217: Honey & Vinegar

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Hi everyone, Gus here. It's been a tough week. If the climate news hasn't scared you, then you haven't been paying attention. We're watching the brutal reality of what scientists predicted would happen play out across the planet, in some cases at the furthest extremes, and it's terrifying. "I told you so" is small comfort when confronted with so much bad news.

However, now more than ever, it's crucial to resist the allure of despair. The narrative of climate doom, while grounded in harsh reality, leads to inaction. As Rebecca Solnit points out, this narrative is a strange mix of confidence and defeatism: confidence in positions that are increasingly based on outdated information, and defeatism about our ability to shape a liveable future.

As a reader of this newsletter you know better than anyone that we now have the solutions to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. Renewable energy is scaling exponentially and getting more efficient and cost-effective every year. Vested interests are doing everything in their power to obstruct its progress, but the ledge they're standing on gets narrower by the month.

In the face of all of this, you're allowed to be heartbroken and hopeful. Hope, not as a naive belief in a rosy future, but as a commitment to search for possibilities. In that spirit, we're going to kick things off this week with all the climate stories you didn't see in the news. There are tens of millions of people working to solve this thing now. Don't forget that.