The case for climate optimism
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In his recent treatise, Enlightenment Now, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker shares an unusual definition of optimism: “The theory that all failures—all evils—are due to insufficient knowledge.” Pinker challenges us to shed our commonly shared defeatism about society’s ails and look towards Enlightenment-era thinkers, who—following centuries of religious wars, normalized torture, human subjugation, and magical perceptions of authoritarianism—found instead a sense of hope in the belief that humans can attain a consistent state of progress through knowledge and empathy.
In a time where we define our enemies and allies based on what we perceive as absolutes, it’s hard to hold on to this type of optimism. There is a sense that, even as our means of communication have improved, our ideological tribes have only closed ranks, rather than opened themselves to the possibility of improvement. There is a seductive, dystopian notion that the technological and normalizing “progress” of the 20th century has actually created a more rigid, unforgiving future, rather than a more open one.
We’re Witnessing an Unprecedented Challenge to Enlightenment-Era Thinking
There is perhaps no greater looming threat than climate change, which has the potential to wipe out so many aspects of human progress cherished by Enlightenment thinkers:
Secular morality, squashed by the desperation of food-insecure and collapsing societies
The failure of reason to overcome base human desires for profit
The culmination of unstoppable natural forces outpacing science’s ability to facilitate a more positive environmental outcome
But I increasingly see the Climate Crisis not as the ultimate thwarter of Enlightenment traditions—belief systems that were at the root of the founding of American democracy—but rather the ultimate challenge for which Enlightenment thinkers have prepared us. The Enlightenment was not about one single discipline, like Biology or Philosophy. It was a reformation of the principles that guide us as a species. The idea that reason, knowledge, and progress were the moral tenets to which humans must ascribe themselves flowed into all aspects of human culture—business, religion, government, and art, among others.
It’s in this universality of thinking, and the universality of the Climate Crisis as a threat, that we might perceive either an oncoming catastrophe or an opportunity. That’s not to downplay the devastation already dealt by our evolving world, rather to highlight the fact that we can, in fact, still shape our collective future for the better—and there’s no better time to do that than now. We can solve this complex problem, and we are already doing so today.
Why Our Unexpected Progress on Climate Change Gives Us Reason for Hope
We often remember Adam Smith as “The Father of Capitalism,” but he was an Enlightenment thinker himself. In 2010, Boston University philosophy professor Charles Griswold pointed out that while Smith’s The Wealth of Nations is widely known to have shaped modern capitalism, his work The Theory of Moral Sentiments “describes a moral vision that serves as the best guarantor of civility in commercial society.”
We often see capitalism as part of the problem when it comes to climate—but as economic forces increasingly show us that climate and our economic futures are intrinsically bound together, it’s in the forces of capitalism where we are seeing some reason for climate optimism. I personally believe global, government action is required for success—but as, for example, the financial security and positive public perception of wind and solar pull back the curtain on the financial uncertainty and catastrophic thinking of fossil fuels, it’s in boardrooms where 10-year financial projections are, for now, out-gaming political progress.
Now, scientists say, we have good reason for optimism. According to New York Magazine, even as our most optimistic models for global warming fade from possibility, so too do our most pessimistic models. And I believe it’s the result of our ‘better angels’—reasoning, humanism, and a desire for a morally just world—at work.
On any given day, humanity appears to be rigid, pessimistic, and unchanging. But the difference between how our collective future comes into focus and how a single news article captures our species’ moral foundation is like the difference between early 20th-century photography and high-definition video. Predictive models change as our habits evolve—and what we’re seeing are habits evolving for the better. The zeitgeist changes as people ‘age out’ and other people ‘age in’ to mainstream thinking, changing the course of culture and business. But while late 20th-century thinking might have told us that economic growth and cultural improvement are inevitabilities on which we can passively rely, we now know better.
Enlightenment thinking is not the idea that humans are on a rising asymptotic curve, always improving even if we never reach perfection. It’s the idea that we can achieve such a curve through a dedication to reason, moral criticism, and the real-world application of humanistic principles. Much like the Climate Crisis, those are very real but all but invisible in each of our everyday experiences. But contrary to what you read on a given day in the news, humanity is showing us there is reason for optimism yet.
