First of all, and most of all, I want to give a massive salute to all those people who refuse to give in to climate doom, and couldn't give a damn what climate doomers say.
If you're determined to keep pushing for meaningful action on climate change no matter what the charts and graphs are saying, you are golden.
You will save this planet. Just keep going. You've got this.
Climate Doom is reaching a tipping point. There are only so many parts per million our atmosphere can take, so we need to act, and fast.
It's really important to know what climate doom is and why it's so toxic and unhealthy.
You should learn to recognize it in yourself and in others. As with any mental illness, early diagnosis is crucial.
Climate Doomers are the new Climate Deniers. Many climate doomers don't realize this, but they could be sponsored by Big Oil.
The reason I say they are the same is because they both lead us in different ways to the same outcome. They lead us to exactly the same place. They lead us to inaction. They lead us nowhere. They lead us to a burning world full of people with graphs and charts saying I told you so.
I know everyone with half a brain cell is worried about climate change. We all should be talking about it. But there are ways of talking about it that are healthier and more effective than others.
Find whatever works for you, just please, for god's sake, don't be a Climate Doomer. And if you can't help yourself, can you at least try to suffer in silence? You're doing everyone's heads in.
I will be adding everything I can find about climate messaging and the perils of climate doomerism here. Please feel free to send me articles and your thoughts. I'm always listening.
Sadly, I will be muting all the inevitable climate doomer replies. It's not personal but once you say we're doomed, there's really nothing more you can say about it, is there? You're out of the game. Just try to enjoy the short time you have left, QUIETLY!
Recovered Climate Doomer Sean Youra has advice for those who are suffering from the same sort of fatalism that he once felt.
“Stop engaging excessively with negative climate change content online and start engaging in your community. You can be one of those voices showing there is support for the solutions.”
"Climate "doomers" believe the world has already lost the battle against global warming. That's wrong - and while that view is spreading online, there are others who are fighting the viral tide."
Marco Silva,
Climate Disinformation Specialist,
BBC.
"I don’t want to talk about whether pessimism is accurate. I want to focus on whether it’s useful. People might defend doomsday scenarios as the wake-up call that society needs. If they’re exaggerated, so what? They might be the crucial catalyst that gets us to act on climate change.
Setting aside the moral problem of stretching the truth, this claim is wrong.
They don’t need to have a majority, or anything even close to a plurality. All it takes is a few thousand sociopathic billionaires — the population of a village — to take full control of everything and then completely ruin our livable biosphere while further enriching themselves.
The scale on the image below is NOT exaggerated. In less than two centuries, and especially just within the last 30 years, capitalist oligarchs have burned so much coal, oil, and gas that our climate system simply can’t handle it.
It’s almost out of control now. But the people who are to blame have names and addresses.
If you take all the energy buried deep in the earth and under the oceans via photosynthesis and animal metabolism, energy from the sun that was packed away over a span of 500 million years as coal, oil, and gas… and then burn through that fuel in the brief period of about 200 years, what will happen?
Think about it.
We’re igniting all of the stored energy from half a billion years of life activity in only two centuries. That’s a ratio of 2.5 million to one — which means we are using this energy two and half million times faster than it was created and stored.
Climate change reports from the UN's IPCC can be fairly alarming, stern warnings about the urgent need for our society to change direction — except it turns out they are NOT as alarming as scientists wanted them to be.
Fierce negotiations between countries working to protect their financial and political interests ultimately “watered down” a landmark climate report released last week by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to a series of recent reports and investigations.
The findings highlight what activists have long warned is hampering meaningful global action to curb rising temperatures — namely, that vested interests are preventing nations from cooperating when it comes to how, exactly, they plan to reduce their emissions and fund efforts to adapt.
Climate scientist Kevin Anderson offers a blistering diatribe about the IPCC's disregard for inequality, their "colonial attitudes", and their overall timidity toward the scale of the climate crisis.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) synthesis report recently landed with an authoritative thump, giving voice to hundreds of scientists endeavouring to understand the unfolding calamity of global heating.
What’s changed since the last one in 2014? Well, we’ve dumped an additional third of a trillion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere, primarily from burning fossil fuels. While world leaders promised to cut global emissions, they have presided over a 5% rise.
For over two decades, the IPCC’s work on cutting emissions (what experts call “mitigation”) has been dominated by a particular group of modellers who use huge computer models to simulate what may happen to emissions under different assumptions, primarily related to price and technology. I’ve raised concerns before about how this select cadre, almost entirely based in wealthy, high-emitting nations, has undermined the necessary scale of emission reductions.
In 2023, I can no longer tiptoe around the sensibilities of those overseeing this bias. In my view, they have been as damaging to the agenda of cutting emissions as Exxon was in misleading the public about climate science. The IPCC’s mitigation report in 2022 did include a chapter on “demand, services and social aspects” as a repository for alternative voices, but these were reduced to an inaudible whisper in the latest report’s influential summary for policymakers.
The IPCC offers many “scenarios” of future low-carbon energy systems and how we might get there from here. But with few if any exceptions, they maintain current levels of inequality between developed and developing nations, with several scenarios actually increasing the levels of inequality.
I sold my last car in 2001. Since then to get around I have used my bike, my feet, public transit, and, on rare occasions, ride-sharing.
So I am a strong advocate for this!
"The Planet Can Do Better Than the Electric Car"
Transportation has long been a major source of greenhouse gases in the United States, with cars and light trucks producing more than half of such emissions. There are two basic ways to address that problem: You can make cars pollute less while they are in use, or you can induce people to drive less.
As global warming ascended environmental agendas in the 1990s, American advocacy groups focused largely on the former rather than the latter. Improving car fuel economy, not mode shift, was their dominant priority.
But Americans kept driving more miles and abandoning sedans in favor of less fuel-efficient SUVs and trucks. From 1990 to 2020, U.S. emissions from transportation rose 6.6 percent, faster than any other sector.
The solution, many environmental groups concluded, was to electrify the motor vehicles that seemed to be an American addiction. EarthJustice’s current website still calls electric vehicles “the wave of the future.”
But after focusing largely (some might say myopically) on electrification as a pathway to decarbonize transportation, many climate advocates are ready to lobby for less driving, period — not just less gas-powered driving. It’s an overdue shift that bodes well for the future of e-bikes and public transit — and for the planet.
Let’s get personal, shall we? I’ve been here a while now, and as I’m feeling quite comfortable at Mastodon, I’d like to share a bit more about myself beyond my passion for the climate and the environment.
To begin with, I’m a male, he/him, hetero, strongly supporting LGBTQ rights. I’m a baby boomer, born at 312 PPM 🌏, a United Statesian, although I lived in Europe (mostly Hungary) for several years, and traveled extensively for work before retiring in 2012. I’ve never been good at sustaining long-term romantic relationships, and I’ve finally settled into comfortable singlehood.
I like to say I’m made of contrasts.
For example, I’m rather funny and quite personable, but I don’t enjoy small talk and I hate parties. I currently live in the Bible Belt, but I’m an outspoken atheist. While I can easily fit into most social situations, I don’t feel comfortable around large groups and prefer being alone most of the time. I live near two huge military bases, but I detest the USA’s militaristic, troop-worshiping culture. I’m almost always cheerful, which masks my deeply felt existential nihilism. I’m a neat freak, but also rather lazy, preferring fun over work.
I’ll finish up with some hashtags to add flavor...
I recently joined mastodon like many, many others. My first impression is that I like it here! I shall shortly introduce myself. I've moved to Iceland from the Netherlands for a PhD in #Fisheries in 2016, and have stuck around on the stormy island since.