We can't afford to be climate doomers, by Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian

If the scientists say we can overcome climate change then why are so many people doomy about it, asks the always very smart and hopeful-without-being-sappy Rebecca Solnit? 

(BTW, her book, A Paradise Built In Hell, is an excellent history and another, Wanderlust, a sort of literary history of walking, one of my favorite books ever.) 

Anyway, my hot take on why so many people might trend doomy on climate change: 

B/c, for one big reason, the forces against climate change reform are the richest and most powerful corporate interests in the world. Big Oil and Wall Street. And everyone or nearly everyone depends on their economy; for jobs, housing, food, savings, etc. 

Big Oil and the Billionaires, the people who run the economy, tell us environmental reforms threaten economic growth and security. And what threatens the Captains of Industry threatens Us, we naturally fear.

We don't want to cook the planet but we need jobs. Ack! 

Now I don't believe this Chamber of Commerce bs for a minute but I certainly recognize the fear in the question: is whatever X factor good or bad for the economy? It matters. Many live with a fear that they're a few paychecks away from homeless destitution or other untold hardships. What if big biz people take their toys (jobs!) and go home, go full-hoarder austerity and wait out the "mob anarchy" (people asking for living wages, basically) in their island fortress redoubts? Too Big To Fail, etc. 

It's scary. 

But my contention is that the historical evidence is mounting that strategic government regulation of the economy, higher taxes on wealth, more spending on community infrastructure, and Democratic administrations since Roosevelt are more pro-economic growth, pro-jobs, and pro-prosperity than the monopolizing free market corporate rule of the Repuglicans, and this is on top of the fact the latter are also horrible bigots and the last people on earth that ought to be telling anyone else how to live their lives. 

My point: With the Dems there is hope, even if it is being strained, in adapting to climate change while minimizing the humanitarian catastrophes coming and, really, already here. But there is no such hope-- all climate doomers or climate deniers, same diff-- w/ Trump and the MAGA Repugs. The problem isn't climate doomers so much as a climate dooming political party.  

Vote Blue No Matter Who! Please and thank you.