Remaining Optimistic in the Face of all This Bad News...

Optimism in a pessimistic world China’s carbon emissions are growing at 11% per year instead of the initially estimated 2.5 to 5%. Emissions from U.S. power plants are reportedly up 2.9% over 2006 – that’s the biggest ever single-year increase – 5.9% more than in 2002 and 11.7% since 1997. Oil closed today at more than $104 a barrel (down from its $110+ high). Fisheries collapse, coral reefs bleach, species go extinct, forests are clear-cut.

I’ll be honest with you, sometimes it’s hard not to just throw up your hands and say “We’re all doomed”.

But such an attitude becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There’s no doubt that we face monumental environmental problems. With each problem, we are faced with a challenge, and within each challenge lies an opportunity.

For many, environmentalism is little more than the assignment of guilt and an outlook of doom. Books like Breakthrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger talk of the failure of mainstream environmentalism to adequately address the issues we face today because it is a “complaint-based” vision based on “limits”. That environmentalism attempts to set itself apart from the common concerns, hopes, desires and ambitions of most people as they live their “post materialist” 21^st century life.

The authors propose the idea that what we need is not a vision of limits, but one of possibilities; the opportunity in the challenge presented by the problem. Not just the problem.

And fortunately for us who, on occasion, succumb to the pessimism of “We’re all doomed” there are voices out there that see the opportunity clearly.

One great place to start is Green Geek’s list he posted a while back of his five top picks for books that have made him an “optimistic environmentalist”.

If you have any books, blogs, or other resources that speak to the optimistic environmentalist in all of us, please leave a comment and let us know.

After all, we’re only doomed if we let ourselves be.