly.
You are also correct. The earth has been around for billions of years and doing just fine. But the climate change argument (at least the scientific one) has nothing to do with irreparable damage to the planet. The planet has survived countless ice ages, hot periods, meteor impacts, etc. The planet will be fine. But there have been at least 5 mass extinctions on the planet over the course of its existence, and while life continued and new species thrived, it didn’t go so well for the older species. And the times of transition were devastating to those alive at the time and took millions of years to recover from. Don’t see many dinosaurs around these days…
I am not saying that humanity will go extinct. We are too smart and advanced for that. But it does not mean that mass starvation, mass migration, and the inevitable violence and warfare that those things have always caused historically can not reasonably be expect to occur. Just look at the effects that are happening worldwide at the moment as relatively small numbers of people are trying to migrate from their current homes to new ones. When the world was a much less populous place this was less of a problem. Now, there is no where that the mass migration can go that won’t involve pushing current people out or forcing massive cultural changes.
Every single projection of the impacts of science being correct with respect to climate change show that the cost of doing nothing far exceeds to cost to actually make efforts to correct it. Most projections show a long-run net positive for making efforts to minimize the effects of climate change. Yes, the upfront cost of the infrastructure is higher than doing nothing, but the long term benefits are massive. Same as any other infrastructure project ever built, be it a power plant or a highway. Just one example – the growth of “green jobs” has far exceeded the average job growth in the United States. Even better, these jobs are mostly created in an area local to the infrastructure project, and those jobs pay more than the average job created in the United States currently.
Lastly, we don’t create opportunity out of thin air. It may seem like that to those on the outside, but those opportunities are created by armies of scientists and inventors slogging away and laying a foundation in basic research and supporting technologies. At some point, a critical mass is reached and something new and revolutionary is released to the world. That new thing becomes part of the foundation of the next new thing. Scientists worldwide have been researching climate change for decades and the results of their research are overwhelming. Yes, there are a few scientists who disagree, but that is normal too. I mean, 40,000 people in the United States are estimated to genuinely believe the earth is flat. Clearly, 100% agreement is not required for progress or accuracy. I would suggest that it doesn’t make sense to argue that science will miraculously save us from a problem while at the same time dismissing what the science itself is telling us about the problem.
I know you and I have just scratched the surface on many of the pro/con arguments and I have no intention of a back and forth. But you appreciated a civil response to you once, so I thought you might appreciate it a second time.
Thank you so so much for taking the time to write this.
Humans have been adept at increasing our carrying capacity through use of technology and agriculture, but it’s dangerous to think that just because humans have been able to do so in the past we can continue to do so in the future. Here’s a quote from The Art of Thinking Clearly that I think about a lot.
“Mankind has always survived, so we will be able to tackle any future challenges, too.” Sounds good in theory, but what we fail to realize is that such a statement can only come from a species that has lasted until now. To assume that our existence to date is an indication of our future survival is a serious flaw in reasoning. Probably the most serious of all.”
Furthermore in response to Dan S.: If 9 out of 10 mechanics told you there was a problem with your car, would you continue to think your car was okay.
For human caused climate change, 97 climate scientist out of every 100 say that this is happening. It’s unclear to me why people continue to believe the other 3.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024
Especially as the other three scientists are likely funded by those with interest in perpetuating climate change denialism.
We voted early.
High-five!
Thank you for posting this. Last night I signed up to volunteer for a candidate who is running for our state house.
Yes!
Me thinks you should worry about the USA losing ‘democracy’ and a conflict with aggressive, and less free countries like China. I encourage you or anyone to vote, if they have made the effort to be objective and read deeply and broadly, or else I’d rather you sit it out and go hide in a cave until the climate restores itself. I make these comments with love in my heart.
Hi. I enjoy your writing style.
Contacting people you know to encourage their voting is a positive move. Young people who will be the most affected by all the bad news do not even participate. The most important thing right now is to register as many people in states that still allow that and to get voter id to those who will be turned away at the polls without special id. This has a huge impact and you are in a position to fund these actions in a small but, important way. Help those votes that are being turned back by evil policy promoting apathetic ignorance and blatent denial of voting privilage
I feel the same way about the news. I cope by watching Last Week Tonight. It’s crazy brilliant and hilarious! Your method of writing letters seems reasonable as well.
John Oliver is my jam.
There are glimmers of hope in your country. For example: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/make-america-dinner-again-mada-potluck-division-dialogue-1.4864141
What a great idea! And they have them in Denver! Thanks for sharing.
I saw Salman Rushdie speak last year. He said that the day after the 2016 presidential election, he was at a demonstration and found himself surrounded by young people. When he asked how many had voted, only one had. He pointed out that the demonstration that really mattered happened the day before, and most of them had missed it.
Thank you for being young and engaged!
Thanks for calling me young!
🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
Thank you for voting, for encouraging others to vote here, and for your productive volunteer efforts. What a great way to channel your anxiety into action! I’m with you on trying to increase voter turnout / participation in the election process regardless of party platform. Like you said, your vote is your voice. I want others to use that voice at the ballot box, even if we disagree.
I did VoteForward too. What a great way to help improve voter turnout :-)!
Apparently it supposedly made a difference in Alabama’s senate race that Doug Jones won.
Thanks for the encouragement.
As a result I voted (from the other side of the world)
🙂
That makes me unreasonably happy. 🙂 Thanks for being a voter.
Where I come from voting is compulsory… well showing up to the polling booth is anyway… what you do after that is your business. Some people show up, get their paper ballot, and draw pictures on it.
If you don’t show up, you get fined. It’s a small fine, nothing substantial. As a result (almost) everyone shows up and (almost) everyone votes.
Sensible. Although the idea of drawing a picture on your ballot instead of voting makes me rather nauseous. Like fingers on chalkboard nervous. Ugh, why?
Well, I should have read this earlier, because I didn’t vote… again. It’s not my fault though, I’m a late Gen X’er and we gave up on society at birth!!
Anyway, I noticed only 1 of the 9 things on your worry list is in your direct control, and maybe partial control on a couple others. Be a good little stoic and act in your sphere of control 🙂
Excellent advice!