"There is too much good news to justify despair"

R. Max Holmes, President & CEO

As climate scientists we are often asked how we keep at it, day after day, week after week, year after year, when progress against climate change has been so frustratingly slow. My own answer has varied, but the truth is that it can be a struggle. We have largely known what needs to be done for many years now, including transitioning away from fossil fuels and protecting, managing, and restoring Earth’s forests and soils. And yet, each year greenhouse gas emissions increase, atmospheric CO2 concentration climbs, and the goal of a healthy, just, and sustainable planet seems to slip further out of reach.

What people really want to know, I suspect, is whether there is still hope.

In considering this question, I was reminded of the following quote by the late environmental scientist Donella Meadows, not specifically about climate change but certainly applicable:

“There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.”

It is all too easy to focus on the bad news side of the story, with complacency or despair being understandable outcomes. This is reflected in the rise of “climate doomerism,” which in some ways is replacing climate denialism. Climate doomers understand the causes and consequences of climate change, they just can’t see the path to a positive future. Or if they see the path, they don’t think it will be followed.

Counter to this narrative, I am increasingly hopeful about the future. How can that be, given all the climate impacts we are already seeing?

Part of the answer is related to the fact that the climate change conversation has gone mainstream. The number of Americans who say they personally have been affected by climate change has doubled since 2010, and climate change went from being barely mentioned in the 2016 election to being a defining issue in 2020. In other words, climate change is here, the impacts are already significant, and that is now broadly appreciated.

The extent of this shift was made clear to me in January when I was invited to speak in Davos, Switzerland during the World Economic Forum. I was surprised and pleased that climate change was a central organizing theme of the conference, with much of the emphasis being on how the business community can help drive climate solutions. This was my first time in Davos, but in talking with long-time attendees it became clear that the intense focus on climate was new.

The shift was further illustrated to me in March, when I spoke at CERAWeek in Houston, Texas. CERAWeek is the world’s premiere energy conference, attended by thousands of fossil fuel executives from around the world not our usual network. As with Davos, I was surprised and pleased by how central climate change was to the discussions. True, I heard CEOs of some of the world’s largest oil companies discuss how they planned to increase production, but just as many spoke clearly about fossil fuels’ numbered days and the necessity of a rapid transition to sustainable energy sources. The topics of my own panels preserving the Amazon, and the feasibility of staying below 1.5°C warming—were also surprising for an energy conference that historically had been dominated by the fossil fuel industry. As with Davos, longtime CERAWeek attendees described how climate change had only recently become a prominent theme at the conference.

Obviously, we need more than words at conferences. We need urgent action. And we are seeing growing momentum. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides an unprecedented $369 billion in funding and incentives to fuel the transition we need and, importantly, support natural climate solutions. Global wind and solar energy production is growing faster than predicted, and is expected to more than double over the next five years, according to the International Energy Agency.

None of this is to say that the battle against climate change has been won, or to suggest that a positive outcome is inevitable or even likely. But the battle has not been lost and the path to a positive future is becoming clearer, and Woodwell Climate will continue to do everything in our power to chart the course to that destination.

Onward.