One of the hardest parts about confronting climate change head on and thinking clearly about what it will mean for my kids is that, emotionally, I regularly swing between optimism and hopelessness. While hope is necessary to any fight–and I really do believe there is reason to hope–there is also plenty of talk of cataclysm.
At moments of emotional tumult, I’ve found Dave Roberts at Vox to be a voice of reason. For example, his blog post on how he responds to people asking him (seemingly daily) about whether to be optimistic is realistic, but not fatalistic. He calls for “conditional optimism.”
Sometimes, though, I just plain need a dose of inspiration. And tonight I got one while listening to a Webinar put on by the Sunrise Movement. For those of you who don’t know about Sunrise, it’s a grassroots movement to get a Green New Deal passed into law. What’s so inspiring about it is that the movement was started by young people–and I do mean young–who are tired of waiting for my generation to do what’s right. Of the three people running the Webinar, one was 18 years old, and another was a senior in college (the guest author was my age). I’ve always said the climate movement needs it’s equivalent of the NRA. The kids at the sunrise movement aren’t just talking about it–they’re doing it.
On the topic of the Green New Deal, as a former public finance analyst at a government watchdog organization, I have to fight my impulse to be skeptical. After all, the bill would be massive in scope and costly. Yet, I would argue, it’s exactly what we need. Beyond being skeptical, my time in government also taught me that crises are often the best time to generate real, lasting change because everything’s on the table.
Yes indeed: if we’re going to overcome climate change, it’s because kids 20 years my junior have a courage and commitment I should have had a long time ago. They’re angry. And we should be too.
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