K-98 Klimawandel – Verzweiflung ist keine Option
Wir brauchen Pessimus und Optimismus beim Kampf gegen den Klimawandel
Far from resting in a belief that things are going to get worse, pessimism in most cases doesn’t have to do with the future at all: rather, it is a philosophy that tries to give a place to the darker side of life, to the reality of evil and pain and suffering in human (as well as animal) existence.
Knowing that we don’t know isn’t grounds for confidence, but it is fuel against despair, which is a form of certainty. This future is as uncertain as it’s ever been..
Ten ways to confront the climate crisis without losing hope (Rebecca Solnit, 2021)
Panik allerdings motiviert junge Menschen nicht zum Tüfteln an bahnbrechender Klimatechnologie oder einer rational durchdachten Energiepolitik, sondern zu Fatalismus und Anklage, Umsturzfantasien und rhetorischer Eskalation.
[[Angst ist kein guter Lehrer (Robert Benkens – Die Zeit, 2022)]]
Could the two not go together, then? Could there be such a thing as hopeful pessimism, as John Gray suggests (which to many of us would seem like an oxymoron) – and could such hopeful pessimism not perform the same tasks as Chomsky’s optimism, and perform them better? I think it can – and should. While it is deeply mistaken to suggest that pessimism is the same as fatalism or giving up, the concern behind this suggestion is nevertheless a valid one. This is the concern, voiced most clearly by Chomsky, that if we become too convinced that things are going to get worse whatever we do, we’ll end up doing nothing at all. […] If it can be said that pessimism risks demotivation, it could also be said that, if we are too optimistic, too convinced that things will turn out fine in the end, whatever we do, we’ll equally end up doing nothing. Why worry ourselves about a complex problem such as climate change if we already believe everything will sort itself out in the end; that progress will prevail?
Was motiviert uns mehr? Das ist keine Frage von richtig und falsch – wir brauchen beides.
To remain with the example of climate change, the optimists believe we will be best motivated if we draw from humanity’s success stories, such as new technologies and the vast human potential for change and innovation, while not focusing too much on the reasons we have for despair. In contrast to this, the pessimists hold not only that ethics demands we do justice to the reality of suffering and evils (including the possibility of impending disaster), but also that this is exactly what will motivate us to want to make a difference: it is precisely a recognition of the dire state of affairs in the world that is needed to impel us to action. The disagreement, then, is ultimately over what is most capable of morally paralysing us: overemphasizing our capacity or rather our incapacity?
Sich auf das konzentrieren, was es zu retten gilt!
Ohne Optimismus kein Handeln
Beschleunigt sich nämlich auch (siehe erstens)
Wir brauchen gute Zukunftsbilder
Utopien können genauso stark sein wie Utopien.
There is a sad failure of imagination at the root of this crisis. An inability to perceive both the terrible and the wonderful. An inability to imagine how all these things are connected, how what we burn in our powerplants and car engines pumps out carbon dioxide that goes up into the sky
Ten ways to confront the climate crisis without losing hope (Rebecca Solnit, 2021)
I believe we now need to tell stories about how beautiful, how rich, how harmonious the Earth we inherited was, how beautiful its patterns were, and in some times and places still are, and how much we can do to restore this and to protect what survives. To take that beauty as a sacred trust, and celebrate the memory of it. Otherwise we might forget why we are fighting.
Ten ways to confront the climate crisis without losing hope (Rebecca Solnit, 2021)
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