Currently — October 25th, 2022

October 24, 2022

What you need to know, currently.

We have a new op-ed from Currently’s partnership coordinator, Meg Ruttan, on the harsh realities of climate doomism and how social media tends to plays a role in inspiring fear, when it comes to the climate crisis, rather than hope.

“Like other strains of doomism, longtermism obsesses about the possibility of human extinction rather than admit that climate change is happening right now and the most privileged among us have yet to suffer its impacts,” Ruttan writes.

“In order to preserve the future of humanity, longtermism posits this:

‘If you could save a million lives to  day or shave 0.0001 percent off the probability of premature human extinction—a one in a million chance of saving at least 8 trillion lives—you should do the latter, allowing a million people to die,’ according to reporting from the Boston Review,” she continues.

“Again, this rhymes with doomism by suggesting that because it’s too late to solve climate change, it’s acceptable to close borders and hoard resources as if we are at the point of planetary collapse where survival is most important. This idea insists that the preservation of modern, Western civilization would be worth abandoning the rest of the world for. It’s simply another type of fatalism.”

What you can do, currently.

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