Reply To: Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
The author shares a similar distain
“…The use of climate arguments to promote other conservation issues has a psychological counterpart in cultivating an image and a self-image of hardheaded realism, in which squishy nature lover reasons give way to rational utilitarian ones. You can traffic in data about sea levels and economic losses and crop failure risks to disguise the truth: Basically, you are a tree hugger. You are a whale lover, a butterfly gazer, a turtle caresser. Maybe you practice Druidic rituals or connect with the soul of Gaia in vision quests. The arguments you give about future impacts, 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees, meters of sea level rise, hectares of forest, energy return on energy investment for photovoltaics, methane clathrate release rates … these legitimize your mushy tree hugger sentiments…”
I think his argument goes deeper than you read into them.
How do we get people to react and respond to climate change.
NIMBYism? “Not-in-my-backyard thinking becomes not-in-anyone’s-backyard.”
But how do we link it? When there is a call to save the planet, what actually is it we are trying to save? The author begins from what each and everyone of us experience, our local “beauty spot”, our local interaction, the hiking and the hill-walking and the swimming in the local river, loch and beach. That the climate change campaign’s stats is a number-game that is failing to reach people.
From the blurb of his book
“This refocusing away from impending catastrophe and our inevitable doom cultivates meaningful emotional and psychological connections and provides real, actionable steps to caring for the earth.”
As one reviewer says, the author wants to present a hopeful and positive attitude and solution. Something that on another thread I am accused of not presenting.
But he is guilty of anthropomorphising our relationship with nature but aren’t we guilty of romanticizing somewhat when we use terms like human family to get our message across?
His language is not ours