As weather gets wilder and horror stories spread faster than the frequent wildfires sweeping across the nation, it has become impossible to avoid bad news about climate change. From the rapidly shared horrific headlines of social media posts from climate news accounts to the footage of increasingly unnatural disasters that dominates broadcasts, climate change has become widely viewed as inescapable and irreversible. Hope has been buried in the ashes and debris of the coverage of some of the worst effects of global warming.
A 2023 collaborative study between Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication found that 65% of Americans are worried about climate change on a regular basis, half of whom indicated that they were very concerned about the issue. 51% of Americans reported hearing about climate change from media outlets at least once a month, and 20% indicated that the subject was discussed within their intimate circles of friends and family, proving how a fear of climate change has permeated American society. This narrative of fear has conquered the American perspective of climate change.
46% of surveyed citizens reported that they believed Americans were being harmed by climate change’s impact, almost all of which (43% of all surveyed) reported experiencing its effects personally. 52% have expressed concern that the extreme weather caused by climate change will be disastrous to their community over the next decade. For most Americans, the future seems even more grim, with 70% of those surveyed believing that future generations will be negatively impacted by the current progression of global warming.
“Climate fatalism,” a recently coined term, refers to a deeply unsettling and increasingly prevalent view of climate change: the Earth is beyond the point of saving, and human efforts have become pointless. 13% of Americans surveyed in the 2023 Yale/George Mason study believed there is nothing at all that could be done about climate change and its devastating effects. A staggering 47% stated that individual efforts did nothing to improve the problem, and an even higher 69% percent said that they were questioning whether there is still time to reduce global warming.
While not every viewpoint on the fight against climate change is as bleak as climate fatalism, the generally pessimistic perspective of the future of global warming is dangerous. Unsurprisingly, fewer people are willing to get involved in activism–or even make a personal effort–for a cause that they believe is doomed from the start. The threats of climate change are real and worthy of concern, but the careless attitude that extreme pessimism towards progress creates only worsens the climate crisis.
A media fixation on the worst of environmental updates hides the forward progress that is worthy of celebration. There is a case to be made for an optimistic perspective on the world’s future, one that is often buried by biased coverage and the human tendency to fixate on the worst.
For one thing, the case for clean energy usage is only growing stronger with time. The majority of Americans (69%) expressed interest in the development of clean energy, and two-thirds wanted government encouragement of alternative energy routes, such as wind and solar power. As recently as 2022, worldwide research spending on clean energy rose to over one trillion dollars, and it is now estimated that renewable energy will make up 35% of the world’s power sources as soon as 2025.
The monster of global carbon emissions, perhaps the most widely understood cause of climate change, is also being contained by worldwide efforts. While carbon emissions are still rising each year at an unsustainable rate, they are rising at a much slower rate than predicted. A dramatic 3% yearly increase in carbon emissions each year dominated the early 2000s, but the rate dropped to just .5% in 2022. Forest preservation and restoration movements have had a positive impact on carbon emissions, as modern forest growth absorbs twice as much (four gigatonnes) carbon dioxide as forest land did in the early 1990s. Carbon emissions are still a major obstacle in the road to a sustainable future, but rather than a sprint towards destruction, steps are being taken in the right direction.
Global warming has also become much more widely acknowledged by both the general public and U.S. legislators. Just 8% of Americans expressed that they were confident climate change was a hoax, indicating that the vast majority of those surveyed acknowledged the reality of the climate’s state. In 2022 alone, three different 514 billion dollar plans that outlined green infrastructure and industrial accountability were passed in the U.S., establishing a legislative acknowledgment of the growing issue.
There are countless other reasons for an optimistic view of the planet’s future climate (consider looking at Harvard’s monthly newsletter on climate optimism), all of which point towards the case that a fight against global warming is not so hopeless after all. Though it may seem like it sometimes, the world is not ending just yet.
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Editors’ note: All opinions expressed on The Uproar are a reflection solely of the beliefs of the bylined author and not the journalism program at NASH. We continue to welcome school-appropriate comments and guest articles.
