Uniting Climate-Concerned People who have Various Levels of Hope

After COP26, are we still united in our varying levels of hope?

After COP26, what does all of the increased variety in our levels of hope do to our community? Does it weaken our solidarity with each other?

If it’s still possible to retain a community between those who still have a lot of hope and those who have little or no hope, then that means that we, as individuals, don’t need to fear that we will “lose our community,” if, on some days, we find ourselves at one level of hope or another.

Retaining a sense of community is a source of strength for any and all individuals who find themselves at any point on the “hope spectrum.”

So after COP26, is it possible to retain that community? I believe it is possible, and I’ll attempt to show you how using the following three questions:

1.    How can different people with these various perspectives form good relationships with each other, and learn to understand each other?

2.    Is it even possible to unite all of these people? I propose that it is, indeed, possible in certain clear ways.

3.    Why unite them? What would be the purpose of those efforts?

Here are some attempts to answer those three questions:

First Question: How can different people with these various perspectives form good relationships with each other, and learn to understand each other?”

Already back in 2016 Nathan Thanki said, “To hell with hope.” That is an emotion-laden expression of exasperation, and it must be respected as such.

But I’m concerned that if someone says that within the earshot of some others, then that might offend some others in ways that were never considered. Here are two examples:

First, I’m concerned about how that statement could be interpreted as, “I’ve lost hope, and you should too, if you see things the way they ‘really are.’” That would be a “demand of others” instead of simply an “expression from one’s self.”

Second, for some people, saying “I’m abandoning hope,” would be the equivalent of saying, “I’m abandoning the future of my children, my grandchildren, etc.” For those people, if they hear other people say, “I’ve abandoned hope,” it’s like hearing them say, “I’m going to abandon the future of your children.” That perceived subtext can be hurtful even if it was not originally intended to be the subtext.

Those two examples show us the importance of careful communication.  If people with varying levels of hope want to learn to understand each other, then we need to clarify what each of their words are meant to express, and also what they are not meant to express. In other words, I’m concerned that we need to communicate carefully with each other about our various levels of hope.

(To be fair, Nathan Thanki, who wrote, “To hell with hope” as the title of his post, did do some more careful communicating later in that post.)

Second Question: How can we bring different positions on “hope” together?

First, on a heart-felt level, let's be clear: Even if your hope has shrunk to zero, the size of your heart can still grow even larger than before. 

Next, on a more philosophical level, finding common ground helps: For example, finding a common ethic helps. What also helps is finding other intrinsically fulfilling examples of “a common sense of purpose” that remain unchanged regardless of a person's level of hope.

·       The Common "Ethic of Reciprocity" (The Golden Rule): “Do to others as you want them to do to you”

It could be argued that most, if not all, climate-concerned people will still want to uphold the Golden Rule and live with principle, regardless of their level of hope.

Living by that Golden Rule includes working for climate justice (which includes global justice, intergenerational justice, and harm reduction).

·       Another intrinsically fulfilling example of “a common sense of purpose” that remains unchanged regardless of a person's level of hope:

It could be argued that most, if not all, climate-concerned people, regardless of their level of hope, might still find fulfillment and a sense of purpose in ensuring that the truth continues to be told about the climate reality.

And they all might still share roughly the same scientific definition of what that “climate truth” is.

To those people, it's intrinsically fulfilling to ensure that the truth continues to be told. Also, that fulfillment is even greater when that “truth telling” has a greater impact in efforts to live by the Golden Rule.

Third Question: “Why unite people with these various levels of hope?”

·       Our first reason: The value of community

Our first reason for uniting them is to maintain the value of community, which is an “end goal” value in itself: It is valuable to all of us because we all want it.

·       Our second reason: We achieve more together; for example, in Harm Reduction

A second reason for uniting people with various levels of hope is to “make the best of a bad situation.” We can do that better if we work together. Examples of what we can do better together are, as mentioned above, 1. Working together for the Golden Rule, and 2. Working together for purposes that we have in common.

"Making the best of a bad situation," is often called harm reduction: (Defining harm reduction: One example is “safe injection” sites for drug users: The goal is not to get the person off of drugs as much as it is to “reduce harm.” The focus is not on “eliminating harm,” but reducing it.)

Those who have lost hope against climate catastrophe can still see value in “working to reduce harm.” In fact, this group of people might be equally as passionate as anyone else about that particular sense of purpose. So that’s another area of common ground -- that also happens to be rooted in the common Ethic of Reciprocity.

We are stronger when we’re together: We want to unite people with various levels of hope because we want “a collective emotional strategy" to achieve the above.

Closing remarks:

Retaining a sense of community is a source of strength for any and all climate-concerned individuals who find themselves at any point on the “hope spectrum.”

Also, the power of that community strength can sometimes do the unexpected. That unknown variable makes it much more difficult to rationally defend a categorical “zero hope” position, at least for now.

Here’s that reasoning expressed in a different way: Pat Humphries’ song, “Never Turning Back,” says “We’re gonna work for change together.” That last word is just one simple word, but its potential power is so far-reaching that it reaches beyond the horizons of what we can foresee from the vantage point of the present.

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**About the post-COP26 Era**:

The tendency to change our level of hope is now likely to increase among more of us after the events of the last few months: After the Aug 9, 2021 “Red Alert” fromUN IPCC Sixth Assessment (The Physical Science Basis) some of us were hoping for a better international response at the “COP26” 2021 United Nations ClimateChange Conference in early November. That Conference was supposed to address that “Red Alert” with adequate measure, but it didn’t. That is now bound to affect the levels of hope that each of us has.

**Further Topics of Discussion**:

Discussion One: What is hope? There are different types of hope, as discussed in this paper:

“How Hope and Doubt Affect Climate ChangeMobilization”

This paper is helpful for those of us who want to create “an emotional strategy for mobilization” that is inclusive of all of these climate-concerned people with all of their varying levels of hope.

Discussion Two: Using hope as a means to an end: (See above paper on “Mobilization”)

**Further Reading**:

“TheClimate Crisis and the will to live” 

A poem,“Ode to Our Collective Courage”

 “Is it wrong to be hopeful about climate change?” (This is full of good links.)

“To Hell with Hope,” (includes the phrase “The Sacred Struggle”)

 

Photo attribution of climate march Sydney, Australia, 20 Sept, 2019
By Marcus Coblyn - https://www.flickr.com/photos/160136040@N02/48763501892, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82393644