Me too [replace study by manage]: "I’m here to make a confession. I confess that I am a climate change fraud. I work on climate change, I study it, I talk and write about it, I am convinced of the importance of taking serious and urgent action on it - but I do not have climate anxiety. I do not lose sleep at night about it." And I am glad about that! I am in the game to make impact, earn a salary with interesting work, be intellectually challenged by complex knowledge and dynamic politics & policy, and keep on working for many years to come - not to make myself feel miserable (which will reduce impact and endurance).
Thanks Ruben, great to have you stop by. You touch on some aspects of my work that I am incredibly grateful for: a chance to make a difference, to not do too much harm, to learn and grow and as you say to work on some pretty damn compelling scientific, policy and political issues. All while earning enough money to make a living. Despite the woes of the world and the various things that give me grief (pun intended), life is pretty good.
Interesting thoughts and feelings about climate change! I can relate to that sense of not losing sleep over it. Witnessing more than a decade of political inaction (which first made me really angry, then kind of numb to it all), had an impact on that. Then you couple that with incredible progress on the renewable energy front, and I somehow think we're going to solve the problem despite our best efforts to keep burning everything. Suddenly the A2 and RCP8.5 scenarios are not business as usual anymore, they are outliers. Not to say that we aren't heading towards big problems though... just that I think we're going to massively slow down emissions in the next decade or two.
Thanks for the thought-provoking post! ‘That implies…that there are well marked lanes and the status quo is some Platonic piece of perfection, which it sure as shit ain’t’ - well said! Haha! I can hear echos of family conversations in that one!
Everything to do with climate change is so complex - from how we got to where we are now, acknowledging that we are in the shit and then actually doing something about it in a manner that brings everyone along. I’m just plotting the trajectory, as it were!
What you do so well is set out the fallacy that somehow humans can be divorced from their feelings so that feelings play no part in decision making. To actually believe that means that everyone needs to be a sociopath (or worse) or just be in denial - delusional nonsense that has had a powerful hold for the best part of two centuries. So why are we in the shit with climate change???
You also intimate towards the fallacy that only what can be ‘proven’ is ‘true’. How do I prove my love for AnneMaree yet it is the single most true factor in my life? Given the situation that we are in and the future that we face we need to draw upon every possible human resource to try to scrape our way out of this shitshow. It’s my opinion that we each have skills and talents and that we are at our best when we use those skills and talents to build community. I had the opportunity to experience that in my working life and it was when I felt most alive. Everyone doing their thing, together, is how we will get out of this - but it isn’t going to be easy.
Science will play a part, undoubtedly, but so many other areas of human knowledge and endeavour will need to as well.
While the movie is largely feel-good nonsense, ‘High School Musical’ named the human condition in the song, ‘We’re all in this together’.
Me too [replace study by manage]: "I’m here to make a confession. I confess that I am a climate change fraud. I work on climate change, I study it, I talk and write about it, I am convinced of the importance of taking serious and urgent action on it - but I do not have climate anxiety. I do not lose sleep at night about it." And I am glad about that! I am in the game to make impact, earn a salary with interesting work, be intellectually challenged by complex knowledge and dynamic politics & policy, and keep on working for many years to come - not to make myself feel miserable (which will reduce impact and endurance).
Thanks Ruben, great to have you stop by. You touch on some aspects of my work that I am incredibly grateful for: a chance to make a difference, to not do too much harm, to learn and grow and as you say to work on some pretty damn compelling scientific, policy and political issues. All while earning enough money to make a living. Despite the woes of the world and the various things that give me grief (pun intended), life is pretty good.
Interesting thoughts and feelings about climate change! I can relate to that sense of not losing sleep over it. Witnessing more than a decade of political inaction (which first made me really angry, then kind of numb to it all), had an impact on that. Then you couple that with incredible progress on the renewable energy front, and I somehow think we're going to solve the problem despite our best efforts to keep burning everything. Suddenly the A2 and RCP8.5 scenarios are not business as usual anymore, they are outliers. Not to say that we aren't heading towards big problems though... just that I think we're going to massively slow down emissions in the next decade or two.
thanks David. I like your optimism
Thanks for the thought-provoking post! ‘That implies…that there are well marked lanes and the status quo is some Platonic piece of perfection, which it sure as shit ain’t’ - well said! Haha! I can hear echos of family conversations in that one!
Everything to do with climate change is so complex - from how we got to where we are now, acknowledging that we are in the shit and then actually doing something about it in a manner that brings everyone along. I’m just plotting the trajectory, as it were!
What you do so well is set out the fallacy that somehow humans can be divorced from their feelings so that feelings play no part in decision making. To actually believe that means that everyone needs to be a sociopath (or worse) or just be in denial - delusional nonsense that has had a powerful hold for the best part of two centuries. So why are we in the shit with climate change???
You also intimate towards the fallacy that only what can be ‘proven’ is ‘true’. How do I prove my love for AnneMaree yet it is the single most true factor in my life? Given the situation that we are in and the future that we face we need to draw upon every possible human resource to try to scrape our way out of this shitshow. It’s my opinion that we each have skills and talents and that we are at our best when we use those skills and talents to build community. I had the opportunity to experience that in my working life and it was when I felt most alive. Everyone doing their thing, together, is how we will get out of this - but it isn’t going to be easy.
Science will play a part, undoubtedly, but so many other areas of human knowledge and endeavour will need to as well.
While the movie is largely feel-good nonsense, ‘High School Musical’ named the human condition in the song, ‘We’re all in this together’.
thanks Patrick. Building community puts it perfectly.
Getting all hands on deck is hard when we are all pushed and pulled in so many different directions, particularly by our dayjobs.
Great to have you stop by the humble blog!