Thread by @DoctorVive

At least two reasons serious people might be worried about human extinction (or even just mass death & depopulation to under 1 billion).

1) Folks may view NDCs and other pledges as greenwashing hiding continued financial and political support for the fossil-fuel system.

1/n

https://twitter.com/peters_glen/status/1492420837970001921

2) People may have less faith than scientists do that our technological capacity will enable us to transcend our dependence on this planet.

We ARE in a 6th extinction. Why would humans be spared if it continues to accelerate?

2/n

We cannot take extinction off the table until the emissions curve bends down.

3/n

It is wrong and dangerous to argue that extinction is unlikely and/or that the warming and ecological devastation delivered by our current economy, and the politics that supports it, is off the table.

Those arguments normalize our current genocidal system.

4/n

If you protest to my saying that saying our current system is "genocidal," look how ongoing mass death from Covid is being normalized so the economy can function as designed.

5/n

Anyway none of this is immutable—and if the climate movement fails to build enough power to revolutionize our systems, it's not like the unraveling will happen in the coming decades—but, again, in thinking about this issue, this is the graph that matters.

6/n

More political progress has been made since 2018 than ever before becuz climate comms has embraced "alarm," thanks to @IPCC_CH SR 1.5 (even as its message is garbled) & @dwallacewells *The Uninhabitable Earth,* & the youth strikers saying they don't want to die & @ExtinctionR etc

Even just a decade ago serious Democrats and academics were still arguing that climate change might have benefits and that debate over whether it was even happening was valid—and that global heating won't hurt economic growth.

Really!

8/n

Yes "doomism" is a real problem. But I think doomism arises from misunderstanding the science and from a view of the climate crisis that is apolitical and un historical, as if climate change were a symptom of human nature rather than an effect of a mutable form of production.

9/

https://twitter.com/doctorvive/status/1170815429864034304

"Doomism" also arises from despair, esp. in young people, who see our political leaders choosing the fossil fuel system over their lives again and again, who feel helpless to build enough power to make elites stop doing this.

Their "doomism" breaks my heart.

10/n

It's the great task of climate communication to all at once create alarm over the climate & ecological crisis AND direct outrage toward fossil fuel interests AND show world-historical transformation is possible AND envision the world that will enable life to thrive.

11/n

But none of this is easy.

Viewing any one aspect of the climate crisis or its resolution is like looking through a kaleidoscope, where multiple pieces interlock to create relationships that are in themselves only one image of the problem and its solutions.

12/n

The less we think of this from one perspective (technical, "policy," communications, etc) & the more we see "the climate crisis" as a contingent & transformable web of relations entirely connected to the ecological and planetary systems that give us life, the better off we'll be.

Anyway, while we live, there's hope.

Remember: every pound of CO2 matters, every tenth of a degree matters.

Transformation and survival IS possible, but it relies on the work we do NOW.

So Never. Give. Up. That's what they want you to do. Why? Because they know we can win. 💚

#DontLookUp #EndClimateSilence

/fin