We need the right kind of climate optimism

Hannah Ritchie in Vox:

We environmentalists spend our lives thinking about ways the world will end. There’s nowhere that I see doomer culture more vocal than on my home turf.

With leading activists like Roger Hallam, co-founder of the popular climate protest movement Extinction Rebellion, telling young people that they “face annihilation,” it’s no surprise so many of them feel terrified. In a large recent international survey on youth attitudes toward climate change, more than half said that “humanity is doomed” and three-quarters said the future is frightening. Young people have good reasons to worry about our ability to tackle climate change, but this level of despair should be alarming to anyone who cares about the well-being of future generations — which is, after all, what the climate movement is all about.

More here.