Let's Not Despair — The Fight Against Climate Change Isn't Over

By Kevin A. Young, Jacobin

“The struggle against climate change is over” if Donald Trump wins again, tweeted Bernie Sanders before Election Day 2024. Presumably our fate is now sealed.

The conclusion is understandable. On our current course, we’re already set for about 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) of heating in the coming decades. That will kill tens of millions of people from heat stroke, starvation, and disease. Vast portions of the globe will be made uninhabitable while chaos spreads everywhere else.

With the fossil fuel barons now retaking the helm of the world’s most powerful government, changing course becomes harder. In addition to the carbon they’ll add to the atmosphere, their evisceration of laws governing air quality, water contamination, and toxic chemicals will kill tens of thousands in just the next few years.

Deadly Future Smoke Stack Oil Refinery Carbon Pollution and Climate Change. Global warming and the destruction of our environment in Corpus Christi , Texas , USA

Yet apocalyptic arguments are both paralyzing to our movement and scientifically misguided. Saving the climate isn’t an all-or-nothing game. We’re very likely to breach the dangerous 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold. But there’s an enormous difference between 1.5 and 3 degrees Celsius, or even between 1.5 and 1.6 degrees Celsius. “Every fraction of a degree matters,” as climate experts often remind us.

Furthermore, the notion that we’re locked into a future of “runaway climate change” — a phrase commonly heard on the left — is wrong. As leading climate scientist Michael Mann writes, the best climate models indicate that atmospheric heating will all but cease “once we stop emitting carbon.” The grimmest ecological projections can still be avoided.

Despair also ignores the continued vulnerability of our enemies. Politicians can nudge the energy ship one way or another, but they don’t determine its cardinal direction. Although the White House, Republican Congress, and Supreme Court will do all they can to protect fossil fuel companies and undermine renewable energy, they aren’t the only three power centers in society. The climate’s fate also depends on many other actors, including our movement.