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https://www.vox.com/climate/374637/climate-ayana-elizabeth-johnson-what-if-we-get-it-right-gray-area>
"If I asked you to tell me the one issue that makes you feel the most
pessimistic, what would it be?
I feel pretty confident saying that the most popular response — certainly one
of the most popular responses, anyway — would be climate change.
But is climate despair really as tempting and reasonable as it seems?
The problem isn’t imaginary. Climate change is real and terrifying, but even if
it’s as bad as the worst predictions suggest, do we gain anything by resigning
ourselves to that fate? What effect might our despair have on our ability to
act in the present?
Is our fatalism undercutting our capacity to tackle this problem?
On a recent episode of
The Gray Area, I invited Ayana Elizabeth Johnson on to
talk about how we might collectively address climate change without falling
into despair or getting mired in false hope. She’s a marine biologist, a
co-founder of the non-profit think tank Urban Ocean Lab, and the author of a
new book called
What If We Get it Right?
It’s a curated series of essays and poetry and conversations with a wide range
of people who are all, in their own ways, trying to build a better future. And
this is not a blindly optimistic book: The point isn’t that everything is fine.
The point is that we have to act as though the future is a place we actually
want to live in — not centuries into the distant future but now and in the
decades to come.
According to Johnson, there are already many concrete climate solutions. If we
were motivated by a belief in a better tomorrow — not a worse one — we would
implement more of those solutions (and find new ones).
So, if you’re someone looking for inspiration, or reasons to feel hopeful — or,
even better, for guidance on what to do and where to start — then this book,
and this conversation with Johnson, is for you."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
