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Both Climate Optimists and Doomers are Wrong
It’s Not Hopeful Complacency or Smug Nihilism From Here On, It’s Selfless Mitigation
Social media is primarily about confirmation bias. If you click on this article, chances are you already agree with its premise. You’ve found fault in both sides of the climate change debate — whether we’re going to “science” our way out of anthropogenic warming and ecological overshoot, or we’re irrevocably fucked — and you’re looking for an article elucidating why exactly you’re right.
We also like being challenged, sometimes — we get as much of a dopamine hit from confronting the opposition as we do cosying up to the echo chamber.
But whether it’s encountering the opposition or rallying with our own team, we like to be confirmed. And it’s true from social networks to podcasts and videos, to the national political news media.
This isn’t about both sides, though, or false equivalency. If anything is false, it’s this binary that we’re either hopeful about our green future with all the trimmings or that we’re plodding hopelessly toward an extinction we can do nothing about.
We don’t have to abide by either end of that spectrum.
And we shouldn’t.
