Should we still be climate activists?

The existential goal posts have changed, but the fight is still real! Chapter 16, folks.

The last chapter invited us all to simplify our lifestyles as a tactic. Chapter 16 invites us to apply an equally fresh approach to how we show up as activist or activated citizens.

I promised way back in one of the first chapters to circle back to where climate activism fits into the collapse picture and then again following my slightly heated interview with Paris Agreement formulator Christiana Figueres.

If you’re new here you can start at the beginning of the book. The audio version is at the bottom, available only to paid subscribers. Ditto the conversation in the comments section where we workshop things together in real time.

BTW: If you’re interested, I’ve started to tweak the ordering and sectioning of the chapters. You can check out how it’s looking here.

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A RIGHT FIGHT

“Trying to solve the problem might just be the problem itself.”

- Bayo Akomolafe

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To kick off this chapter, I want to answer the following question. I promised to come back to it.

Should we still be focused on the climate fight …in a collapsing world… when we’ve blown that 1.5C threshold?

OK, so here goes.

When I “broke up” with hope about 18 months ago, it was like I’d broken up with the entire climate movement. In my mind I hadn’t abandoned the cause; I was as strapped into the fight against fossil fuel extraction and the destruction of natural carbon sinks as ever. But my new position, which I began to share on social media and at environmental events, was interpreted by many as an irreparable divorce.

I immediately felt cast out. I got a few messages from other activists saying they were worried about my “stance”, others unfollowed me on social media. I was told I was a shill for the fossil fuel industry who “just want us all to believe there’s no hope so that we give up the fight against them”. (Which is true; doomism is a new, manipulative tactic of theirs. But many truths can exist at once.)

Rather than take people aside, perhaps offering to buy them a beer at the pub so that I could bleat “my side of the story”, I pulled back and created some space for everyone. And myself.

But I think I’m now ready to give my nuanced version of things.

I want to say this with all my care and love - I can no longer support the idea that “we can still make it”¹, that we can bring global warming and emissions down within the ranges set out by the poor scientists who’ve been warning for decades that we’d reach this precise point where hopeful outcomes could no longer be promised. Further, the energy transition and the “net zero” ambition simply does not stack up - we can’t do it in time, not without doing further damage to the planet, other species and the human condition. Oh, and those carbon credit programs companies like to toot are largely a furphy. Last year, a report found over 90 per cent of forest carbon offsets (the most common type on the market) are essentially worthless.² 

I mean, such a relationship with reality is unhealthy, right? Couples counsellors might say toxic.

Finally, to hang everything on some miracle technology or AI upgrade saving us, which is where I think most climate folk I know now land, is precarious at best. It’s not even hopeful; it’s desperately wishful. And definitely irresponsible³.

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But there’s also this: I have had this horrible, cringey feeling for some time about the fundamentals of the energy transition. During my separation period, I got to the bottom of it. The “electrify everything” message has always been about telling folk that if we make the big switch to solar panels and wind turbines, EVs and heat pumps, we can all go about business as usual, enjoying our devices, heating our homes to tee-shirt’n’undies levels and driving over-sized (now electric) cars to malls to buy things that come in recycled! repurposed! packaging. The circular economy works to a similar deluding and destructive logic. Ditto recycling.