From Bill McKibben Avoids the Fetal Position (last Q/A exchange):

MJ: Well, how do you stay hopeful, or at least engaged? How do you keep people from just curling up into the fetal position?

BM: You know what, at some level I’ve given up trying to figure out whether I’m pessimistic or optimistic. I get up in the morning and do what I can, as much as I can, to try and change the odds of this wager that we’ve undertaken. What keeps me hopeful is seeing the tremendous response of people all over the world. We’ve organized 350.org in every country except North Korea. The thing that makes me bleak sometimes is just how quickly the science grows darker. We haven’t caught any breaks in the last 20 years. Everything that we’ve worried about has come in on the upper end of the projected range or off the charts altogether, whether it’s the melt of the arctic, or acidification of oceans, or the increase in drought and flood. So we’re clearly not going to stop global warming at this point. We’ve already raised the temperature of the planet one degree. We’ve got another degree in the pipeline from carbon we’ve already emitted. What we’re talking about now is whether we’re going to have a difficult, difficult century, or an impossible one. And we may still have enough room to maneuver to affect the outcome of that question.

This is eerily similar to my own thoughts of the last few months.

I would emphasize that the heat “in the pipeline” McKibben refers to does not, as far as I know, include the additional warming that will be triggered by the aerosol whiplash (part 1, part 2). It also does not assume a major acceleration of warming from permafrost and methane hydrates emissions, both of which could start happening any day now or next century or never.

After studying climate change and it’s twin terror, peak oil, intensively for over eight years, optimism seems like, more than anything else, a symptom that one is disconnected from the facts. Even taking swift action now will not likely avoid some nightmarish events in the next few decades, most related to the creation of large numbers of climate refugees, whether via lack of food and water or weather catastrophes or resource conflicts. This is a very difficult position for me, as I’ve always had great faith in the ability of human beings to do the right thing, even if they had to be slapped around by circumstanced first. The timing inherent in our situation, from the lock-in effect of our oil-dependent infrastructure[1] to the very long atmospheric lifetime of CO2[2], rule out the possibility of

Pessimism is nothing more than a euphemism for surrender, given the breadth, depth, and perversity of our problems.

So what’s left? In my opinion, it comes down to one of my favorite lines in Apollo 13: Failure is not an option. Gene Kranz and all the other “steely eyed missile men” refused to give up, refused to even consider it, and kept fighting to the best of their abilities. Of course, unlike that real world event[3], we don’t have the luxury of finding a solution and then cheering wildly and walking away from the mess. As McKibben correctly says, we’re facing a choice between a terribly painful century and an “impossible” one. He’s too circumspect to say it, but I’m not: An “impossible” century would essentially be the end of modern civilization as we know it, anywhere on this planet.

And that leaves us with the chores of trying to educate those who find ignorance comforting and less challenging, and activating those who are simply too damn lazy or distracted to act in their own best interest as well as that of their own children and grandchildren. I’ve thought a great deal about what this implies for my research and writing. While I haven’t yet finalized my Next Big Plan, I’ve made more progress than I expected.

I’ll keep you posted.

[1] Currently, US transportation of all modes is virtually all oil-fueled. How long do you think it would take us to convert even half of the cars, trucks, ships, trains, and air planes to something other than petroleum, and ensure we have a reasonable supply of whatever wonderfuels we’ve lashed ourselves to at that scale? Ponder this for a few seconds and try to tell me it doesn’t scare you spitless.

[2] I’ve mentioned it before, but let me drag it into the conversation yet again: Ask intelligent, environmentally aware people about CO2 in the atmosphere, and I guarantee you that at least 90% of them implicitly assume that if we cut worldwide CO2 emissions by, say, 50% over the next few months that atmospheric CO2 levels would drop almost immediately and we’d see global cooling. Tell them that we’re locked into at an absolute minimum decades of additional warming, regardless of our actions, and they will either refuse to believe you or get the most horrified look on their face you’re like to see at a casual social gathering.

[3] Yes, I’m obsessed with that movie, for reasons I once explained.