Pondering the Future of Climate Hopium

I'm considering an overhaul of Climate Hopium and would love your input?

So it is actually just over a year since I started publishing Climate Hopium. In that time I’ve grown the readship (thanks!) and also experimented with some different styles of writing, though all have one common goal - to show that there is real hope in the battle against climate chaos and that hope leads to action.

However now is a good time to take stock of the project.

(Wind farm in Xinjiang, China. Image credit - 林 慕尧 / Chris Lim from East Coast (东海岸), Singapore (新加坡))

Some of the fomats I’ve been using are:

• Smaller articles on developments that catch my eye. Swiss Women Lead the Charge of Legal Battle Against Climate Chaos (& other positive news)

• Listicles that explore climate hope. e.g. The climate positives? The (now) 10 areas I think offer real hope for the future

• A monthly summary of all the positive climate moves in the past month. e.g. Positive Climate News from July 2024 - What gaining political power means for the climate

• Strategy articles on how we can respond to the situation. e.g. The main climate action we should do is politics

For anyone following the news, the battle against climate chaos took a big hit with the loss of the US election to Trump. For those of us from the UK, we’ve been in this place of loss and despair before. 

Back in 2016 there was a referendum on the UK leaving the EU, aka Brexit. It was marked by the most divisive rhetoric, a horrific political assassination by a far-right terrorist of a left-wing lawmaker, lies, disinformation and Russian interference. By a margin of 52% to 48% we lost the vote to lies and hate. Then a few years later in 2019 we were hit again where the conservative leader, Boris Johnson, a man so deeply unfit to hold power because of his lies, corruption and narcissism, won power in a landslide helped by a cheerleading right-wing media. With that power they set about rigging the rules of the game to benefit them; altering election law, allowing more dark money, appointing lackeys to key positions of power. The opposition was broken, the political-right were firmly in power and I was resigned then to a generation of Johnson’s rule. Yet just 3 years later he would resign in disgrace, the ruling party mortally wounded and dreams of eternal power in dust. He was principally brought down by his own hubris and incompetence for all those he appointed were there for loyalty to him and not skills or ability. While they caused a lot of damage in that process, fall they did.

This is a set-back but one that we cannot allow to stop us from acting. However I do want to focus my time and energy on things that help. My feeling is that doing things the same as before, has less value now.

So a moment of your time to complete the survey would be grategully recieved!

So I’ve got 3 questions - one on the form of the content, one on how it is delivered and one on the subject.

(Image - A semi-submersible floating offshore wind turbine, approximately 5km offshore of Agucadoura, Portugal. Image Credit - Untrakdrover.)

Thanks in advance!