Let’s tell the moodsplainers they’re wrong and then get back to work – Professor Jem Bendellhttps://jembendell.com/2023/08/05/lets-tell-the-moodsplainers-theyre-wrong-and-then-get-back-to-work/One of the chief ‘moodsplainers’ is the famous author Rebecca Solnit. When her ‘doom-shaming’ was challenged on her Facebook page, she defended her position with the claim that scientists tell her it’s not too late (presumably for our modern societies). She referenced the climatologist Michael Mann as evidence for her claim (see the screenshot). Known to be a prolific author, he was in good company when declaring in 2009 that if emissions did not peak by 2020 and consistently decline, then humanity would be in for the roughest of rides, in a situation where various feedbacks would likely amplify changes. As you may already know, emissions went up last year. But the 2023 version of Professor Mann appears to have forgotten his past assessment. Clearly, hope springs eternal. Especially if wishful thinking is a non-negotiable aspect of one’s identity, worldview and status. The suggestion by Solnit that all scientists agree must ignore the hundreds of scientists and scholars who have publicly disagreed that it is not too late to transition to a sustainable form of our current societies, including leading climatologists Professor Gesa Weyhenmeyer and Professor Will Steffen
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After my paper on climate change went viral in 2018, a big part of my next two years was talking with psychologists and reading the relevant psychology research. That got me invited to keynote at conferences of the psychology peak bodies around the world, and to publish in peer-reviewed psychology journals. I learned that research finds how so-called “catastrophic imaginaries” are powerful motivators whereas optimism can be demotivating on environmental issues. So when the new head of the IPCC, Jim Skea, tells the media that “we should not despair and fall into a state of shock” if global temperatures increase to 1.5C, it is likely he does not know what he is talking about, psychologically-speaking, and is simply expressing his own proclivities.
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You have probably seen some version of the illogical claim that “doomism breeds apathy and inactivism, and there are far too many doomers in Extinction Rebellion and other activist groups.” It wasn’t named the optimist’s incremental change rebellion, was it? Even XR’s critics have a better appreciation of activist motivations than the armchair anti-doomers. When trying to claim that such activism is a form of extremism that the British government should crack down on, guess who was the academic the Policy Exchange think tank cited the most for ideas motivating Extinction Rebellion? Yes, that’s me, the guy that GQ magazine called the “doomer-in-chief”. That was in an article that Facebook then filtered from view, like they have done with so much doomster content since 2020 – a global form of censorship and public manipulation I will discuss further in a moment.
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The ‘doomster way’ is naturally rebellious and radical. Which means we pose a threat to the establishment. Which is why they are responding with moodsplaining, telling us we should believe in the system – technology, enterprise, capital, charismatic leaders, and so on. That is how ‘stubborn optimism’ can become functional in ongoing oppression. The worst instance of this approach is when they pathologise the youth for having a more honest assessment of the situation. To believe that the experts and elites need to fix the emotions of young people by providing more positive stories seems to me to be an arrogant form of ‘experiential avoidance’ on the part of adults, and even a form of psychological child abuse. Instead, young people need us adults to grow up and meet them in a far more honest way. To hold the possibility that young people are closer to the truth than many adults, and explore what the options are from such an outlook.
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people in frontline communities have criticised the stories of a sustainability transition that are promoted in Western media to comfort their audiences. Kenya climate activist, scholar and agroforester Dr Nyambura Mbau argues “The millions of people being uprooted by climate change do not benefit from the ‘stubborn optimism’ of environmental elites. Instead, they will be better served by the stubborn realism of the experts and activists now brave enough to call for urgent degrowth in rich countries and fair adaptation everywhere.” Solnit’s claim is not unusual, with the same argument made to slur people like me over the last few years, even in publications like the New Internationalist (which then retracted and apologised). If people are busy thinking and communicating like white saviours, then they can overlook what is being said and done by the independent activists and scholars from across the Global South
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There is now a huge faction of capital that wants to limit the environmental agenda to promoting renewable energy, nuclear power, and electrical products like cars. There is also a huge professional sector ‘climate users’ who are driven to have a successful career with a green sheen. They are joined by a wider ‘sustainable development’ sectors of hundreds of thousands of professionals who are now compulsively lying to each other to ignore the data from the UN on what’s really happening.
It is extremely worrying for democracy and good governance, globally, that the moodsplainers are now backed up by the censorship teams in the bigtech companies, who shadow ban content on climate that doesn’t align with the capitalist-friendly ecomodern view of the future. For years, their climate ‘factchecking’ outfits don’t even bother to reply to internationally renowned climatologists who criticise their shadow banning activities. Thus, the general public is left misinformed, less radical, and more compliant for incumbent power.