While
falling down the rabbit hole of Twitter the other day, a Tweet popped
up that caught my eye. “I would vote for this as the worst piece on climate
change yet published this decade-” Alex Steffen begins, “flawed in both concept
and execution, morally cowardly, and lavishly self-indulgent.” With gorgeous
words such as those, I felt personally compelled to take a peek at the New
Yorker article attached, and it continued to compel/frustrate me so much
after reading it to the point of having to making this post. Mr. Jonathan
Franzen, a famous (or rather infamous) essayist and novelist known for taking
extreme positions on topics he feels compelled to discuss, as well as a
self-declared “non-scientist” has spurred many to challenge his opinions due to
his vocal take that keeping the world from succumbing substantially to climate
change, and the hope contained within that, should be at this point considered
fictitious. While Franzen does take on the issue of hope and its use in certain
dialogues around climate change in a way that I believe is beneficial – that
is, only using hope as an anchor for stopping climate change (because at this
point the climate will change, we cannot reverse this nor fully prevent it)– he
fails to come around to the reality that the main use of hope, amongst those
like Greta Thunberg and supporters of the Green New Deal, is to prevent pure,
unfettered disaster. It inspires and motivates individuals to take action, to
be concerned for future generations, and to not become disengaged and let the
world go to complete and utter shit, trading concern for others for interior
decoration ideas for their underground bunkers. Not only that, but only a
select few get to even have that privilege of abandoning active hope and even
thinking said thoughts. Jonathan Franzen is clearly part of that.
Franzen is seemingly dropping the torch because he can; unlike
many others he does not feel the immediate life-threatening effects of climate
change such as climate displacement, inadequate access to food, public health
issues, among many others. An award-winning author can afford to relocate,
continue to maintain good health, and stray as far away as possible from any
type of environmental bad – that is until disastrous, worldwide benchmarks are
hit – which of course is guaranteed if we follow in Franzen’s do little or
nothing footsteps. But this “climate apocalypse” is already happening for
oppressed individuals trapped under combinations of income, citizenship, race,
etc. To say that we should go ahead and stop pretending like we can enact any
sort of monumental change is ignorant. No, we cannot prevent all of the major
realities of climate change, such as temperature increase, infrastructure
damage, or rising sea levels- but we can help those already being put in life
and death situations to find significant amounts of relief, big and small, all
while advocating and pressuring our government to decrease the severity of
results with adequate top-down processes. There is a duty to be had among those
with more say in the political realm and freer from certain bounds of climate
injustice. Privileged folk such as Franzen are ignoring this, and with essays
like these, seem to aim at and conjure up those who are on the fence about what
to do (and are quite comfortable with their status in life), to abandon hope,
abandon that drive to make lives better for others, and just accept that what
whatever happens will happen.
A lot of discourse around climate change stems
from this internal reflection of how to feel – should we continue to hold onto
hope and actively push for major reform, or prepare for the absolute worse and
abandon all notions that any sort of reform will prevent a “climate
apocalypse”? I think it’s appalling to give in to the latter, and I will do
what I can to call out those who think it’s okay to quit. I believe, much like Eve
Andrews, that “giving up is a bullshit move”, and rather unnatural. There’s
still time to lessen the blow. There’s still time to make immediate
improvements both big and small for those that need it most. Doing otherwise is
simply a move driven by privilege, and should be judged and critiqued as such,
as we continue the dialogue around our role in the climate movement.
Salem Menze
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