Hope in the Time of Climate Change
2022 -- A YEAR TO PUT HOPE IN YOUR HEART
Sally Beth and Michael are launching this blog because we believe hope is an indispensable but underappreciated and misunderstood imperative for meeting the challenge of a warming planet head-on. Far too many people have fallen into an attitude of resignation and despair on climate change, and this doesn’t sustain the movement nor inspire others to join. Despite the enormity of the climate change challenge, we believe that humanity can rise to the challenge. There is great HOPE, and we hope you will join us in fanning it.
It’s been a tough couple of years. Each of us has our own story to tell about how we’ve been challenged, touched, and for some of us, laid very low. And it is not as if our other human challenges have stood still while we dealt with the pandemic. Climate change, or Global warming, in particular, has become an increasing issue of concern as its effects become more apparent. But herein lies an irony—as climate change’s effects become stronger and arguably harder to reverse or adapt to, more people, organizations, and governments are compelled to address the issue. In fact, you could say that climate change is inspiring the greatest grassroots movement in the history of the world.
We believe this is one of many reasons to have HOPE in the time of Climate Change.
WELCOME to our new blog, “Hope in the Time of Climate Change”, which we’ve launched with the turning of the new year. We believe that 2022 can be a year of amazing, remarkable progress and collaboration in the human project to address climate change. We believe that one of the key ingredients to success is HOPE, which we define simply as the belief that a positive outcome is possible. Hope is the polar opposite of a doomsday mentality, an attitude that over our careers we have encountered far too often, contributing to paralysis and resignation in countless ways. We want to change this, and we want you to join us.
If you are intrigued, even if not convinced, about the importance of Hope in the Time of Climate Change, please subscribe here. We welcome your collaboration on this journey.
When Was Giving Up Ever a Winning Strategy?
Have you given up but you don’t know it? Recently I was at a neighborhood get-together when I overheard this remark: “well, of course we’re all doomed…” which was met with affirming nods and lip pursing. “Yes,” someone else sighed, “we’re – what is it—the frogs in boiling water.” More nods of agreement and grimaces of concern, before the conversation moved on to sports, a planned trip, and work concerns. It was over so fast that
The Blob and Melting of the Polar Ice Cap
When I was about 9 or 10 years old, my childhood friends and I watched the movie The Blob as the “creature feature” re-run on a local television station. The 1958 horror flick starred a young Steve McQueen, who had to help his small town stop a voracious and constantly growing Amoeba-like mass. When it crashes to Earth in a meteorite in the opening scene, the blob is the size of a person’s hand. After consuming
In his famous book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell defines the term as “that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.” It is an inflection point and that moment of unstoppable change where things cannot go back to how they once were. Tipping points are critical drivers in climate change science, and there are valid concerns about the irreversibility of consequences from increased greenhouse gases in
