Death before decaf

Today, I turned 39 which I duly celebrated with morning coffee at Kastello and a ferry ride across the harbour in Gothenburg. Unfortunately, I also managed to get pulled into one of those endless Twitter debates about climate change. I am still undecided if engaging in these debates is really meaningful. Although I learn a lot about why we disagree, I am also afraid that spending my days debating with radicalized Malthusians may distort my understanding of climate politics more generally.

Walter Lippmann once wrote that democratic politics “is not about getting everyone to think alike, but getting people who think differently to act alike”. Effective climate action will depend on the creation of broad political coalitions, both domestically and internationally. For that reason, hairshirt environmentalism may be as much of an obstacle to effective mitigation as the Koch Brothers. But then again, for people like Naomi Klein, climate change is merely a vehicle for bringing about other, and completely unrelated, political changes so it is not surprising that compromise has become so incredibly difficult.