I see people who don’t fight climate change because they’re hopeless and despairing and I see people who don’t fight climate change because they underestimate the danger and urgency.
I see plenty of both of these two problems, but I see—anecdata alert—far, far more of the second category.
Here in Sweden there is a little bit of outright denialism, and that definitively counts as “underestimating the danger and urgency”, but there’s a lot of greenwashing. “Buy this burger, it’s 1% less harmful for the climate!” There’s a “we’ve got this” vibe that is not without its pros but it’s a double-edged sword if it leads to not doing enough.
Used to be I decided to think “I’ll kid myself into thinking we’ve got a 15% chance (no matter what the real odds are)—that’s low enough to motivate me to keep it in mind and keep fighting, but high enough that I won’t give up outright”. As I’ve grown my emotional toolbox I’ve become better able to handle a more pessimistic version while still keeping up the fight. Ultimately there’s got to be some room for the truth in our climate discourse.
Greenwashers are doing some good but also a lot of harm especially when the “solutions” they are pushing is doing outright damage.