‘It’s not over’: An open letter to David Suzuki – The famed scientist and environmentalist recently said the fight against climate change is over. That’s not honest realism – it’s depressing cynicism.

25 comments

1. It’s reality, and he (and myself) have come to terms with it. We’re cooked, so to speak. We crossed all the critical tipping points years ago. The lag time of such large systems is what’s being confused for hope.

2. Suzuki clarified his perspective, saying that he knows there is still work to do and that it’s not over.

   But isn’t depressed cynicism an appropriate response for a man who’s been working to educate us and encourage change for 40 years with very little to show for it? Or as a response to oilsands and new pipelines, lack of political will for collective action, and continuing ecological decline?

3. The fight is not over. We never even bothered to start it #apathy

   We spent extremely crucial decades in denial and wasting time. That still continues today.

4. Apparently studying the politics of climate change leads to precisely where we are in the problem, in _not knowing the actual science and problems we’re facing_ Donald. What an absolute idiot.

5. It’s kind of hard to stay optimistic when you look at the GML data, the emission source distribution charts and where we need to be to at least stabilize status quo. Net zero is nothing more than a pipe dream right now.

6. That’s not depressing cynicism. Suzuki is in fact, being a realist and not insulting people’s intelligence by obfuscating the fact that we are cooked. 

7. It’s not cynical to state the truth.

   The whole “save the environment” phase of human survival has been lost, and now our only option is to figure out how we exist in what is becoming “the new normal.”

8. As the optimist said to the crying pessimist: “dont worry, mate! Chin up! It can get a lot worse!”

9. His letter says nothing and makes no points, valid or invalid

10. Copium. 🤷

11. For me personally, I see it as similar to pilot on a plane that the pilot knows is going to augur into the ground. Pilots have a moral obligation to aviate until the bitter end, even against all hope.

12. No, I think it’s reality. I think he’s correct. I just read how our oceans have heated up so rapidly in the last 2 years that they likely are at the point of no return. How do we refreeze the poles? Our AC unit for the planet hit 30c recently. It’s reality, sorry to say. 

13. Lets be real he is right,

    America elected a Facsiest leasder who is hell bent on not having a renewable power plan, he is dismantling the EPA, and those changes will take another 5 years to reverse to even get started, so that is 5 years of MAX emissions on top of the already high emissions. The people are to damn stupid to realize they are turning up the oven temp on them selves and when they do it is climate collapse it is over. So no there is no more hope, hope is dead, fine your safe climate location, make your moves, use your know how to prepare, but accept your fellow humans were to stupid to do a damn thing about this whole mess.

14. My view is that it’s over, and just beginning.

    There is one sense of it being over that I agree with. We will not stop horrible effects of climate change. And many of us will sadly not even TRY to stop it, and some (the US currently) will work to *accelerate* damage to our climate.

    But for the ‘just beginning’ part… We are building the foundation of fixing and recovering. We are still researching and building out green energy everywhere. Leave the US out of it, and Europe and China are still on board with saving the planet. Scientists and researchers continue to make progress every day. Energy storage and production companies make advancements and breakthroughs every day.

    So in a sense, we have a TON of smart people preparing for disaster right now. They are just waiting to be called on, and for the moronic masses to finally say “uh oh… we DID screw things up, didn’t we? What do we do now?” and we’ll have the foundations in place to hopefully sort things out.

    That’s a long winded way of saying that unfortunately people were right when they said “it has to get worse before it can get better.”

15. Oh, are you feeling depressed? Good. Because you should be.

16. It’s honesty. I mean even if we stopped all our emissions, the trigger has been pulled decades ago and we are locked in to witness pretty much every tipping point that are hot topic and even those which we are about to discover

17. What is over is the guilt ridden climate policies that shamed people for not doing more on a personal level and letting corporations and foreign governments off the hook. I’m sorry that I can’t ride my bicycle fifty miles each way to work or turn off my air conditioner when it’s ninety degrees because of health issues.

18. The positive examples in this post mean nothing in the big picture. The EU might have produced a lot of energy from solar, but the global energy mix is still 80% fossil – just like in 2015.

    All advances in green technology barely cover the increased demand each year.

    The green adaptation started too late. Even if everyone delivered on their Paris Agreement promises (they haven’t and they won’t) we would still need to produce all the things for green energy.

    That infrastructure alone cost more in CO2 (because it had to be produced with dirty processes) than the budget to stay below 1.5C.

    If you look at the big picture, we haven’t even slowed the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere. In fact, the past 20+ months have seen an acceleration, pointing to tipping points being passed. My guess is that the oceans are saturated.

19. This is reality folks. Our current global society will collapse because of climate and we did not do enough to stop it. Too many tipping points have passed. There will be a great die off of the human species as a result.

20. I’m tired of the “yes we can” camp always trying to say we can tackle this problem. It’s such a huge issue and the things being done are not even close to being nearly enough. Yeah it sucks to feel like we’re all doomed, but until I see some concrete evidence to the contrary, wtf are we supposed to do: bury our heads in the sand, sing kumbaya, and hope for the best? Or recycle that aluminum can only to realize it’s sent to the same garbage facility overseas as all our other trash?

21. There’s so many depressing things about this world. Yet, we still continue and try to improve. Suzuki is probably right but we can’t stop trying, because there’s still that .09% chance that we will come together in time

22. Climate change is here, it’s accelerating, and there’s a lot of momentum in the system. For someone who’s been working in this area for four decades and was working to prevent us from exceeding our known thresholds—well, that is no longer possible. That doesn’t mean we stop fighting, but the nature of the fight has changed. Now we prepare for changes and try to adapt as best we can

23. Years ago I heard someone saying that we need to working on contingency plans. What does that mean? It means starting to take action to counteract some of the effects of climate change, rather than only taking action to stop climate change. For example, one of the biggest issues related to climate change is going to be political instability and inequality.

24. I mean the fight to completely prevent or reverse climate change is over. Right now my focus has become minimising and mitigating the damage and saving as much as we can from what remains to be saved.

25. Depressing cynicism is honest realism, the longer you have spent fighting this fight the more you will become a cynic, because you will see time go by and nothing changing. I became one myself, and gave up just like him. People saying otherwise just haven’t realized the gravity of the situation we are in, the time to act was decades ago

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