Why the fate of the ozone layer should give us hope on climate change
Douglas Coupland on why we need to fight ‘noptimism’
Recently I read an article online saying that the ozone hole will be completely fixed by about 2030. But wait — was this the same ozone hole that made me lose sleep for decades and was going to destroy all life on earth? Yes, it was: the ozone hole, quietly fixed, its repair meriting a single article in a Monday science section.
I thought back to the early 1980s when acid rain was the bogeyman, murdering Germany’s forests while triggering mass extinctions and dissolving Rome’s Coliseum. I thought, “Hmmm — whatever happened to acid rain? I haven’t even thought of it in at least a decade.” The answer? It was fixed.
A few weeks later I was at a large dinner in California where I ventured this idea: “We fixed the ozone hole and acid rain. I think we might actually be able to fix global warming.” Never have I endured such a shitstorm as quickly as what happened there.
Allow me to paraphrase: “How dare you try and say that global warming can be fixed. Who the hell do you think you are?” “People like you make me sick. Global warming can never be fixed.” “Your supercilious attitude is loathsome. The moment you start thinking global warming can be fixed is the moment it can never be fixed.”
OK, I wasn’t expecting this.
The dinner guests were expressing a new form of ecological logic: “We can only have hope if we have no hope,” or, “The moment we have hope, we’ll let our guards down and then we really will lose the war.” But wait, you already decided in advance the war was unwinnable to begin with. I don’t think this phenomenon has a name yet. Let’s call it noptimism.
My noptimistic inquisition took place in November 2019, the same month and year in which the 1982 film Blade Runner was set — the jewel in the crown of dystopian cinematic futures: dark, perpetually raining and plagued with androids.
And yet there we were in November 2019 and . . . if nothing else, 2019 was definitely not the mess it was once supposed to have been. The sky is still blue and people have more access to information than ever. Engines are running. Wheat fields aren’t growing thin. It’s a decreasingly nuclear era — and yet there’s all of this harsh noptimism going on
This got me to wondering, why does everyone shit on optimists? You can do or say anything you want to optimists without any repercussion, and that seems really screwed up. An optimist’s sole crime is that they possess hope.
In November I had not one, but three people younger than myself by a few decades email to ask if I’d go out for a coffee with them. They were, all of them, at that magic age when it dawns on you that the life you have is the only life you’re going to get.
Each of them had a slight variation on a common theme: what is happening to us, where is it going, and how can I feel less afraid for myself and my family?
But what I really noticed was the way that each of these individuals was being way too emotionally charged about the world in a way I don’t remember people being when I was their age.
Part of my advice to them was that 1) Things are going to be fine; 2) They really are going to be fine; 3) Negativity is a stupid person’s way of trying to look smart without actually being smart; 4) In my lifetime I’ve seen acid rain and the ozone hole fixed and so I truly believe we can and will fix global warming; 5) Stop spending so much time online. The new global economy isn’t about data — it’s about who can hijack your emotions and how they can profit from that; 6) The next time you feel you’re getting pissed off or verklempt about something, stop. Pull back. Be honest and be critical and try and determine who did this to you and why. Forget data; emotional manipulation is our new cultural currency, and hyperpolarisation is merely a subset of hyperemotion. This isn’t a new idea, but it does seem to be increasingly evident with each day.
To bring this all back to global warming and the dinner party, someone tried to “OK boomer” me, to which I said: “I detested my allotted generation so much that I invented one of my own. So, I’m definitely on your side, but if you can’t imagine hope, then why not just go jump off a cliff with all the other noptimists?”
To be a noptimist means that someone’s calculatedly frightened you and owned you in the process. Go to war, but do so knowing you can eventually win. There’s nothing wrong with that.