Thread by @AndrewWinston

This will be an unpopular view in the climate twittersphere, but the New Yorker "climate doom" article (by Jonathan Franzen), for its serious flaws, isn't all bad.

newyorker.com/culture/cultur…

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Many smart voices, such as @leahstokes, @AlexSteffen, and @GlobalEcoGuy have documented the fatal flaws well, and correctly.

Leah's take down is particularly pithy...

https://twitter.com/leahstokes/status/1170734860534714368

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But the few big problems for me are:

1. Franzen's odd insistence that 2 degrees is a magic # and everything turns instantly to hell after that. That's nuts. As @AlexSteffen has written, if we miss 2, we fight for 2.1, then 2.2, etc.

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(Franzen actually contradicts himself multiple times on his core argument. He talks about how global action, even if it slows one devastating hurricane, is worthwhile.)

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2. The whole framing of this discussion is WAY too close to how deniers talk now -- i.e., first it was a hoax, but now somehow it's too late. They're skipping over, you know, trying to DO something.

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And this new form of action denial, which isn't exactly what Franzen is saying, but plays into that denier framing, is just as damaging, perhaps more so, than outright 'hoax' denial.

medium.com/@AndrewWinston…

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3. I truly can't stand the "green energy is actually dirty" arguments. Of course there are impacts from big solar/wind projects. And Franzen loves birds (we all do). But climate change is contributing to an extinction crisis, killing SPECIES of birds, not individuals.
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Ok, so what's good about the piece?

Well, he has a clear 'this changes everything' view about climate that doesn't sound all that different from @NaomiAKlein's analysis on how much change is required.

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Franzen rightly says that protecting democracy is now a climate action. Even though he criticizes the #GreenNewDeal as unrealistic and not as fatalistic as he believes we should be, he reflects the essence of the GND well...

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"...any movement toward a more just and civil society can now be considered a meaningful climate action. Securing fair elections is a climate action. Combatting extreme wealth inequality is a climate action."

Damn right.

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I also like his idea of a "portfolio of hopes, some of them longer-term, most of them shorter...struggle against the constraints of human nature, hoping to mitigate the worst of what’s to come, but it’s just as important to fight smaller...local battles that you [can win]"

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I think he's getting at a balance I've tried to find of accepting some hard realities -- there will be suffering & devastation that we've locked in like, low-lying areas are in trouble, coral most likely dead, etc. -- while maintaining hope and never stopping the fight.
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I've been struggling with this balance as well. I wrote about it recently and where I fall on a 'climate grief' scale that Jonathan Porritt proposed recently (after reading @billmckibben and @dwallacewells books).

sloanreview.mit.edu/article/yes-im…

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In the end, we need to be having public discussions about just how serious things are, and how likely some bad outcomes are (they're already here in Paradise CA, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, island nations, etc).

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So I welcome, in part, anyone that starts from the premise that climate is an existential threat. We need lots of voices, and the debate on what the crisis means for our lives is important.

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But for all his talk of hope, he doesn't really talk about how much is already going well, like the massive shift toward renewables underway, and the Gen Z-ers refusing to accept his dark reality and marching to change it.

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So I share much of Franzen's view on how serious it all is and how much change to the status quo it requires...

But I choose to focus also on our path to a different future.

/end