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Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumAn NYT Interview with Paul Kingsnorth
I remember finding out that Paul Kingsnorth had walked away from environmental activism, and thinking, "Finally, someone else who understands. I'm not alone."
Its the End of the World as We Know It . . . and He Feels Fine
I had a lot of friends who were writing about climate change and doing a lot of good work on it, he told me during a break from his festival duties. I was just listening and looking at the facts and thinking: Wow, we are really screwed here. We are not going to stop this from happening.
The facts were indeed increasingly daunting. The first decade of the 21st century was shaping up to be the hottest in recorded history. In 2007, the Arctic sea ice shrank to a level not seen in centuries. That same year, the NASA climatologist James Hansen, who has been ringing the climate alarm since the 1980s, announced that in order to elude the most devastating consequences, wed need to maintain carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at a level of 350 parts per million. But wed already surpassed 380, and the figure was rising. (It has since reached 400 p.p.m.) Animal and plant species, meanwhile, were dying out at a spectacular rate. Scientists were beginning to warn that human activity greenhouse-gas emissions, urbanization, the global spread of invasive species was driving the planet toward a mass extinction event, something that has occurred only five times since life emerged, 3.5 billion years ago.
Everything had gotten worse, Kingsnorth said. You look at every trend that environmentalists like me have been trying to stop for 50 years, and every single thing had gotten worse. And I thought: I cant do this anymore. I cant sit here saying: Yes, comrades, we must act! We only need one more push, and well save the world! I dont believe it. I dont believe it! So what do I do?
Instead of trying to save the earth, Kingsnorth says, people should start talking about what is actually possible. Kingsnorth has admitted to an ex-activists cynicism about politics as well as to a worrying ambivalence about whether he even wants civilization, as it now operates, to prevail. But he insists that he isnt opposed to political action, mass or otherwise, and that his indignations about environmental decline and industrial capitalism are, if anything, stronger than ever. Still, much of his recent writing has been devoted to fulminating against how environmentalism, in its crisis phase, draws adherents. Movements like Bill McKibbens 350.org, for instance, might engage people, Kingsnorth told me, but they have no chance of stopping climate change. I just wish there was a way to be more honest about that, he went on, because actually what McKibbens doing, and what all these movements are doing, is selling people a false premise. Theyre saying, If we take these actions, we will be able to achieve this goal. And if you cant, and you know that, then youre lying to people. And those people . . . theyre going to feel despair.
I had a lot of friends who were writing about climate change and doing a lot of good work on it, he told me during a break from his festival duties. I was just listening and looking at the facts and thinking: Wow, we are really screwed here. We are not going to stop this from happening.
The facts were indeed increasingly daunting. The first decade of the 21st century was shaping up to be the hottest in recorded history. In 2007, the Arctic sea ice shrank to a level not seen in centuries. That same year, the NASA climatologist James Hansen, who has been ringing the climate alarm since the 1980s, announced that in order to elude the most devastating consequences, wed need to maintain carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at a level of 350 parts per million. But wed already surpassed 380, and the figure was rising. (It has since reached 400 p.p.m.) Animal and plant species, meanwhile, were dying out at a spectacular rate. Scientists were beginning to warn that human activity greenhouse-gas emissions, urbanization, the global spread of invasive species was driving the planet toward a mass extinction event, something that has occurred only five times since life emerged, 3.5 billion years ago.
Everything had gotten worse, Kingsnorth said. You look at every trend that environmentalists like me have been trying to stop for 50 years, and every single thing had gotten worse. And I thought: I cant do this anymore. I cant sit here saying: Yes, comrades, we must act! We only need one more push, and well save the world! I dont believe it. I dont believe it! So what do I do?
Instead of trying to save the earth, Kingsnorth says, people should start talking about what is actually possible. Kingsnorth has admitted to an ex-activists cynicism about politics as well as to a worrying ambivalence about whether he even wants civilization, as it now operates, to prevail. But he insists that he isnt opposed to political action, mass or otherwise, and that his indignations about environmental decline and industrial capitalism are, if anything, stronger than ever. Still, much of his recent writing has been devoted to fulminating against how environmentalism, in its crisis phase, draws adherents. Movements like Bill McKibbens 350.org, for instance, might engage people, Kingsnorth told me, but they have no chance of stopping climate change. I just wish there was a way to be more honest about that, he went on, because actually what McKibbens doing, and what all these movements are doing, is selling people a false premise. Theyre saying, If we take these actions, we will be able to achieve this goal. And if you cant, and you know that, then youre lying to people. And those people . . . theyre going to feel despair.
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