The Need for Climate Optimists: A Hopeful Generation or a Fearful One?

It’s not always easy to find good news about climate change. We read about climate disasters on the news, see shocking images and data on social media, and hear about new doomsday scenarios from our friends and family all the time. It’s enough to make you want to give up hope—almost.

There are two general approaches to talking about addressing climate change. Some people think it’s important to emphasize that the climate is too far gone. These so-called climate doomers either hold the belief that fear might inspire action, or they assume that there’s no point in acting—it’s already too late. Others—let’s call them climate optimists—believe that hope is a better motivator than fear and that if we focus only on the bad news, people will feel helpless and hopeless, and this might lead to them giving up.

We tend to agree with the optimists—what do you think?

Humanity is doomed! Or is it?

In a 2021 survey of 10,000 young people ages 16 to 25, more than half said they believe that humanity is doomed. Most admitted that the future is frightening, and more than a third reported they were afraid to have children because of future climate change. Perhaps most importantly, many of those surveyed reported that they thought they’d have a harder life and less opportunity than their parents. The doom-and-gloom crowd has convinced a lot of people.

Still, there’s room for hope, and the doomers haven’t convinced everyone. In fact, if you were born after 1996, you’re a member of the generation most likely to do something about climate change. Your age group spends more time talking about climate change and taking action to fix it than your parents or your grandparents.¹ And you’re giving older generations hope—people are listening to you.

In the rest of this article, I’m going to try and convince you to join the ranks of a group we call informed optimists.

What do informed optimists believe?

Should we be optimistic? It seems like there’s a new story about a different climate disaster every day. Summertime, in particular, seems to have become one long news cycle about heat waves, fires, and hurricanes. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as we need the media to tell us about what’s happening and to give us a sense of the human experiences in these disasters.

But scientists who look at the wider picture of data can give us a more complete idea of what’s happening than individual news stories do. It shows there’s cause for optimism. For example, the data in the chart below indicates that new technologies and better social organization are building resilience to natural disasters and that death rates from these disasters are actually falling.

Death rates from disasters

And it doesn’t stop there. The cost of renewables like solar and wind has plummeted, and the price of batteries for storing all that clean energy has similarly dropped. Electric vehicle sales are increasing every year, and we have passed truly meaningful climate legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act.

Scientists who know climate data the best are still worried, of course. They want us to work together to stop those changes that will have huge negative impacts on economies, safety, and people’s lives. But many, including Oxford University researcher Hannah Ritchie, also want us to understand that there are still things we can do.

“Let’s be clear: Climate change is one of the biggest problems we face. It comes with many risks—some certain, some uncertain—and we’re not moving anywhere near fast enough to reduce emissions,” Ritchie writes. “But there seems to have been a breakdown in communication of what our future entails. None of the climate scientists I know and trust—who surely know the risks better than almost anyone—are resigned to a future of oblivion.”²

Informed optimism is not blind optimism

While there are real reasons to be optimistic about the future, nobody’s saying that climate change isn’t an enormous challenge. But being optimistic doesn’t mean you should be satisfied with the status quo. Informed optimists are aware that if we do nothing, things will get worse. They also know that there are solutions to climate change, and they use that awareness to drive their actions.

Historically, actions that have made the world better have been started by optimists, people who are hopeful and confident that the future can be better than the past. Optimism inspires people to innovate. It drives us to take risks—investing money and time in the hopes of making a better future.

Informed optimists understand pursuing new innovations is risky and know that new ideas often fail or that the public is slow to accept them. Certainly, this is true in the case of many technologies we need to fight climate change—like nuclear energy or plant-based meat alternatives. But informed optimists don’t give up. Instead, they learn, and they continue to act and innovate.

We have to keep at this!

Optimism is not only accurate, it’s also useful. We still have time to make a difference, but we won’t solve our problems unless we work on them together. And that sort of widespread cooperation requires hope— and informed optimists—all over the world. We need to create new innovations in energy production and distribution, the way we grow and treat our food, the materials we use to build, the ways we move ourselves and our cargo, and how we heat and cool our buildings. We need to convince governments, corporations, and individuals to adopt these innovations. This work will be risky. It will sometimes fail, and it will often be expensive. But if we’re pessimistic—if we assume the world is already doomed—we won’t do any of this. We need informed optimists.

So, it’s time to choose between the two big trends of your generation: fear and pessimism about climate change on the one hand and a willingness to believe in and act toward a better future on the other. The informed optimists will act. Will you join them?

1 Cary Funk, “Key Findings: How Americans’ Attitudes About Climate Change Differ by Generation, Party and Other Factors,” Pew Research Center, May 26, 2021. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/05/26/key-findings-how-americans-attitudes-about-climate-change-differ-by-generation-party-and-other-factors/
2 Hannah Ritchie, “Stop Telling Kids They’ll Die from Climate Change,” Wired, January 11, 2021. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/climate-crisis-doom