I used to think optimism was a good thing.
Actually, I thought it was essential. You know, the usual stuff: look on the bright side,
believe in humanity, everything will work out in the end. There is always a solution. Humans
are clever. We invented vaccines, landed on the Moon, built artificial intelligence and
somehow managed to put Wi-Fi on an airplane and bubbles in a tea. Surely we can fix
climate change.
But I’m not so sure anymore, because I’m starting to think optimism might be one of the
most dangerous things we have. Not hope. Hope is different. Hope makes you act.
Optimism makes you feel safe. And feeling safe is exactly what we don’t need right now.
We keep telling ourselves that it’s going to be alright. We will figure it out. Technology will
save us. Governments will eventually do the right thing. People will wake up. Someone
smarter, richer, more powerful, more responsible will come along and fix the mess.
It’s a comforting story. And like most comforting stories, it can be extremely dangerous.
Imagine being held hostage and telling yourself every morning: “Don’t worry, the
kidnappers will probably let us go.” Then another day passes. Then another. But you keep
telling yourself that everything will be alright. At some point, this stops being optimism. It
becomes Stockholm syndrome. Except the hostage taker is us. And the hostage is our
future.
We have become remarkably good at negotiating with reality. The iceberg melts and falls
into the ocean. We call it an unfortunate event. The field dries out under a heatwave and
the harvest fails. We call it a difficult season. A forest burns. We call it just another wildfire.
A storm tears through a city and turns streets into rivers. We call it extreme weather, even if
it’s not that extreme anymore.
And then we go back to our phones, because surely it will be alright. Except it won’t.
And worse: it is getting worse faster. That is the part we seem to have the hardest time
accepting. Climate change is not standing still while we debate whether we should do
something about it. The atmosphere doesn’t care about election cycles. Oceans don’t read
government strategies. Glaciers don’t wait for the next climate summit.
The laws of nature are remarkably impatient. And yet we keep behaving as if we have
unlimited time.
We celebrate another solar record. Good.
We announce another climate target. Great.
Another electric car company breaks a sales record. Excellent.
Another country promises net zero. Wonderful.

Meanwhile, the temperature keeps going up as we desperately try to suck our mango
bubble tea through a paper straw that got clogged on the first sip. This is where optimism
becomes almost surreal.
We see a beautiful red sunset over the city and take a picture. It is Instagram gold. And
sometimes that beautiful red sky is not just a beautiful sunset. It is the result of all the
pollution and tiny particles we have pumped into the atmosphere, scattering the sunlight
and painting the sky red.
But hey, at least we are going to suffocate in a nice setting. We have become very good at
turning warning signs into scenery. Maybe the most frightening thing about the climate
crisis is not that we don’t know what is happening. It is that we know. Yet we still think and
say:
“Hopefully it will be alright.”
Hope is useful. Hope is what makes you plant a tree when you know you may never sit
under its shade. Hope is what makes you build a solar farm, protect a wetland, restore a
forest, redesign a city, change an industry. Hope is action with no guarantee.
Optimism is different. Optimism is action postponed by confidence. And that is a luxury we
can no longer afford.
We don’t need to believe that humanity will do the right thing. We need to make humanity
do the right thing. We don’t need to believe that politicians will suddenly become
courageous. We need to demand courage from them. We don’t need to believe that
corporations will voluntarily sacrifice short-term profit for long-term survival. We need to
change the economic rules so that destroying the future stops being the most profitable
business model on Earth.
We still stand a chance, but only if we stop confusing hope with optimism. That isn’t
pessimism. That is reality. And strangely enough, I find that much more hopeful. Because if
we stop pretending that somebody else will save us, we might finally realize that somebody
has to.
There is just us, which is mildly terrifying, but also, technically, good news. Because if we are
the problem, we can still choose to be the solution. So perhaps optimism has had its turn.
Maybe it’s time for something less pleasant. Fear. Anger. Urgency. Reality. Anything that
gets us off the sofa.
Only then will we survive. Probably. Which is not exactly the most comforting word in the
English language. But neither is extinction.
And now, back to your beautiful sunsets and heroic battles with bubble tea straws.