With this Climate Hope Together Substack I hope to give you hope — two kinds of hope. They must go together.
The first kind looks to the future, a future we create. A key way we can see the possibilities of this future is by looking at and correctly understanding what we have accomplished in the past. This kind of hope sees the future we hope for, our vision for a better future.
Combined with our second kind of hope, it sends despair into deep retreat so it does not become a self-fulfilling prophecy that sucks the fight right out of us.
Can we in fact overcome climate change? That is, can we avoid dangerous interference with the climate system by working to achieve 1.5C with minimal overshoot as we set wrong right and make things better? Are we too late? Is doom our fate? Are all our actions in vain? Do they simply inspire a fool’s hope? A fantasy? A mirage?
Vision-hope, our first kind of hope, helps us see that it’s possible, so that we can send despair packing as we create the world we envision, a world filled with beauty.
We must be ever mindful that despair lurks in the shadows and can snatch us unawares.
We still need vision-hope, not only to steel us against despair, but to inspire us to strive for greater heights and keep us moving in the right direction. Our vision does not just show us defeating the bad; it shows us creating the good. Our vision is not one of a less-bad world; it is a vision of a better world.
And what is that vision?
Here’s my version. It is a Vision, Purpose statement, and Major Goal all wrapped up in one:
To overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.
But vision-hope without our second kind of hope is just whistling past the graveyard; on its own it becomes a fool’s hope.
This second kind of hope is not a passive hope. It comes from past and present actions. Those before us have made hope for us.
To accept this second kind of hope is to recognize what time it is: it is kairos-climate-time, the time to act is now. To accept this second kind of hope is to be infused with a will to act: we in turn make our own hope, which we pass on to others. Hope from action will not lead to inaction, but rather to more action.
By its very nature, our action-hope cannot be hoarded. It is impossible for us to become hope-misers. We cannot passively consume both kinds of hope only for ourselves. We cannot become fat on hope. You won’t catch action-hope sitting on its butt; it is forever on the move.
Action-hope doesn’t stop at making us feel hopeful. It has an innate drive to inspire us to act. Our action-hope has a will to live and a will to reproduce, to create more action that in turn creates more action-hope.
With action-hope we make hope happen by making our future come faster.
The hope we receive empowers us to pay it forward by becoming hope-strivers and hope-makers and beauty-creators. Both kinds of hope help transform us into Climate Action Athletes, running with perseverance the races set before us on our Olympian Fields of Action as we see the course and the finish line.
As Climate Action Athletes we are no longer merely spectators in the stands. Nor can we run half the race and call it a day, or just run our leg of the race and not hand off the baton to our teammates.
When the hope-stealing forces of stasis and the status quo say take it slow, when they oppose change at the speed and scale necessary, we the hope-strivers, the Climate Action Athletes, must hold fast to our calling to be hope-makers and beauty-creators.
To switch metaphors, we will not settle for half a loaf of hope. We can’t settle for just getting by.
In other words, we can’t settle for eliminating the bad stuff, i.e. climate consequences. That is only part of the race.
We must strive to completely transform our world. We must continually push to create the good stuff, a better world, a beautiful world, a world that sets wrong right as we create a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances well-being for everyone and everything.
That is our vision. That is our course. That is the full race before us in overcoming climate change: stop bad stuff; set wrong right; make things better.
To run the race we need both kinds of hope that support one another: see-and-do; do-and-see. We see what can be done; we do what must be done.
Our actions can only give rise to hope if we believe we have a chance to make a difference. So our action-hope must be complimented with vision-hope. We must be able to see how it’s possible and also see the better world we are creating. And then we must act to make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful as we make hope happen by making our future come faster.
Make sure to check out the previous posts in this Introductory Series.