The unbearable hopelessness of Franzen
The Jonathan Franzen article about climate change is making the rounds on Facebook, after being thoroughly torn apart by climate scientists on Twitter.
Yes, things are bad. We’ve locked in a certain amount of warming and continue to pump out huge amounts of carbon. But Franzen writes, “All-out war on climate change made sense only as long as it was winnable.” This is dead wrong: 2 degrees of warming is much, much better than 3 degrees, 3 degrees is much, much better than 4 degrees, and so on. All-out war on climate change makes *more* sense than ever.
And, despite what he says and you might believe, catastrophe is not inevitable. There are billions of us who want a livable planet, and only a small number of people who want to extract every dollar and every drop of oil.
Millions of young people are rising up to challenge the destructive forces of capitalism and the colonization and white supremacy that power it. Indigenous people are rising up. People in the global south, who have been stuck with the bill for the party we in the industrialized north have been holding for three hundred years, are rising up.
I’m on my way to Alaska today to interview Native elders and young activists who are experiencing severe erosion and warming that threatens their salmon and communities. They don’t have the luxury of giving up the fight. They, like the grassroots climate organizers I’ve met in Kentucky and California and so many other places, are brilliant and beautiful human beings fully engaged in the fight of our lifetime. Engaging in the fight brings people alive.
What Franzen is doing, and what the New Yorker is allowing him to do, is let himself and others like him — privileged and comfortable people who have lived well under the current system — off the hook. Because believing we're doomed excuses our personal and collective inaction. Franzen is essentially declaring that he won’t do much of anything to change the political reality that creates our climate reality, and he wants you to join him. Fuck that. It’s not courageous to say we’re doomed — it’s lazy and cowardly. It’s advocating for abandoning our children and all future generations.
It’s time to listen to other voices
As a number of people have pointed out, we need to be listening to other, non-white, non-male voices about climate change.
Mary Annaïse Heglar (@MaryHeglar on Twitter) is a woman of color who is writing brilliantly and has compiled a Twitter list of women writing about climate; check it out and also follow my friend and former colleague Beth Sawin (@bethsawin), and read this great piece by Amy Westervelt.
If you want to hear from someone with actual wisdom, which I find missing from Franzen’s piece, listen to Joanna Macy in the film I made about her several years ago. Link below; use the code Indiegogo1003 and you can watch it for free (feel free to share this).
Feel your fear. Feel your grief. Be pessimistic if you need to be. Then — and I say this with love — get to work. Register people to vote. Help flip the Senate. Stop thinking you are doing enough because you vote for Democrats. Learn about no-till gardening and regenerative agriculture. Fall in love with nature. Join the Climate Strike next week. Nearly all of us, me included, can do much more.
Or don’t get to work. Just don’t use Franzen’s “We’re doomed” story to let yourself off the hook.
Here’s an excerpt from a letter E.B. White wrote in 1973 to a man who was deeply discouraged about the state of the planet:
“Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.
“Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”