I’m hardly what one would call a climate crisis optimist, but scanning the stories of this particular morning’s collection from Medium I was struck by the tone of doom in so many of the posts. Here is one especially noticeable doom suggestion: Earth is becoming like Venus. Last I checked, scientific consensus has the surface temperature of Venus around 800 degrees under a poisonous CO2-drenched atmosphere. I’m pretty sure that this is rather unlikely to happen here on Earth, just as I’m sure that this claim was made for effect, not prediction, but still.

Some of the stories I follow or those otherwise algorithmically suggested to me fall into the category of climate crisis doomism, but recently these sorts of posts have soared. I get it. America has been experiencing a jump in extreme climate crisis based events, including huge swathes of the country oppressed by unprecedentedly long heat waves, smoke-choked New England, New York, and upper Midwest regions, and extreme volumes of rainfall that have killed New Yorkers and Vermonters and destroyed one heck of a lot of property in the Hudson Valley and part of Vermont and western Massachusetts.

Notice, too, that like a typical American I’m referencing only American climate-related events (well, except the oblique reference to Canada’s wildfires, but, you know, Canada is like us culturally and geographically), even though a lot of similar disasters happen around the world.

While I am US-focused, let me recommend we consider the climate crisis and its potential solutions from another perspective other than that of inevitable oppressive doom. I’m not saying that oppressive doom isn’t awaiting us, but rather that this depends on our collective actions going forward, and there is no doubt that the point of avoiding the climate crisis is long-past—we have climate crisis problems today and more are unavoidably coming. But we also know that solutions are available to us. We’ve seen impressive, albeit early strides toward renewables, for instance, and Biden’s Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act is an impressive national-level step forward, albeit a tottering first step. Public appreciation of climate crisis has continued into a majority view, although, of course, there are plenty of other factors that can offset effective political action.

Any progress—or any large-scale effective progress, anyway—is most likely to be politically based, and while our current state of politics is more cause for doom-think than hope, I ascribe to the fundamental views of people like Bill Moyers and Robert Reich, each of whom have been articulate about how change comes about in America. They, and fortunately, many others, claim that the counter to the interests of extreme wealth and the power of the Fossil fuel industry is voting on a massive scale. Yes, politics has been corrupted by money, but if enough citizens say “Enough!” to this corruption, then change can happen when new candidates get elected and new laws get made.

Neither Moyers nor Reich would claim that change in politics makes all problems disappear. They understand that while Teddy Rosevelt’s Progressives curtailed the power of Big Trusts, wealth still carried on and that women remained disenfranchised. Moyers and Reich understand that FDR’s New Deal was a big deal for improving economic balance and fairness, but they also saw that blacks and other ethnic groups were still oppressed. Moyers and Reich understand that the Civil Rights Act corrected many egregious laws, but that there remains a long way to go for racial justice. Robert Reich writes extensively about today’s income inequality and the ascendent power of the rich and he’s not happy about the resurgence of money interests and the weakening of some of the very laws that had improved economic fairness in this country. He is hardly a blind optimist, but rather a clearsighted analyst of our current economic inequities. He understands what people are up against in their attempts to claw back all that has been again reclaimed by America’s oligarchs. But his view, and Moyer’s view, is that the power and interests of money can be countered only by the power and interests of people, however imperfect the process of and results from such efforts may be.

Of course, they may be wrong, but there are plenty of signs and certainly much in history to suggest they are right.

When I say any climate crisis progress—or any large-scale effective progress, anyway—is most likely to be politically based, I’m not saying that individual efforts are unimportant. I am saying, though, that one essential effort of all individuals is voting, and if you can’t be bothered to do that, giving up hamburgers or only riding a bike is laughably naïve in the expectation that a useful difference is being made. Yes, on the climate crisis amelioration front every act is important, including individual action on climate responsibility, but only by collective action can we make the significant difference.