It felt like pessimism and cynicism was a state of privilege reinforced by – or enforced because it is from doomsayers. A doomsayer has the privilege of being cynical, of being pessimistic, especially when they’re not directly impacted by climate change.

Elin Kelsey touched on cynicism as well in How to Be Hopeful, saying how cynicism “is graced with the mirage of intelligence” (p. 19) when in contrast to hope.

I wonder if hope is thus criticized as opposed to cynicism because of its connotations with religion, as listed in page 16. In contrast, cynicism feels like another colonial force, claiming to be intellectually superior because being hopeful is to be “‘not bright enough to realize how corrupt [the world] is’” (18). Being hopeful then felt like it was for the less intelligent, the inferior, the perceived backward ones who still cling to religion which os an outdated notion that needs rectifying with scientific information of doom and an apocalyptic future and a cynical stance.

“Choosing hope is a commitment to believe in the capacity for change. From that standpoint, one could consider that privilege is at play whenever we step away from hope, and from our collective responsibility to act on behalf of necessary change.” (Kelsey, pg 22)

This quote stood out to me because I seemed to subconsciously believe that having hope is a privilege. I was always under the impression that having the ability to look away from reality and be able to hope was for the privileged, but this section really opened my eyes to how being able to not rely on hope and actually being able to step away from having hope is the real privilege.

I admittedly did not know many of the positive things that the article details and learning about them did bring me joy, but the above thought crept in eventually. It felt awful to think "well your current suffering is alleviated, but that suffering is only the beginning to what is coming in the future." I want to just be happy that these positive things are happening to people that needed them the most, but then the article reminded me about the future. The article uses the above graph to refute the claim that people are still "pumping out more carbon." The graph is meant to show that China is not a straight line up anymore and they are starting to "flatline". To me, it looks like it could just be a slight dip similar to what happened from 2022-2023 before exploding even further up. I do not see meaningful change when I look at that graph. It does not make me feel hopeful, it makes me feel more confident that the human race will either solve this problem or perish.

"Climate doomism is the belief that

catastrophic warming of the planet is now inevitable and there is no ameliorative action that can be taken

to avert this." - Elin Kelsey from "How to Be Hopeful".

I found this definition to be interesting. I had to look up what ameliorative (to make better from something bad or unsatisfactory) meant, and I fit 50% of this at least, but I wouldn't consider myself a "doomer". I definitely think that the catastrophic warming of the planet is inevitable, but I do believe the catastrophe can still be averted. Before I detail my exact thoughts, I wanted to explain my thought behind hope and confidence. For me, hope is one of the worst things I can have. Hope is something I have for things I have spent all of the time and energy I want to on, and now I am putting my hands up and letting time solve it. If I were to have hope for the environment, that would mean I have given up on anything meaningful happening and never worrying about it again. I'm not hopeful that the human race will solve the climate crisis, I am confident they will because the other option is to perish. What form this takes is still up for debate. Will we be able to make meaningful changes so that many people survive, or will living be only reserved for the super wealthy? Will money even be able to solve this issue? There are many issues that the human race will face in the near future, and each one will either be solved, or it won't.

"Hope is a way of being in the world that I

nurture and develop no matter how bad the situation might be. I hold hope as an ongoing stance." (Kelsey, pg 11)

These stood out to me because I used to think the opposite; I thought hope was something that fades when things get grueling. However, this perspective does make sense. These quotes frame hope as a daily practice rather than a feeling that comes and goes. It gives us agency over our mindsets.

"But nuance doesn’t sell. Pessimism does. It sounds smart, sophisticated, proof that you’re a clear-eyed realist. Plus, doom is dramatically satisfying in ways that incremental progress never can be." (Hervey)

I think this quote perfectly captures the core dynamic of modern media/public discourse. Catastrophes are easy to sell because they trigger an immediate emotional response. But incremental progress is less 'emotional' to talk about.

This is just one quote expressing the idea, but there were multiple comments about how media and the world around us makes us feel hopeless and needlessly negative, and how we need to do an overall better job at finding and sharing the victories and accomplishments that are happening all the time. The quote here is referring to how carbon emissions went down during the Covid pandemic worldwide, and yet news articles in Canada and other such countries still expressed fear and concern that such accomplishments were futile and wouldn't change anything. There was also a comment somewhere in the reading that all this negative news makes us forget the accomplishments and successes we've made, and thus makes people feel like we've only started fixing things rather than the reality that we've already made so much progress; another comment was assuming other people around us (especially people of different political background) don't care about climate change at all which makes us feel like our concerns don't matter, when in reality a majority of people are moderately concerned about climate issues and we could better understand that from each other (solidarity and working together as adrienne talked about). Overall, there was plenty of discussion about how fear and negativity are often overprevelent in our media and news we consume, and how that often gives people the wrong conclusions on the not-actually-as-bad truth, and how such doom and gloom often leads people into needless giving up when they absolutely shouldn't need to feel as such.

I haven't gotten to the other reading yet, but hopefully this as a response should suffice for the time being.

Kelsey’s reading connected to that a lot too, especially when she talks about doomism and how hopelessness can actually stop people from acting. I thought this quote was really interesting: “hope without agency is wishing” because it completely changed the way I thought about hope. Usually hope sounds passive to me, like just wishing things magically improve, but she argues that real hope is connected to action and participation. I also liked when she says cynicism is easier because once you decide everything is doomed you don’t really have to try anymore. Honestly I think that’s really true online. A lot of people in our generation joke about climate collapse constantly and sometimes it feels like humor becomes a way to avoid actually processing how overwhelming everything feels.

Another thing I found interesting was how both readings made hope feel less individual and more collective. Kelsey talks about how hard it is to stay hopeful alone when doom culture is everywhere, and I honestly related to that because social media algorithms constantly push outrage, fear, and negativity since those emotions get engagement. So when someone shares actual progress or solutions it almost feels weird because we’re so used to disaster narratives. At the same time though I don’t fully agree that hope alone motivates people. I still think fear and anger matter too because a lot of activism starts from frustration. But I think the point both authors are making is that fear without hope eventually burns people out.

Overall these readings made me realize climate change is also an emotional and psychological issue, not just a scientific one. People are not only trying to understand the facts anymore, they’re trying to figure out how to emotionally live with all this information every single day without either shutting down completely or pretending everything is fine.

In Hervey’s The Telemetry, I was surprised by how many positive changes are happening around the world that never make the news. The example about countries eliminating trachoma really stuck with me because it showed that major progress can happen even when it feels like everything is getting worse.

Both readings made me think about how easy it is to focus only on negative stories. They reminded me that recognizing progress doesn’t mean ignoring problems.

In Kelsey's, How to Be Hopeful, she describes the anti hope as the "...lure of doomism." The trap with doomism is that it feeds into the "...too late, too broken or too big to change...," mentality. It's crucial to strike the right balance with hope as to not fall into the void of doomism. And to gain hope, one cannot just sit around waiting for things to change. In order to obtain hope, we must seek it, contribute toward it, and invest in things that will grow into hope. I found this reading to be very insightful. The contrast between this discussion around hope versus the prior reading is interesting but still a good balance of realism -- not too over optimistic.

I found both reads to be interesting. They challenged concepts that I had never thought to even question such as the nuance doesn't sell, pessimism does, and the different way of viewing hope. Looking forward to incorporating some of the ideas shared here and integrate it in my final project. :)

- Wen Huber

I think this quote really speaks to me with how commodified hate itself has become. Algorithms push what gets interactions, which is often inflammatory speech, so the industries that cause so much environmental damage also feed into the cycle that resists solutions.

“Given the detrimental impacts of doomist headlines, part of holding a stance to reject fatalism is to

consciously make choices about news consumption. Luckily, research on news media literacy

interventions—ways to help you think more critically about the information you are consuming—reveals

that learning about how news media is skewed toward the negative (through, for example, negativity bias

and clickbait) increases your ability to avoid spirals of cynicism and gain more control of your news diet” (Kelsey pg. 37).

This connects to the previous point that online mediums are encouraged inherently by their profit driven goals to funnel non-constructive discourse. I think the problem for me with this is that I would argue that this method of learning about your news diet and adjusting seems really difficult to spread and implement the majority of the population that needs it, and the ones that are currently believing in climate doom.

This stood out to me because of how fascinating it was, a lot of conversations about climate change focus on fear, loss or political gridlock but these stats show how quickly large-scale change can happen once a country fully commits to renewable energy and clean technology!

"Accepting that none of us can truly know what will happen next can help us look differently at far more serious situations that have become deeply entrenched. One of the things that holds violent conflicts

in place is people on both sides believing that the conflict is inherently unresolvable" (Kelsey, pg. 26).

This made me think about how uncertainty can sometimes create hope instead of fear. People often treat the future as if it is already decided, especially in situations involving long-term conflict, which can make change feel impossible. I found it interesting that the passage suggests the belief that conflict is "unresolvable" may actually help keep it alive. It shows how powerful collective thinking can be in shaping political and social realities. I wonder how societies or individuals begin to challenge the idea that a deeply rooted conflict can never change?