The glass is leaking
When people find out I work in climate, they often ask me: 'Are you depressed?' or 'How do you keep going?' As daily news of disasters predicted by climate modeling accumulate, it's easy to go into a mental tail-spin.
I'm a pragmatist, not an optimist. I joke with friends that if you show me a full glass, I will list out every conceivable way the glass could be emptied by tomorrow. Climate change is real, it's happening, and it will get worse before it gets better.
So, how do I keep going when I see that glass leaking day by day?
As a natural problem solver, I start at the beginning, by defining the problem; ie asking the right questions. When we ask questions such as 'how do we move communities in danger of rising sea levels to safety?', it sets us on a vital planning path to mitigate and adapt to the changes that are coming. There are passionate individuals working on a myriad solutions for climate change: from greening cargo ships, to forest fire management, to soil carbon sequestration, and every possible solution in between. Answering these questions will help us to adapt, minimize as much as possible the ravages of climate change, and over time reduce greenhouse gas levels to a stable amount.
The power of positive vision
But thinking of solutions for today's problems is not what keeps me going. Instead of simply imaging catastrophes and how to avoid or mitigate them, I picture an ideal sustainable future that I would want to live in. I imagine the air cleared of pollution--being able to see the Sierras rising up from a California Central Valley cleared of car smog. I imagine the ocean cleaned of microplastics and the tributaries free of chemicals.
These visions aren't simply an exercise in wishful thinking. The questions we ask, determine our solutions. On John Muir's doorstep, refineries line the shore. Some of these refineries are the site of cutting-edge carbon capture technologies. I'm a proponent of carbon capture; we need it to help us quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But in the long-term, I dream of a day when those refineries have been dismantled and the coastline returned to its natural state as John Muir would have wanted.
Another example is if we look at car emissions and ask: 'How do we reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars?' The answer is electric vehicles, which is great, we need those. But when I imagine the future of my local town, I don't picture streets clogged with EVs. Instead I imagine what it would look like to have safe pedestrian walkways, bike lanes, and public transportation available to provide improved health and equitable transportation in addition to lower carbon mobility footprints. That larger sustainability vision gets me excited and raises a completely different and broader set of sustainability questions and solutions than focusing solely on the immediate problem of decarbonization.
I got into a morbid habit last year of thinking each time I saw a butterfly that it might be the last one I'd ever see. The Western monarch is at risk of extinction, hovering at less than 4% of its 1980 levels. I went to visit one of their overwintering locations in Pacific Grove over Thanksgiving and marveled in their delicate beauty. I'm using them to inspire myself to imagine a future where there are many more butterflies than today. I ask myself: 'What can we, and I personally, do to increase the butterfly population in my community?' Hint: native plants play a key role not only in supporting butterflies, but the entire natural ecosystem. These positive dreams of the future are what keep me going day after day.
So the question is, what do you want the future to look like?