The climate positives? The (now) 10 areas I think offer real hope for the future

In an earlier post I'd identified 8 areas that gave me hope, I'm updating that now to 10!

In an earlier post I’d written about 8 areas that, despite all the grim news on climate, gave me some hope that humanity might actually have some hope in dealing with the climate crisis. In my original post the original 8 were:

1. The huge growth of renewable technologies - Wind and solar are surging as they generate power and the costs drops.

2. The youth - Younger people understand better the threat of climate chaos and, on average, are motivated to act more.

3. New Technologies - Beyond solar and wind we have areas like fusion that are pretty exciting.

4. World population is slowing and will soon reverse - Less people overall gives us a space, on average, to use less energy and give each person a better life.

5. Public attitudes - The public knows there is a climate crisis and wants to see action. Often the signal is lost in the noise of everyday politics though.

6. The carbon bubble is brittle - The political power of fossil fuels interests is built, in part, on the assumption they will continue to be needed. As that drops, so does their power (a point I found from Alex Steffen)

7. Climate legal battles - There exist in many countries a duty of care by the state of it citizens - ignoring the climate crisis is a dereliction of the duty and some are taking states on  here.

8. Human ingenuity - Thus far, we humans have been much more inventive than we’ve expected. Even more so when faced with a crisis.

There’s lots of links and some more info on each here, in the original post. Since writing that, I’ve both had feedback and also been thinking about the points raised and I think there are two more to be added to the list, taking us to 10:

9. Every point of a degree of warming stopped is a victory - There is no doubt that dealing with the climate crisis is a huge and global challenge. A challenge along the lines of the victory over facism in WW2, however unlike a war that tends towards binary outcomes of ‘victory’ or ‘surrender’ here the outcomes are more complex. While campaigns and agreements are focused on targets such as keeping the global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees, any prevention of warming will make a meaningful impact in terms of less climate chaos. So if we fail to halt warming at 1.5 degrees (which sadly we will probably do)  that does not mean we should give up - far from it as every 0.1, indeed 0.01 degree of warming we stop will mean lives, homes and habitats saved.

10. There is now global momentum - Major political changes are hard work to achieve and take time. For example universal sufferage in the UK - that is giving all people the right to vote - arguably starts in the English Civil War with movements like the Levellers (1642-1646) and the Putney Debates (1647) and it carries on an an issue in political life in one form or another, eventually morphing into the Chartists (1838-1857) where millions of working class people act for the vote yet you don’t get British men and women voting equally until 1928! It takes over 280 years! We don’t have 280 years to solve the climate crisis, yet in around 3 decades we’ve gone from it being a non-issue to most people (though scientists and oil companies knew it was an issue) to it being the global issue.

(Image - The Great Chartist Meeting in London, 1848)

As ever, I caveate this with the note that, yes I know there is a climate crisis, I know we’re not doing enough and I’m all for more and faster action. This substack is about hope; becase hope is a key engine of action and progress!