The Planet Will Be Fine? Part I

A Climate Pessimist Finds Hope

It wasn’t the first time I had heard it. “I mean, the planet will be fine. It’s people who will die off. But, dinosaurs went extinct and the planet was fine. Maybe even better suited for the mammals and animals that came next.”

Generally, I don’t love when I hear this argument. I wonder if people say it to slither out of an uncomfortable discussion by distracting us with semantics or catching me in a technicality. This time, though—in the middle of a discussion on the book, Hope Matters, by Elin Kelsey (which you should totally read!)—I thought my friend was reaching for a kind of hope. Listening to him, I even felt myself exhale a bit of stress. Finally, everything does not hang in the balance of our decisions. The planet will be fine. We’ll be gone—not messing everything up anymore, and the planet will have a chance to heal. And it will recover. We couldn’t even destroy the planet if we tried.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

I guess it’s true what the Buddhists say about non-attachment. If I set aside my attachment to humanity and de-center us in the climate catastrophe, I do feel calmer. You know what? It’s just us we’re destroying, and, frankly, we deserve it. There’s a certain justice to that. The planet will be fine—our responsibility to steward this world is limited to protecting the planet’s ability to care for us. And if we fail, we die, but the collateral damage is limited by the fact that the planet itself will recover.

I can almost get on board.

Let’s leave for a moment the fact that I’m not really sure it’s true that the planet would be just fine after whatever apocalyptic events lead to the demise of humanity. And let’s come back later to the collateral damage to all the other species we’ll take with us to the end times.

The real reason I don’t find hope in this line of thinking is that I am attached to humanity. I think we matter.

I think it matters whether people live or die. I think it matters when people suffer, and it matters when people thrive.  

I care about climate change because I care about people. I want to work for climate justice that makes this planet a place where all humans can thrive. 

We are nature too. What is good for the planet is good for us. Making the air and water cleaner and our food sources varied and nutritious is good for us and good for the planet. War is terrible for us and terrible for the planet. Allowing a few people to hoard the world’s resources is terrible for us and terrible for the planet. Educating people all over the world—especially women and girls—brings everyone’s genius to life. That’s great for humanity and great for the planet.

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This piece is part of my work on my upcoming book titled (for now) A Climate Pessimist Finds Hope. Please comment! Is there something here that makes you think, “well, yeah, but, what about….” Tell me about it! Do I use a particularly persuasive or not persuasive argument? Tell me before the bad stuff ends up in the book!

For more on the book see:

• A Climate Pessimist Finds Hope (I'm writing a book!)

• A House on Fire

• From Denial to Nihilism

• Hope Meets the Presidential Debate

• Climate Despair is in Our Way

• Climate Privilege

• Saving the Planet is Group Work

• Our Story is Not Over Yet