Climate Revolution Now’s recent post, “People Get Ready,” is entirely unignorable, not least because of the screen grab from one of the later Mad Max movies, with Tom Hardy’s character, mouth-guarded and grimacing, strapped at the front of one of those stupid vehicles.

Of course, the sub-title of this Substack post is equally alarming: “The end is nigh.”

Thomsen-Cheek breaks people into three categories when it comes to climate change, as follows:

(1) The people who don’t “believe” in climate change won’t act personally or politically because… nothing ain’t happen and what are you global-warming-panic-attack freaks all het up about? Fair enough.

(2) The folks who know that the climate is changing aren’t convinced it’s dire don’t revolt because they think the answer is a “transition” to a “new green economy” featuring “renewables.” And they are trusting the process.

(3) The people we call “doomers” won’t rise up because they’re convinced the danger is insurmountable and don’t see the point.

The first group she calls “What Me Worry?,” and I’ll always appreciate any literary allusion to Mad Magazine. The second group is “It Won’t Be That Bad.” Group number three is “Doomers.”

The second group is the group that interests me and is, obviously, the likeliest vector from which climate progress comes. Group 2 seem to be her peeps, but in her opinion, “Group 2 is too sanguine. I am not for a moment convinced that there is any meaningful ‘transition’ or that any currently serving politician has any intention of upsetting the apple cart enough to make real change to energy and infrastructural policy.”

Who’s Sanguine?

“Sanguine” is an interesting choice of adjective, since it means “to be cheerfully optimistic, hopeful, or confident, especially in a difficult or uncertain situation. It is a slightly literary or advanced vocabulary word, often used to describe an upbeat, resilient outlook on life,” according to Gemini AI Summary.

I’m not sure how many of Group 2 are sanguine. There are those Climate Optimists, for example, but as best I can figure, such efforts are more along the line of self-care, except instead of applying skin care daily or taking enough time to stretch one’s hamstrings, it’s more an effort to keep centered or calm enough to avoid pulling off one’s head so that attention to climate change and the mechanisms to fight it can be continued.

Thomsen-Cheek agrees that we have time to prepare, although she seems awfully like the doomers in her belief that politically not much is going to happen to make climate progress a top agenda item. At least without a revolution or national strike or “…if one million people showed up on the National Mall this November we could stop Washington DC dead in its tracks. We could make demands. We could force change. We could call for accountability, and accept nothing less” in her hope that Groups 1 and 2 can rally, rise up.

Right on, sister, sincerely. I’ll meet you on The Mall, but I also think there’s plenty of other efforts to be made to fight climate change.

I’m a Member of Group 2a, the Semi-sanguines

What bothers me with Thomsen-Cheek’s piece is the dour tone of despair, short of total revolution, anyway. It is clear that there are forces of self-interest loose amongst the world and Big Oil is one such. Here in the United States a bunch of big money self-interests have decided to threaten American’s imperfect but glorious experiment in democracy and depending on the particular news cycle they look close to winning.

But pessimism isn’t likely the best framing and “revolution” sounds like a too-high bar. Furthermore, Thomsen-Cheek skews her reporting. Here’s an example:

Group 2 probably expected to see emissions go down because of all that green new economy jazz. It is demonstrably clear that that outcome did not happen. Emissions are rising. France and Spain are burning down. Group 2 should be easy to motivate to revolt now because they feel cheated, abandoned, and lied to. I know I feel that way.

The hyperlink reference is to a Guardian article about data centers leading to an emissions rise, mainly from new data centers, with Microsoft and Google loosening their already largely theoretical net-zero goals. Yeah, carbon emissions are still rising, and under Trump’s stewardship, America is producing more emissions. But let’s not forget that there are plenty of examples of an accelerated clean energy implementation even here in the U.S. And let’s not forget the tremendous achievements of the Biden Administration, with IIJA and IRA, creating the most ambitious climate action legislation in the known universe bar none. Yup, and then came Trump, but what’s coming next? The 2026 mid-terms and the 2028 election. Place your money and make your bets. These days the smart money is on clean energy, not least because it wins in the marketplace and” affordability,” at least when Trump et. al.’s thumbs aren’t on the scale.

China, the recent world champion of emission production, seems likely to have leveled off and the shockingly fast rate of clean energy infrastructure development will make for a downward emissions trend. Non-petrostates and countries of the Global South seem to understand more clearly by the second that clean energy is the way to bring life-supporting electricity to populations previously underserved or never served. The Pakistani miracle of massed individual efforts with solar to provide electricity apart from that country’s national grid infamous for poor reliability and high prices, has in two or so years time built clean energy capacity to rival the capacity of the old grid.

The Conflicting Climate Change-Human Perspectives

Climate change occurs on a different time scale than human lives. Perhaps the most shocking thing about climate change is how fast it is developing, considering there’s only been 200-plus years of ever-growing volume of fossil fuel use, but still, comprehending the large Earth systems at work in climate change presents a far-different scope than our day-to-day lives. Thomsen-Cheek is unfair in how she describes Group 2, and I believe that she is severely underestimating the level of understanding of what’s at stake with climate change and the determination of vast numbers of people to do something about it. The fact of the matter is that major economic systems need to change and it’s going to take all these people to gain any possibility of such system changes. Let me be less fanciful than “system changes,” since most needed changes are not rocket science: legislation to encourage the use of clean energy and legislation to discourage the use of fossil fuel energy. The arguments—economic and environmental—support such change and the growing record of people and countries making such changes is impressive.

It’s not the time to suggest it may be too late if we don’t join a national strike tomorrow (even if such a strike might help) or that erecting guillotines should be part of the climate action playbook. The biggest help of all today may be to acknowledge the progress being made and the second big help would be to present next steps and political actions clearly.

A central theme of The Steep Climes Quartet—Book Three, Over Brooklyn Hills, has recently published—is  the conflict between the need to address climate change and the human scale of the lives of those who must act. Even the most committed climate scientist or activist is going to worry and think about the next mortgage payment or how junior’s acting out in school or a dear friend’s recent diagnosis—that’s life. Climate action develops within each of our personal lives and in the many ways as different as we are from others. Politics is one of the major ways out personal lives interact with larger issues and critiquing one’s closest allies is hardly politic, especially as the knowledge about climate change spreads with every news story of extreme weather, and especially since we’ve seen—here in America—the most ambitious climate action legislation (and, no, not perfect) become law, only to be gutted through unlawful branches of government. It is easy enough to be pessimistic, and Trump—President Big Oil Stooge—makes this ever more likely.

It is also easy to despair when we look at how we build things today. In my neck of the woods there are far too many small bridges waiting for years for replacement construction that seems to take forever, but that’s not an intrinsic limitation. America has had large-scale infrastructure happen fast, with just one example being the rural electrification act that brought electric distribution out to millions; another is the TVA, or the huge dam projects like Hoover Dam, or, for that matter, the lightning-fast military industrialization in America during WWII.

The threat of a warming planet is ever more in front of our eyes and mobilization against it is the key.

Call to Action

In the end, it looks like Thomsen-Cheek is also a member of Group 2a, the Semi-sanguines. We know that we have damaged the Earth’s systems enough to have allowed ongoing climate change, but we also know that actions today and in the near term can make the difference between a world of 2 degrees Celsius or one of 3 or 4 degrees above what had been for centuries the global average temperature, so hardly full-throated happiness, but a call to action, certainly.

Let’s pay attention to 2026 and 2028 in such calls and not make fun of those who place their trust in “renoobles.” Jeff McFadden, who Thomsen-Cheek quotes, may be the source of the “renoobles” crack, but urging ourselves and others to pay attention to how the world works and nonetheless push for progress is another thing of man that is renewable.

Can the work of climate progress happen faster? Yes, that would be great. Put me in that group.

And vote, goddammit.

The post In Defense of Group 2 first appeared on David Guenette.