I was born 65 ppm ago. “ppm” stands for parts per million, a measurement unit used to calculate how much of a gas there is inside another gas. In this instance we refer to the amount of CO2 dissolved in the atmosphere. While I’m writing these words, we have reached 433 ppm of CO2 in the air. Do the math. I was born under 400 ppm, which was kind of the 70s objective if we wanted to achieve another main goal in the fight against climate change, the well-known 1.5ºC increase of average annual temperatures under pre-industrial levels. 65 ppm later, the fight changed: now we want to avoid going over an interval of 2 to 5ºc. Two degrees might not seem much higher than 1.5, but four? That is well over three times the original goal.

I was born on the year of the fifth Conference of the Parts (COP) on Climate Change, and last year I followed the thirtieth closely. During all the years I have been familiar with the climate movement and its actions, two things have been constant. First, despite smaller victories – incredibly valuable and that deserve recognition –, the much-needed structural changes the system has to undergo for an actual effect did not arrive. And second, climate activism was, above everything else, the champion of non-violence. Protests were about sit-downs in front of oil company meetings, unfurling banners, demonstrations in which it was explained in every possible way that the methods were to be non-violent. “We must do everything accordingly and properly so we can be heard. Only like this our petitions will be valid and validated”. 65 ppm, 25 COP and 1.5ºC of warming later, who heard the petitions?

Now that we have reached this point, I have some questions for you: How do you feel? Do you feel sad? Helpless? Or are you angry? These words, do they push you to despair, or to fight even harder against climate change? A while ago we already dealt with eco-emotions: ecoanxiety, ecodepression, and ecorage. I sincerely hope you feel angrier than you feel sad or anxious, is far more useful. And less dangerous, as we are about to see. Today we will talk about two different sides of the climate movement: doomism (and derivates) and the call for “violent” action, both closely linked with the mentioned emotions.

Figure 1: Peoplesclimate demonstration in Melbounre, banner reads “Anthropocene: we came, we conquered, we vanished”. Photo by Takver. Source: Wikimedia commons.

Doom rhetorics are born from despair and helplessness, which are mainly represented by ideologists like Roy Scranton, Jonathan Franzen, or our old acquittance, Kingsnorth. And as one might sense from the name of this ideological current, they hold little to no hope for the future. They defend that we must learn how to live with what we brought upon the planet and affirm that there is nothing we can possibly do, as “human beings are the killers of the natural world” [1]. From this kind of fatalist discourse that will certainly not encourage anyone to change nothing, some dangerous currents can also arise, such as ecofascism and the actual Deep ecology line of thoughts. The latter meant a huge input into the environmental ethics during its beginnings, with the theories of Arne Naess [2] talking about the need to develop an environmental awareness surrounding the human role as a part, rather than the owner of ecosystems, being conscious about their limits, as well as admitting the intrinsic value of everything non-human.

However, some people that consider themselves adjourned to this current have focused a lot on the “ecosystem limits” part during the last years, so much that they argue for the reduction of human population as a solution for the Earth. The idea of “human beings as parasites” is a slippery slope. Social ecologists Murray Bookchin wondered about “what disruption had turned man into that highly destructive parasite?”. All in all, human beings are social and gregarious animals, or they used to be. They used to be organized in societies in which collectivity and cooperation were the most important, and they depended on the health of the surrounding ecosystems to survive. According to Bookchin, the roots of the problem are the current system and organization that drain human’s community and solidarity nature, and they are regressive from an ecological perspective [3].

“[The current system and organization of society] undermine human spirit and community, and the viability of the planet and all living beings”

The problem here does not lie in human nature, then, and therefore it would have a solution. The problem with doomists is not usually that they deny the solutions, they admit that emissions would decrease if some changes were made. What they sustain though, is that a “radical reorientation of human economic and social production” is simply not going to happen. And thus, what they propose is to stoically accept it. Their acceptance, which seems nihilistic rather than stoic, brings us back to the aforementioned point: sadness or anxiety are useless in generating some answers. Especially because, as also mentioned, we know solutions are possible.

But what about probable? Is it worth it to fight? As journalist David Wallace-Wells said, “the fight is not yet lost, it will never be lost, as long as we avoid extinction, because however warm the planet gets, it will always be the case that the following decade could contain more suffering or less” [4]. And it is actually like that. If we cannot avoid global warming to stay under the 1.5ºC threshold, we can by any means possible try to keep it under 2ºC. And this leads us to the next question: which are these “any means possible”?

And so, we face yet another dilemma. Yes, the situation looks rather dire. Yes, we have the solutions. Or at least, we know them. We know what to do to reduce emissions, to stop temperatures rising, to reduce overexploitation of resources… And most importantly, we have said it. Scientists, activists and the ecological movement in general have tried to transmit it over decades: first, there was a crisis. Then, the magnitude. And in the meantime, the solutions. Everything in a civil, and according to Human ecology professor Andreas Malm, “in a gentle and mild in extreme way”. This is the main reasoning behind his book How to blow up a pipeline [5]. The title might look rather taunting – and it is, do not believe for a moment that this is an instruction manual –, but his proposal is basically what he gives away: he does not believe that the pacifist way is bearing the fruits that it should.