{"id":5667,"date":"2021-02-07T13:20:53","date_gmt":"2021-02-07T18:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecooptimism.com\/?p=5667"},"modified":"2021-02-07T13:20:53","modified_gmt":"2021-02-07T18:20:53","slug":"can-we-be-hopeful-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ecooptimism.com\/?p=5667","title":{"rendered":"\u201cCan We Be Hopeful?\u201d Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

0\"Biden<\/a><\/p>\n

(I had originally planned to post this near the beginning of the year, but it hardly seemed appropriate amidst the events of January 6. With the Biden administration now in office, it feels more timely.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Slightly over a year ago, for my end of 2019 post, I wrote \u201cCan we be hopeful?\u201d In it, I said that, as bad as that year was environmentally, under a president who single-handedly set us back to whatever year ExxonMobil wanted him to, there was room \u2013 and need \u2013 for seeing the potential for a positive turn in the climate emergency.\u00a0 But that was before massive wildfires, a record-breaking hurricane season, arctic waters that didn\u2019t freeze when they\u2019re supposed to, and numerous floods and heat waves beyond what used to be the norm.<\/p>\n

Much of the optimistic viewpoint then was dependent on electing a new president. Any new president.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the environmentally horrific events, though they may be overwhelmed in newsworthiness by the COVID-19 pandemic, have served to sway some of the deniers. It\u2019s way too much to hope that they will all be convinced, but we already had a majority of the public onboard; it\u2019s the politicians who have been the most obstructive. Perhaps the further swing in their constituents\u2019 beliefs (I hate when people refer to \u2018believing\u2019 in climate change), will overwhelm their fealty to oil industry financial support. But, then again, maybe that\u2019s the EcoOptimist in me.<\/p>\n

The gist of that year-old post was that we needed both hope and fear. Fear of what can happen (or is happening) and hope that we can still prevent the worst. It\u2019s a combined carrot and stick, I wrote.<\/p>\n

Teaching my first class after Trump\u2019s election in 2016, I barely held back tears, saying that the window on preventing the worst scenario of the climate emergency was closing. (I was also fearful for the immigration status and safety of the many international students in my classes.)<\/p>\n

In an earlier draft of this post, pre-inauguration, I had written: while President-elect Biden is not as strong an environmentalist as many of us would have wanted, there\u2019s no comparison to the windmills-cause-cancer malignancy of the outgoing administration. (Trump also said wind turbines are bad because they kill birds, but then authorized oil companies to \u201cinadvertently\u201d kill birds. Hypocrisy and politics seem to go together when they are convenient.)<\/p>\n

Editing this delayed post now, just after Biden\u2019s \u201cClimate Day,\u201d his executive orders<\/a> are wonderfully exceeding our reserved hopes. (As a policy and economics geek when I\u2019m not in my ecodesign role, I especially love that he is eliminating subsidies for fossil fuel companies.)<\/p>\n

But is it too late, as I semi-tearfully feared after the 2016 election? Dunno. Some studies say the path past a 1.5\u00b0 rise is set, that that train has left the station. (The metaphor is appropriate because, like trains, climate change ‘s momentum is hard to slow down.)\u00a0 But I think the mindset it generates is unhelpful because it leaves us with only fatalism and no reason for action. Even if it’s true, we still can affect, if not that perhaps pre-ordained path, the further degree of impact. This isn’t merely EcoOptimism; it’s really the only way to move forward.<\/p>\n

So, all in all, we have more reasons to affirmatively answer the question \u201cCan We Be Hopeful?\u201d than we did four years. And far more than we did a year ago.<\/p>\n

Raising a glass of organic champagne.<\/p>\n

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