Event: Beyond ‘Hopeium’ and ‘Doomism’, Chatham House
Discussions of the environmental crisis are sometimes framed in binary terms. We have ‘eight years to save the world’; it’s ‘one minute to midnight on the [climate crisis] doomsday clock’. This partly reflects strategic communications priorities; the need to highlight both the threat of the crisis and the urgency of the action required.
Yet the chances of limiting global heating below 1.5°C are diminishing and environmental impacts are growing. In turn, it can be difficult to face the challenging emotions elicited by the heightening stakes. One reaction is a dogmatic optimism that sees technological change or other ‘silver bullets’ overcoming these complexities: ‘hopeium’ in the words of climate justice writer Mary Annaïse Heglar. In direct contrast is a fatalism that sees no plausible route to avoid worst-case scenarios, sometimes described as ‘doomism’.
Breaching the 1.5°C target does not mean that the world cannot be ‘saved’ or that it will ‘end’. It will mean vastly more suffering and injustice. As the UN Secretary General has said, ‘every fraction of a degree matters’. But how do we navigate through the worsening impacts of the environmental crisis and the heightening stakes without slipping into extreme reactions?
As planetary boundaries are further exceeded, a far less stable world could result as societies struggle under worsening environmental shocks and their cascading consequences. These conditions could present significant threats to the transition itself, potentially fragmenting focus on mitigation or presenting overwhelming demands on adaptation. They could also present large opportunities, creating a greater impetus for rapid change.
As part of London Climate Action Week (LCAW), Laurie Laybourn-Langton chaired a session at Chatham House to discuss these issues, joined by:
Nina Jess, Schwarzman Academy Fellow, Environment and Society Programme, Chatham House
Dr Jesse Reynolds, Executive Secretary, Global Commission on Governing Risks from Climate Overshoot
Loretta Hieber Girardet, Chief of the Risk Knowledge, Monitoring and Capacity-Development Branch, UN Office of Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)
Dr Aaron Thierry, Researcher, Cardiff University
