Thread by @DoctorVive

A thread about #ClimateTwitter, community, and disagreement.

I think we'll lose something if we use this space only to hate on climate denial, self-promote, & backslap.

While remembering we're all allies, I think we *should* ask hard questions, & argue with each other.

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Climate twitter is a miraculous thing: a space where people working on climate change can talk to each other.

Scientists & longtime activists are immensely generous with their time and expertise. I personally have learned a ton from them and from every journalist here.

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I am so deeply grateful that climate twitter exists.

The climate complacency in the real world is so surreal and insane that sometimes I feel like I'm in one of those nightmares in which you scream as loud as you can but no sound comes out.

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Here everyone is speaking about climate. It is a godsend.

4/n

But of course not everyone agrees! And sometimes things get heated.

The first major twitter fight I participated in was the furor over David Wallace-Wells' NY Mag article (which he went on to expand into his great book, of course). That was a very intense fight!

5/n

In retrospect I think the debate was partly about whether climate would be (just) a science story going forward or whether it could evolve into something more literary: a potential tragedy, or an epic, or a metaphysical challenge to our ideas about what it means to be human.

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And at the time tempers ran high and folks' positions became very entrenched. But at least partly *because*, I think, folks had that fight here, the debate shifted.

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In a small but important way, the debate pushed climate communication out of the "hope vs fear" rut, enabling it to be increasingly connected to so many different things people care about. It helped people work through that shift, to redraw new discursive boundaries.

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To take another example, scientists really pushed back *on Twitter* against the "twelve years to save the world" message that began to circulate after SR 1.5, since of course it distorted what that report said.

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There was a lot of bitching back and forth about that too. But guess what happened in the end: advocates and AOC herself stopped using the phrase.

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There are plenty of other examples in which a Twitter kerfuffle changed the conversation, or influenced the way that climate change is represented in the media or talked about by politicians.

That is something to celebrate!

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W regard to the latest kerfuffle (over Lisa Friedman's article): maybe out of this folks could agree to note whether a quoted expert has received funding from the fossil fuel industry or is some way involved in judicial cases or political campaigns related to climate policy.

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Or maybe assessments of candidates' climate plans should include the opening statement of IPCC's SR 1.5👇or its timelines for decarbonization. One needs context for the criticism, say, that a candidate should include nuclear in his vision of decarbonization, or whatever.

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Or: MAYBE NOT! Maybe there is a good reason not to do these things! But this is a space for the informed public and the experts to argue that point.

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But if we shut down those arguments with calls to be civil, that will be the death of what makes climate twitter a virtual public forum in the best, even ancient sense of the term.

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So, I say, no name calling; no accusations of personal mediocrity, perfidy, or self-interest (and if I've implied such things, I apologize).

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We can all be thoughtful about our tone, me certainly and for sure.

But yes debate, yes arguments, yes calling out opinions and practices you think are wrong!

Tell me you think I'm wrong any time.

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But let's keep moving the conversation forward.

/fin