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 how bad things have gotten. These so-called climate doomers either believe fear will inspire action, or they assume there’s no point in acting. For them, it’s already too late. Others—let’s call them climate optimists— believe that hope, rather than fear, is more likely to motivate people to act. If we focus only on the bad news, they say, 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 for them, the future seems frightening. More than one-third reported they were afraid to have children because of future climate change. Perhaps most importantly, many surveyed reported that they thought they would 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. 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 as if there’s a new story about a different climate disaster every day. Summertime, in particular, has become one long news cycle about heat waves, fires, and hurricanes. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, we need the media to tell us about what’s happening.

But the broad data that scientists look at can give us a more complete idea of what’s happening than individual news stories. It shows there’s cause for optimism. For example, the data in the chart below shows that new technologies and better social organization are making people better able to handle natural disasters. Death rates from these disasters are falling.

Death rates from disasters

And it doesn’t stop there. The cost of renewables like solar energy and wind power has dropped steeply. The price of batteries for storing all that clean energy has also fallen. Electric vehicle sales are increasing every year, and we’ve passed 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 certain changes before they have a huge negative effect. 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, she points out, “none of the climate scientists I know and trust” believe we are doomed. They still believe we can turn things around.²

Informed optimism is not blind optimism

While there are real reasons to be optimistic about the future, nobody’s saying climate change isn’t an enormous challenge. Being optimistic doesn’t mean you should be satisfied with how things are. Informed optimists are aware that if we do nothing, things will worsen. They also know there are solutions to climate change and 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 take risks and makes us try to create a better future.

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

We have to keep at this!

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—around the world. We need to create new innovations in energy production and distribution. We also need to alter how 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 must convince governments, corporations, and individuals to adopt these changes.

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