Is climate defeatism a threat to a greener future?

There are relatively few people who would deny that there is a climate crisis in place and that it is fuelled to a greater or lesser extent by human activity. While those few people make a lot of noise, study after study shows that a majority of people agree that climate change is a problem, and also agree that they would like governments to do more, not less, to deal with the crisis.

However, there is a difference between believing that we are in a crisis which needs prompt and wide-ranging actions and having faith that enough will be done. In that difference, we find a phenomenon that could be described as “climate defeatism”. That’s the mindset that says there is definitely a problem, that the right actions could make a huge difference, but that for one reason or another, such actions will not be taken. To put a stop to climate defeatism, we need to understand it and be able to argue against it. And to achieve that, the following information is undoubtedly going to be beneficial.

It’s true that most of the damage is done by industry

A common talking point of climate defeatists can be summed up as “Why am I washing out plastic containers for recycling when big businesses are pumping out carbon by the tonne?”. It’s easy to sympathise with this point of view, but when you break down the damage done by heavy industry, a lot of it is connected to human activity. Big businesses will argue that while they do pollute, it is in response to consumer demand. So for those of us at the consumer end of the scale, it’s important to act, shop and live sustainably so big businesses see where we stand.

Net Zero by 2050 is not an ambitious enough target

Even if we achieve Net Zero by 2050, it’s accepted that that will only be enough to keep the rise in temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius. That’s still not ideal when we really need to be bringing them down. However, the more of us that commit to reaching business net zero much earlier, the sooner countries can reach the target. If future climate conferences decide to become more ambitious – and public opinion will play a part in that – then it is always going to be beneficial to have more households and businesses that are already ahead of schedule.

Whatever happens globally, local action is a benefit locally

As no shortage of people and one great cartoon have been happy to point out, what if all of this climate stuff was a myth and we found out we’d cleared our streets of litter, made our air and waterways cleaner, helped people with respiratory problems and improved the look of our town centres for nothing? Our individual actions do have a very small impact globally. The same is not true locally – taking care of the environment around us is something that will pay off anyway, and if enough people think in the same way we’ll see results on a wider scale. We shouldn’t be environmentally conscious because there’s an emergency – it’s just the right thing to do anyway.