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 found myself pulled into one of those endless Twitter debates about climate change. I am still undecided about whether engaging in these debates is really meaningful. While I do learn a lot about why we disagree, I also worry that spending my days arguing with radicalised 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. Then again, for people like Naomi Klein, climate change is often less an end in itself than a vehicle for bringing about other, largely unrelated political changes. In that light, it is perhaps not surprising that compromise has become so incredibly difficult.