Climate deniers and climate doomers are more alike than they’d like to think
Climate deniers and climate doomers are more alike than they’d like to think
Their input messages might be different, but both lead us to inaction.
If you’ve read some of my other work, you might have heard me say that climate doomers can be as bad as climate deniers. At least when it comes to driving positive action on climate change.
This pisses some people off, but I’ll say it again, because it’s true. Much to their discontent, deniers and doomers achieve the same thing: inaction.
I made a quick visualisation to show this.
Most of us see deniers and doomers as being at opposite ends of the spectrum. That’s how they see themselves too. That’s shown in the top panel.
But they’re not as different as you – or they – might think. Sure, the input messages they promote are opposites. Deniers say there’s no problem. Doomers say the problem is so big and hopeless that it’ll be the end of us. But the outcome and what they ultimately achieve are almost identical. Both tell us that we should do nothing. This is shown in the lower panel.
Climate deniers want us to choose to do nothing; that it’s not a problem and doesn’t require any action. Climate doomers tell us that we don’t even have a choice to do something; we’re already screwed and it’s too late to act. Follow either and we end up in the same place of inaction. That’s a place that we can’t afford to be.
In the end, doomerism is no better than denial. And from my experience (which is an n=1, sorry!), outright climate denial is shrinking while climate doomerism is on the rise. That’s why we need to focus as much – if not more – attention on tackling the latter.
You miss that many, perhaps most so-called doomers can accept that it is highly likely that humanity will face near term dystopia and still act to reduce harm, bring joy and even work on mitigation.
People are complex and go through cycles as I have experienced and witnessed. One could be a doomer for one day or one year, and then be hopeful, optimistic, in different despairing and most every other emotion over time.
I strongly disagree with your superficial analogy between doomers and deniers. As others have pointed out where is the data to support your simplistic conclusion?
To be truly informed about the climate and ecological crisis, without having feelings of despair and hopelessness, is a willful and perhaps unhealthy denial of reality.
I expect there is a difference: doomers will be hard at work preparing for the end of the world; while deniers would continue their other projects without a care. There might be social and environmental consequences to prioritizing the end of the world, especially if the doomer does not expect consequences to matter at all.